December 13, 2014 Katherine Moore, PhD; Mainwaring Teaching Specialist in the Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials, Penn Museum; University of Pennsylvania, Department of Archaeology: "Dogs from Sitio Conte, Panama: Finding the Story Behind the Bling"

        The site of Sitio Conte in western Panama is famous for its chiefly tombs dating from the period A.D. 450-900. The imagery from the burial offerings show fabulous animals in beautiful designs on ceramic vessels and gold plaques. The offerings also include remarkable richness in animal bones, teeth, and other "scary" parts of animals such as sharks and rays. As part of an upcoming exhibit at the Penn Museum: Beneath the Surface: Life, Death, and Gold in Ancient Panama, the animal remains from Burial groups 11 and 12 were reexamined for the first time since they were excavated in the 1940s. Dr Moore examined the relationship between dogs and people at this time, and asked what it would take to produce this piece of jewelry and what it might have meant.

         Katherine Moore is an archaeologist who has worked on animal bones from across the Americas, the Middle East, and Africa. She is the Mainwaring Teaching Specialist in the Center for the Analysis of Archaeological Materials at the Penn Museum and lectures in archaeology for the Department of Anthropology. Her major research work concerns the transition from animal hunting to herding in the Andes of Peru and Bolivia. She has also worked on the archaeology of the bone tool production in Bolivia.

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