Veraguas Culture
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Veraguas Culture
The Veraguas culture, also known as the Chiriqui culture, was a pre-Columbian Panamian culture. It is noted for the quality of its goldwork. Art The Veraguas culture cast zoomorphic pendants out of gold and tumbaga, using the lost wax method. When using tumbaga, artists would often use acid to remove copper from the surface, allowing for a shinier piece. This process is known as depletion gilding. This goldwork was practiced until the early 16th century CE. The Veraguas culture also produced painted tripod bowls and anthropomorphic figures. In addition, sculptures were made out of basalt Basalt (; ) is an aphanite, aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the planetary surface, surface of a terrestrial .... Sites El Cangrejal El Cangrejal is located on the Pacific coast of Panama. Several earthen mounds as well as many potsherds were found at this ...
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Pre-Columbian
In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, the era covers the history of Indigenous cultures until significant influence by Europeans. This may have occurred decades or even centuries after Columbus for certain cultures. Many pre-Columbian civilizations were marked by permanent settlements, cities, agriculture, civic and monumental architecture, major earthworks, and complex societal hierarchies. Some of these civilizations had long faded by the time of the first permanent European colonies (c. late 16th–early 17th centuries), and are known only through archaeological investigations and oral history. Other civilizations were contemporary with the colonial period and were described in European historical accounts of the time. A few, such as the Maya civilization, had their own wri ...
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Panama
Panama ( , ; es, link=no, Panamá ), officially the Republic of Panama ( es, República de Panamá), is a transcontinental country spanning the southern part of North America and the northern part of South America. It is bordered by Costa Rica to the west, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the south. Its capital and largest city is Panama City, whose metropolitan area is home to nearly half the country's million people. Panama was inhabited by indigenous tribes before Spanish colonists arrived in the 16th century. It broke away from Spain in 1821 and joined the Republic of Gran Colombia, a union of Nueva Granada, Ecuador, and Venezuela. After Gran Colombia dissolved in 1831, Panama and Nueva Granada eventually became the Republic of Colombia. With the backing of the United States, Panama seceded from Colombia in 1903, allowing the construction of the Panama Canal to be completed by the United States Army Corps of En ...
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Culture
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.Tylor, Edward. (1871). Primitive Culture. Vol 1. New York: J.P. Putnam's Son Culture is often originated from or attributed to a specific region or location. Humans acquire culture through the learning processes of enculturation and socialization, which is shown by the diversity of cultures across societies. A cultural norm codifies acceptable conduct in society; it serves as a guideline for behavior, dress, language, and demeanor in a situation, which serves as a template for expectations in a social group. Accepting only a monoculture in a social group can bear risks, just as a single species can wither in the face of environmental change, for lack of functional responses to the change. Thus in military culture, valor is counted a typica ...
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Goldsmith
A goldsmith is a Metalworking, metalworker who specializes in working with gold and other precious metals. Nowadays they mainly specialize in jewelry-making but historically, goldsmiths have also made cutlery, silverware, platter (dishware), platters, goblets, decorative and serviceable utensils, and ceremonial or religious items. Goldsmiths must be skilled in forming metal through file (tool), filing, brazing, soldering, sawing, forging, Casting (metalworking), casting, and polishing. The trade has very often included jewelry-making skills, as well as the very similar skills of the silversmith. Traditionally, these skills had been passed along through apprenticeships; more recently jewelry arts schools, specializing in teaching goldsmithing and a multitude of skills falling under the jewelry arts umbrella, are available. Many universities and junior colleges also offer goldsmithing, silversmithing, and metal arts fabrication as a part of their fine arts curriculum. Gold Com ...
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Gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal in a pure form. Chemically, gold is a transition metal and a group 11 element. It is one of the least reactive chemical elements and is solid under standard conditions. Gold often occurs in free elemental ( native state), as nuggets or grains, in rocks, veins, and alluvial deposits. It occurs in a solid solution series with the native element silver (as electrum), naturally alloyed with other metals like copper and palladium, and mineral inclusions such as within pyrite. Less commonly, it occurs in minerals as gold compounds, often with tellurium (gold tellurides). Gold is resistant to most acids, though it does dissolve in aqua regia (a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid), forming a soluble tetrachloroaurate anion. Gold is ...
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Tumbaga
''Tumbaga'' is the name for a non-specific alloy of gold and copper given by Spanish Conquistadors to metals composed of these elements found in widespread use in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica in North America and South America. The term is believed to be a borrowing from Malay , meaning 'copper' or 'brass'. It has also been spelled ''tumbago'' in literature. Composition and properties Tumbaga is an alloy composed mostly of gold and copper. It has a significantly lower melting point than gold or copper alone. It is harder than copper, but maintains malleability after being pounded. Tumbaga can be treated with a simple acid, like citric acid, to dissolve copper off the surface. What remains is a shiny layer of nearly pure gold on top of a harder, more durable copper-gold alloy sheet. This process is referred to as depletion gilding. Use and function Tumbaga was widely used by the pre-Columbian cultures of South and Central America to make religious objects. Like most gold alloys, t ...
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Depletion Gilding
Depletion gilding is a method for producing a layer of nearly pure gold on an object made of gold alloy by removing the other metals from its surface. It is sometimes referred to as a "surface enrichment" process. Process Most gilding methods are additive: they deposit gold that was not there before onto the surface of an object. By contrast, depletion gilding is a subtractive process whereby material is removed to increase the purity of gold that is already present on an object's surface. In depletion gilding, other metals are etched away from the surface of an object composed of a gold alloy by the use of acids or salts, often in combination with heat. Since no gold is added, only an object made of an alloy that already contains gold can be depletion gilded. Depletion gilding relies on the fact that gold is highly resistant to oxidation or corrosion by most common chemicals, whereas many other metals are not. Depletion gilding is most often used to treat alloys of gold with coppe ...
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Crotal Bell Panama Gold Metropolitan Museum Of Art
Crotal bells (Greek 'crotalon' – castanet or rattle) are various types of small bells or rattles. They were produced in various pre-Columbian cultures. In Europe they were made from probably before the early Middle Ages and though many founders cast bells of this type, the Robert Wells bell foundry of Aldbourne, Wiltshire, produced the largest range. The first medieval designs came in two separate halves into which a metal pea was introduced and the two halves were then soldered or crimped together. Somewhere around 1400 they were cast in a single piece with a ball of metal inside. Crotal bells, also known as rumble bells, were used on horse-drawn vehicles before motorised vehicles were common. They were often made of bronze with a slot cut down the side. These bells were used to warn other horse-drawn vehicle users (mostly on country roads) that another vehicle was approaching. They were either hung on a small leather-and-iron harness bracket above the horse's collar on smal ...
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Basalt
Basalt (; ) is an aphanite, aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the planetary surface, surface of a terrestrial planet, rocky planet or natural satellite, moon. More than 90% of all volcanic rock on Earth is basalt. Rapid-cooling, fine-grained basalt is chemically equivalent to slow-cooling, coarse-grained gabbro. The eruption of basalt lava is observed by geologists at about 20 volcanoes per year. Basalt is also an important rock type on other planetary bodies in the Solar System. For example, the bulk of the plains of volcanism on Venus, Venus, which cover ~80% of the surface, are basaltic; the lunar mare, lunar maria are plains of flood-basaltic lava flows; and basalt is a common rock on the surface of Mars. Molten basalt lava has a low viscosity due to its relatively low silica content (between 45% and 52%), resulting in rapidly moving lava flo ...
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