Archaeology Magazine - April 1972 - 63

it. Work usually proceeds at a rapid pace, three
to five hours is all that is needed to excavate a
shallow tomb. The shaft is usually dug to the
bottom of the entrance of the chamber and then
the chamber itself is emptied. It is rather important for the guaquero to follow the original
shaft quite closely since he doesn't want to come
down vertically on the artifacts and damage them
or, in the case of a large unfilled tomb chamber,
fall through the roof. However, only the very
largest tombs have unfilled chambers.

M ost burials were covered with dirt to the
roof of the chamber after the body and offerings
had been properly arranged. Large or deep tombs
are much more dangerous to dig, even though
the rewards may be greater. Collapse of the shaft
walls is an ever present danger in all types of
tombs, especially if the surrounding soil is at all
sandy. This is also a seismically active area and
small earthquakes are frequent. Tales of guaqueros
being buried by the collapse of the shaft or chamber walls are common. There is another danger
in guaqueria - discovery. If the guaqueros are not
digging on their own land, and many are not, the
owner may appear and force them to abandon
their work or to yield any finds. For this reason
much of the excavation may take place at night
by the light of candles.
Should the entrance to the tomb chamber not
appear in the shaft wall after a reasonable depth
has been reached the guaqueros will stop work
and search for the entrance. This is done by
k
scraping the walls of the shaft carefully with a
flat piece of gourd or wood or even with a machete blade. In scraping, a valid archaeological
technique, changes in the color or the consistency
of the earth may appear which will indicate the
location of the entrance. Once the entrance is
* found and
working space has been cleared, the
guaquero tunnels in. If it is a small shallow
chamber he may well simply tunnel a bit and
scrape around to try to locate any artifacts. If it
is a large chamber he will empty it of dirt, working inside the chamber itself by candlelight. A
good deal of care is exercised in emptying the
burial place so as not to either miss or damage
any of the artifacts. Until recently chambers were
not cleared as carefully but now undamaged,
decorated ceramics fetch a good price and the
guaqueros have become more careful. As vessels
and other objects appear they are gently disen-

gaged from the surrounding soil and placed in
the basket to be hauled up. This area is so damp
that everything is waterlogged and even fired clay
vessels are incredibly fragile. Broken artifacts,
human remains, and objects of no commercial
value are either left in the chamber, abandoned
at the top, or destroyed. The main interests of the
guaqueros is gold and after that saleable vessels or
tools. No records are kept and little effort is made
to remember any details except for an occasional
unusual find, two omissions which are particularly
deplored by professional archaeologists.

Wuh
the beginnings of an industry of making
fake antiquities, some Colombian guaqueros are
making a point of remembering where they got a
piece and from what sort of tomb as a rough
means of authenticating it if they should be
questioned. Occasionally a collector will specifically
ask for such information. On the other hand, if a
guaquero suspects that he has found a cemetery
where there may be more loot he will often deliberately give false information to protect his
"claim" from poachers. Many museum artifacts
in particular are known to have such false information attached to them. With the coming of
archaeologists to this area it is to be expected that
more and more pieces will be falsely labeled in an
effort by the guaquero to protect his business.
A guaquero working on his own land or one
who has some reasons for hiding his work will fill
in the shaft when he is done. More often, however, the open shaft will simply be abandoned. In
hard soil it may stand as an open pit for years.
In softer ground the chamber and shaft will
slowly collapse, fill up and leave only a roughly
circular depression to mark where there once
was a tomb. The fields and orchards of central
Colombia are riddled with such testimony to the
activities of guaqueros.

KAREN OLSEN BRUHNS, a lecturer in anthropology at San Jose State College in California , was born in 1941 in Santa Rosa , California
and received both her A.B. and Ph.D. from the
University of California at Berkeley. She has spent
three field seasons in Colombia and the Andes.
Having published several papers dealing with the
Quimbaya and other Colombian cultures, she is
currently working on a monograph on the
Quimbaya.
143

Archaeology Magazine - April 1972

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - April 1972