San Agustin Archeological park

The archaeological park of San Agustín is one of the most important archaeological sites in Colombia, located in the south of the department of Huila. It was founded on November 20, 1935, during the first government of Alfonso López Pumarejo, and in 1995 it was declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco. It is the largest necropolis in the world.

Location

The archaeological park of San Agustín is located in the upper basin of the Magdalena River, in the municipality of San Agustín, in the department of Huila, at an altitude of 1,730 m.a.s.l. no. m. This area is located in the eastern foothills of the Colombian Massif, from where the three Andean mountain ranges that cross the country from south to north in the Andean Region come off. San Agustín is at a distance of 533 [km] The archaeological park corresponds to a small zone of concentration of tombs of the total archaeological zone of greater extension that reaches the National Archaeological Park of Tierradentro.

Periodization

There are the following periodizations, based on the age of the finds, for the San Agustín region:

• Stage Arcaica: It corresponds to a period from approximately 3000 to C. to 1000 B. C. From that period a fire of a pre-ceramic culture is dated.
• Higher training period: From 1000 B.C. to 300 B.C. During that period there are findings that demonstrate the introduction of pottery and agriculture.
• Higher period: From 200 B.C. to 300 AD.
• Regional Classic Period: In that period, which goes from 300 to 800, it corresponds to the construction of the funeral mounds, the statuery and the sarcophagus in wood.
• Recent period: From 800 to the Spanish conquest, period in which the last statues are built, realistically, and the peanut is cultivated. It is the period of decadence and disappearance of the culture that built the statues.

History

18th century

The first to write down a description of the archaeological site of San Agustín was the Franciscan missionary Fray Juan de Santa Gertrudis, who arrived in America in 1755. Between 1757 and 1767 he toured the Viceroyalty of New Granada. Upon his return to Spain, he published a book entitled Maravillas de la Naturaleza, in which he recorded his journey, including a detailed description of the sculptures of San Agustín, and some personal theories about the possible origin of the town that built them.

The next to publish a description of the sculptures of San Agustín was Francisco José de Caldas, who in 1808 published the account of the visit he had made to the place in 1797. The publication was made in the Semanario del Nuevo Reino de Granada , in an essay entitled "State of the Geography of the Viceroyalty of Santafé de Bogotá, in relation to geography and commerce".

19th century

In 1850, the government of President José Hilario López started the Chorographic Commission, which had been promoted in the previous government by President Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera. The Italian geographer Agustín Codazzi was commissioned to direct said commission. Codazzi arrived in San Agustín in the company of the cartoonist Manuel María Paz, who made the first pictographic copies of the sculptures. Codazzi published in 1857 detailed descriptions of the site known as "Las Mesas", in an essay entitled Ruins of San Agustín.

In 1859, some cinchona businessmen moved to the town of San Agustín three anthropomorphic statues (one of which was carved from a granite slab) and a large canoe or sarcophagus carved in stone. Between 1892 and 1893, General Carlos Cuervo Márquez wrote the first academic reviews in a work entitled Prehistory and Travel.

In 1892, the Spanish explorer Luis María Gutiérrez de Alba published a book entitled Impressions from a trip to Colombia, in which he described the archaeological site of San Agustín. Gutiérrez de Alba proposed to the conservative governments of Carlos Holguín Mallarino and Rafael Núñez that they allocate economic resources for the exploration, conservation and dissemination of the archaeological site, but his suggestions were not heeded.

20th century

In 1907, during the government of Rafael Reyes Prieto, two of the sculptures of San Agustín were ordered to be transferred to Bogotá with the purpose of making them known to the public in the capital. Subsequently, these statues were installed in the Bogota National Park.

Between late 1913 and early 1914, German archaeologist Konrad Theodor Preuss visited the area as a special envoy for the American Section of the Anthropological Museum in Berlin. This researcher was the first to take photographs of the Augustinian sculptures, and the first to identify the mounds that had been looted and removed from their original state. Konrad Preuss managed to photograph a total of 120 statues.

On November 20, 1935, during the first government of Alfonso López Pumarejo, the Archaeological Park of San Agustín was officially founded.

In 1936, the ethnologist and indigenist Gregorio Hernández de Alba, considered one of the fathers of archeology and anthropology in Colombia, began several excavations in the area. As a result of his research, he published a book entitled The Archaeological Culture of San Agustín , which is considered one of the fundamental works of Colombian archaeology.

In 1937, the Spanish archaeologist José Pérez de Barradas, in the company of the cartoonist Luis Alfonso Sánchez Valderrama, carried out archaeological excavations in San Agustín. In 1943 the book Agustinian Archeology was published in the National Printing Office of Bogotá, in which the research carried out by Pérez de Barradas was recorded, with illustrations by Sánchez Valderrama.

The German ethnologist Justus W. Schottelius, who fled from Nazi Germany because of his Jewish origin, published in 1940 an interesting essay entitled Analogies of the ideas represented in the statues of San Agustín with those of Central and South America , product of their expeditions to the area. Another prominent archaeologist who made important finds was the Colombian-Austrian Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff, who also fled Germany after being expelled from the SS in 1936. Reichel-Dolmatoff excavated the St. Augustine area in 1966 and published several scholarly articles and scholarly essays. about the results of their investigations.

Archaeologist Luis Duque Gómez, who was director of the Archaeological Park, conducted extensive research on San Agustín from the 1960s to the 1990s, during which time he published numerous books and essays on the subject.

Description

The park locations are defined by a system of terraces and embankments. The San Agustín archaeological park is made up of four "little tables", three properties, an archaeological museum and the so-called Forest of Statues. The three properties are the following:

• San Agustín: It is 4 km from the municipality of Isnos. You can walk or ride from San Agustín, crossing the Strait of the Magdalena River.
• High of the Idols: There is the highest statue of the municipality of Isnos that measures 7m. It should be noted that in the municipality of Isnos there are 3 archaeological parks.
• High Stones: It is located 7 km from Isnos. There is the statue known as "Doble Yo". Nearby are El Tablón, La Chaquira, La Pelota and El Purutal. From La Chaquira you can see the strait of the Magdalena River.

Alto de los Ídolos and Alto de las Piedras do not belong to the archaeological park of San Agustín; They are independent parks that are located in the municipality of Isnos, a few kilometers from San Agustín.

The vestiges of the ancient cultural groups are scattered in an area of more than 50 km², on plateaus located on both sides of the canyon formed by the upper part of the Magdalena River.

• Archaeological Museum of San Agustín: In the museum there are several exhibition halls in which some statues are protected from their original location in addition to clay vessels, utensils, inscriptions and historical documents relating to archaeological research carried out in the past.
• Source of Lavapatas: Discovered in 1937 by archaeologists José Pérez and Gregorio Hernández, it is a system of channels on stones carved with human figures, amphibians and reptiles. The approximate date of the site corresponds to a period of centuries I and IXd. C.
• Statue Forest: It is a circuit of ecological paths in which, in addition to appreciating the regional flora, 35 funeral statues found in the surroundings can be seen.

St. Augustine Statuary

Detail of one of the statues.

A high percentage of the statues of Saint Augustine are found in situ (in the same place where they were originally found), facing east. A good part of the statues is characterized by engravings similar to ceremonial masks that mix human and animal features. The works are planimetric or engraved only frontally, on flat surfaces and without lateral sculptures. Some of the main statues are as follows:

• Triangular face: This is a triangular face in an inverted pyramid position. Some researchers have suggested that the face has a corn kernel scheme.
• The cure: This statue was written in 1756 by Fray Juan de Santa Gertrudis, who defined it as the "image of a priest to whom his right arm was cut to dispossess him of the riches that adorned him."
• Bird and reptile: It is one of the most recognized statues. It is probably about an eagle or owl that takes a snake in the beak.
• The graves: Several of the megalithic sculptures reflect a funeral cult. They are built as a dolmen with guardians and shamans responsible for protecting the sarcophagus or tomb.

Sites of interest within the park

Source of Lavapatas.

• La Source de Lavapatas.
• Statue Forest.
• The Alto de Lavapatas.

Gallery