Northern Andes 1000 CE to 1200 CE

1000 CE People in the Calima region of southwestern Colombia live in small villages of up to fifteen houses built on terraces. Models of houses in sheet gold and ceramic show they are of rectangular shape with pointed roofs. Terraces for the cultivation of corn, beans, yucca, and squash are also built.

1000 CE Coastal peoples in Ecuador are heavily engaged in sea commerce with Peru and Colombia. They trade primarily cotton cloth and spondylus shell for wool cloth and copper.

1050 CE At Tamalameque, along the lower Magdalena River in Colombia, the remains of the dead are placed in tall, oval ceramic urns. Covered with lids with large modeled heads and short, stubby arms, the urns are kept in side chambers of shaft tombs.

1050 CE The Milagro-Quevedo peoples, inhabiting the Guayas basin in southern Ecuador, produce distinctive ceremonial ceramics. Well-burnished, red-slipped pedestal bowls are decorated on the outside with appliquéd human figures, snakes, frogs, and birds.

1100 CE A spectacular cast-gold pendant, almost twelve inches tall, is placed in a burial near the modern town of Popayán in the upper Cauca River area. Depicting a transformation image, it features a human figure with a lizardlike body surrounded by small bird-headed humans and quadrupeds.

1100 CE Cochasquí, north of Quito, is an important center of a local chiefdom. It has about fifteen rectangular mounds (tolas) arranged in clusters, many with long earthen ramps leading to the top. Separated from the tolas, circular funerary platforms covering shaft and chamber tombs are built.

1150 CE Numerous small, independent chiefdoms flourish in the middle Cauca valley. They produce quantities of small adornments of hammered sheet gold, including spiral ear and twisted nose ornaments.

1150 CE In eastern Ecuador, people build small settlements consisting of single or double rows of houses along the banks of the Napo River. They bury their dead without offerings in ceramic urns placed beneath house floors or at random rather than in cemeteries. The urns are often in the form of seated males with white-slipped surfaces and black and red painted design.

1150 CE People in the highland region of Nariño in southern Colombia and Carchí in northern Ecuador produce handsome footed bowls embellished with black-on-red or black-on-cream resist designs with added red. The well-polished surfaces inside the bowls are decorated with motifs ranging from stylized animals and human figures to geometric designs.

1200 CE At Ingapirca, northeast of Cuenca in the southern Ecuadorian Andes, a twenty- to thirty-year-old Cañari noblewoman is buried with all her finery; she is accompanied by ten male and female attendants. Her grave is marked with a stone pavement and a stela at one end.

1200 CE The Tairona of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in northern Colombia produce complex gold objects of tumbaga. Of considerable volume and intricate detail, many castings depict human beings with animal attributes wearing spectacular headdresses.