The civilization

Tairona or Tayrona was a Pre-Columbian cultural tradition characterised by a set of intense and complex relations between the coast, the slopes and the mountains of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (in present-day Cesar, Magdalena and La Guajira Departments of Colombia, South America) sharing technology and social aspects and functioning effectively as an integrated organisational and productive system which consisted of a group of different chiefdoms whose definitive formation as an independent cultural tradition goes back to at least the 10th and 11th centuries AD. Genetic and archaeological evidence shows a relatively dense occupation of the region by at least 200 BC.

Field notes

period

200 CE — 1,600 CE

region

Andes

known sites

1