status, there was a movement away from fieldwork and toward armchair studies, a trend that extended into the first decades of the twentieth century. Carlos Cuervo Márquez was an exception in this regard. A historian and Colombia’s first field archaeologist, he excavated in San Agustín, in the eastern plains of the Orinoco basin, and in a new region that came to be known through him as the Tierradentro; this area would become famous for the polycrome paintings and sculptures on the chamber walls of the pre-Columbian tombs found there. Márquez was the first to make a detailed description of the Tairona stone architecture in the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta. His most important publication was Prehistory and Travels (1893), which was republished in 1920 as Archaeological and Ethnographical Studies. Another work that was not written by a scholar but that contained useful archaeological information was Remembrances of Tomb Looting in Quindío by Luis Arango Cano.

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Gold seated figure from Quimbaya, Colombia, fourteenth–fifteenth century

(Image Select)

During the last years of the nineteenth century some efforts were made by the state to inspire antiquarian activity, but for the most part the field remained the province of independent scholars, who were in contact with Europe and with current scientific trends. Most of them were professionals, but archaeology was not