2026 Theses Doctoral

The Coastal Ecologies of El Dorado: Aesthetics, Materiality, and the Unmaking of Tairona Gold, ca. 1000-1500 CE

Mazariegos, Eric

This dissertation analyzes Tairona metalwork and related media from ancient Caribbean Colombia through the lens of the Blue Humanities. It centers the coastal ecologies within which Tairona metalworks were made, worn, and circulated to frame these objects as sites of ongoing negotiation between makers, materials, viewers, and environments.

The undulating, circuitous forms and volatile, copper-laden alloys that characterize Tairona metalwork conjured—I propose—the churning ebb and flow of Caribbean waves, and materialized the oxygen-rich humidity of the coastal atmosphere as they catalytically “grew” bright blue corrosion. I historicize these visual and material complexities in deep time by marshaling archaeological evidence prior to the Tairona apogee, including artworks from the Malambo (ca. 1000 BCE – 100 CE) and Nahuange (ca. 100-1000 CE) periods, which suggest a distinct artistic coherence based on the liquid ecologies of the Caribbean coast. Though Tairona metalworks have long been “read” as legible and stable surfaces, this research suggests the opposite: that Tairona aesthetics and material values were founded on principles of instability and volatility, thereby shifting established perspectives on “gold” as a stable, enduring medium.