university acquired an important collection that formed the basis of the archaeological museum named after this scholar.

The 1970s were remarkable for the “new winds” blowing through the archaeological world with the foundation, renewal, or reinforcement of various, mainly state-connected institutions involved in research, publication, and/or pre-Columbian heritage management. In Cali what was originally a branch of the smithsonian institution of Washington was reorganized as the Institute for Scientific Research of the Cauca Valley (INCIVA). Cespedesia, its journal, though primarily focused on botanical matters, has published many articles on archaeology and history. In 1968 the Gold Museum opened in a new building designed to meet the most up-to-date specifications, high security among them. Here the remarkable and extensive collection of gold artifacts was exhibited in the best didactic manner and made accessible to a wider public. It became the best-loved museum in the country and gained international renown as a result of its policy of sending temporary exhibitions all over the world, accompanied by attractive catalogs with original contributions by experts (see, for example, Bray 1987). The museum also provided the research platform from which its two archaeologists, Ana María Falchetti and Clemencia Plazas, seconded by Juanita Sáenz, launched their long-term project of mapping and exploring the thousands of hectares of raised fields, housing platforms, and causeways in the seasonally flooded plains of the lower San Jorge River. Over the following decades the museum opened branches in the capital cities of several departments.

The Bank of the Republic also set up the Foundation for National Archaeological Research (FIAN). Initiated by Luis Duque (at that time director of the Gold Museum), it was originally oriented toward the preservation of monuments in San Agustín, and it funded research in this area. Over time this foundation has financed research all over the country on a one-person, one-project basis for up to a year. Between 1972 and 1984 it financed 106 projects, of which 30 percent were for fieldwork and theses of undergraduates. In 1978 it started publishing the best fieldwork reports and by 1984 boasted twenty-eight titles (FIAN 1985a). This foundation has perhaps been the single most important factor in promoting research into all aspects of Colombian archaeology, and it has managed to continue its activities, relatively unscathed by financial cuts, into the twenty-first century.

Another state bank, the Popular Bank, has taken a similar path, although on a more modest scale, through its Fund for the Promotion of Culture. Purchases made over a number of years enabled it to amass a large collection of pre-Columbian pottery and found two archaeological useums: the Casa del Marqués de San Jorge in Bogotá and La Merced in Cali. Its publication series included a number of titles in archaeology as well as new editions of the writings of several Spanish chroniclers whose work was of great interest to archaeologists. The fund established an annual prize for the best archaeological research, an unfortunately short-lived program. Among the projects recognized by this program was the work Alvaro Chavez and Mauricio Puerta had carried out in Tierradentro.

The Colombian Institute of Anthropology began to share its location in a nineteenth-century stone prison with the National Museum and appears to have lost much of its former drive. The few young graduates from the University of the Andes who found a job there made little difference in this regard. The ICAN was soon to be incorporated into the newly created Colombian Institute of Culture (COLCULTURA) under director Alvaro Soto, one of Reichel-Dolmatoff’s pupils. Combining personal dynamism and professional connections, he managed to increase the budget, augment the institute’s staff of researchers, and establish strategic research stations in areas of the country in need of fieldwork. Working from the Nariño station Maria Victoria Uribe explored that little-studied region and established links with the results obtained by Ecuadorean scholars on the southern extensions of the area. The most outstanding archaeological project was the extensive exploration of Tairona sites on the northwestern slopes of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. For several hundred years this area had been abandoned to the forest and practically uninhabited,