Muisca - Muisca Research

Muisca Research

Studies of Muiscan culture are abundant and have a long tradition. The first sources come from the Chronicles of the West Indies, whose work lasted for three centuries during the existence of the colonial New Kingdom of Granada.

After the independence wars in 1810 there was a surge of interest in study of the Muisca culture. White Colombians established the capital of their republic in Bogotá, the former viceroyal city, which was the capital of the confederation of the Zipa, and was known as Bacatá. Research shows that this site was the cradle of an advanced society whose process of consolidation was cut short by the Spanish conquest.

This search for an identity resulted in giving emphasis to the Muisca culture and overlooking other native nations, which were seen as wild people. Researchers wrongly concluded that the Muiscan culture inhabited a previously empty land and that all archeological finds could be attributed solely to the Muisca. In 1849 President Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera invited Italian cartographer Agustín Codazzi, who led the Geography Commission with Manuel Ancízar and did descriptive studies of the national territory and an inventory of the archaeological sites. The result of the expedition was published in Bogotá in 1889 as Peregrinación Alfa. Argüello García pointed out that the goal of that expedition in the context of the new nation was to underline the Pre-Hispanic societies and in that sense they centered on the Muisca culture as the main model. A similar tendency can be found in the works of Ezequiel Uricoechea. An objection to that point of view came from Vicente Restrepo: his work Los chibchas antes de la conquista española showed them as barbarians.

Miguel Triana, in his work La Civilización Chibcha suggested that the rock art symbols were writing. Wenceslao Cabrera Ortíz was the one who concluded that the Muisca were migrants to the highlands; in 1969 he published on this and reported about excavations at the El Abra archaeological site. Those publications opened a new era in the studies of the Pre-Hispanic cultures in Colombia.

Recent archaeological work has also concentrated on the creation and composition of Muisca goldwork, with this data being made available for wider research.