Anthropomorphous pendant

This small pendant cast in gold belonged, at least a millennium ago, to a chief in the Calima region, near the Colombian city of Cali, in the Andes mountain range. In those days the political leaders wore large ornaments in fine hammered gold: chest plates, nose rings, earrings expanding the ear lobes, crowns with hanging plates. With this attire they looked extremely imposing before their followers. The fact that the pendant is a miniature representation of the chief is strongly indicated because the nose ring, the earrings and the chest plate used by the leader while alive, and which he was dressed in for his trip to the world of the dead, were also found in the same tomb.

Pre-Hispanic indigenous people believed in life after death and therefore they were buried with food and drink for the trip, and with the elements indicating their position: this chief would continue ruling in the other world. EL