Stony faced in San Agustín NESTLED between the headwaters of the Magdalena river and high Andean moorland, the ancient stone statues at San Agustín are among the most mysterious pre-Columbian archaeological artefacts. So far archaeologists have discovered 40 large burial mounds containing 600 likenesses of mythical animals, gods and chieftains in what is South America’s largest complex of megalithic statues. Like other sites in the region, San Agustín has suffered plunder, both organised and freelance. Konrad Preuss, a German anthropologist who led the first European excavations there, shipped 35 statues that he found to a museum in Berlin, where they remain.This history has made the local inhabitants, who live from tourist visits to the site, suspicious. So it proved with a plan by the national museum to take 20 of the statues to the capital, Bogotá, a ten-hour drive away, for a three-month exhibition to mark the centenary of Preuss’s discovery of the site.Aware of the sensitivity of removing the statues even temporarily, anthropologists from the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History held town meetings to explain the importance of allowing them to be...
via The Economist: The Americas http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21591197-exhibition-mistrust-whose-statues?fsrc=rss|ame
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