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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