Page 627 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

SINU
The gold work characterized as Sinu was ties described by the early Spanish chroni- this area had a dense indigenous population
produced on the tropical Caribbean plains of clers, which were designed to enhance the that buried its dead in urns and produced
Colombia, which is traversed by the Sinn, Greater Zenus social cohesion, reaffirming gold work that shows some relationship
San Jorge, Cauca, and Nechi rivers (Perez de the prestige of the caciques and priests. with that of the earlier Zenu. Numerous
Barradas 1966; Falchetti ^976). Gold was These privileged individuals dominated the finials in gilded tumbaga were produced
already being worked here in the sixth to union between the sacred and the social; there. Cast filigree was also used to decorate
tenth centuries A.D. This era was the zenith they had greater rights than did ordinary the finials and for the various types of ear-
of the culture of the Zenu, a people who men to possess gold and to take it with rings. Filigree from the Serrania de San
densely populated the low-lying plains of them, in burial, to their tombs. Jacinto is different from that of the Zenu in
the San Jorge that were prone to flooding. The influence of the Zenu was felt around that the cast thread is finer and the designs
There they constructed a complex network the Serrania de San Jacinto, the mountain more varied (Falchetti 1976; Plazas and
of artificial canals covering an area of range that separates the plains from the Falchetti 1985).
193,000 square miles of marshy lands Caribbean coast. In the sixteenth century
(Plazas and Falchetti 1981). After the tenth
century these plains were gradually aban-
doned, and the population inhabited the
higher surrounding savannahs. According to
an indigenous tradition recorded by the
Spaniards in the sixteenth century, Finzenu
and Yapel, on the rivers Sinu and San Jorge,
were surviving chiefdoms of an older socio-
political organization, when the Greater
Zenu territory was divided into three prov-
inces—Finzenu, Panzenu, and Zenufana-
governed by caciques of the same lineage
and fulfilling complementary economic and
social functions. Finzenu was a land of spe-
cialists. Even during the sixteenth century
there were communities of goldsmiths. Over
the course of many centuries these artisans
produced the gold objects that have since
been found in tombs spread throughout the
Greater Zenu territory.
The abundance of gold in this area is
attested to by the considerable number of
pieces made of fine gold hammered into
sheets and then embossed from both sides to
create designs. Zenu craftsmen also melted
gold and mixed it with copper to produce
works — including decorated finials — in
tumbaga, whose surfaces were then gilded.
They also used the ''false filigree" technique
to produce many earrings and to decorate
larger pieces. False filigree is a casting tech-
nique, using a model built up from wirelike
threads of wax. It has been given this name
to distinguish it from true filigree, in which
bits of coiled gold wire are soldered together
or to a support. Sinu iconography includes
the characteristic fauna of the savannahs
and marshlands: deer, caymans, jaguars,
and birds with beautiful plumage.
A large part of the production of the Zenu
goldsmiths must have been in the service of
the chieftains. Gold, of great emblematic
importance for objects of adornment and for
religious and funerary offerings, played a
fundamental role in the ceremonial activi-

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