Cast-Gold Composite Animal Effigy Pendant (detail)

Emerging from the soaring cloud forests, rushing rivers, and dancing waterfalls of Central Panama, a celestial hero of ancient myth, arrayed in supernatural golden clothing, revealed himself to the modern world when, in the early 1900s, stories began to circulate of children playing marbles with gold beads found in the great Coclé River.

The first Cuna San Blas Indians believed their gods, heroes, and other mythic men and women could turn into animals at will to accomplish special purposes. At the time of a great flood or other cosmic disaster, gods transformed people into animals to allow them to survive or to punish them. It was in the late 1920s that news of a veritable "river of gold" began to spread as large quantities of fabled golden animals and sacred ornaments were discovered, attracting the attention of archaeologists.

River of Gold: Precolumbian Treasures from Sitio Conte tells the story of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology's (whose collection was the source of the incredible exhibition Searching for Ancient Egypt, which drew 134,578 visitors to Joslyn in 1999) excavations at the Precolumbian cemetery of Sitio Conte, Panama, and, for the first time, presents these archaeological treasures within their cultural context.

Cast-Gold Bat Effigy Pendant (detail)

The cemeteries of Sitio Conte — about 100 miles west of Panama City — were overlooked by gold-seeking Spaniards in the 16th century, a fortunate circumstance when, at the turn of the 19th century, the Rio Grande de Coclé shifted its bed yet again and partially exposed the burials and their contents. In the 1940s a Penn Museum expedition undertook an excavation that uncovered rich and remarkable evidence that a thriving Precolumbian civilization had inhabited the region more than a thousand years previously. Great quantities of gold artifacts and jewelry were found especially in the grave of one high-status individual. Like the sun emerging from the underworld, gold objects removed from the burial mounds conveyed highly symbolic images of the creation myth and personifications of nature's animal and human forces. The gold work from the site, which is almost entirely body ornamentation, is famous for its extraordinary beauty and sophisticated technology. Goldsmiths of the New World were consummate artisans, and those who created the objects found in the Sitio Conte cemetery were no exception. Working with the simplest of tools, they utilized technologies such as embossing, lost-wax casting, and depletion gilding to achieve extraordinary aesthetic effects. Plaques and cuffs were crafted from hammered gold sheet; cast pendants were exquisitely detailed, one-of-a-kind items.

The exhibition presents the gold from Sitio Conte in its unique archaeological and cultural context. Included are more than 150 gold objects dating from 700 to 1100 AD — hammered repoussé plaques, nose ornaments, gold-sheathed ear rods, pendants, bells, bangles, and beads — as well as richly detailed, painted ceramics and objects of precious and semi-precious stone, ivory, and bone.

Very little is known about the ancient societies of Central America, which have long been overshadowed by the more famous Precolumbian civilizations of Mesoamerica and the Andes. River of Gold is not only a visually stunning exhibition, it also gives viewers an invaluable glimpse into a Panamanian society as it was a thousand years ago and promotes an understanding of the culture of these enigmatic people who left such sophisticated art in their elite burials.

Gold Nose Clip (detail)