The name Sonso, which refers to the final pre-Hispanic period in the region, was coined by archaeologists from an indigenous Calima term that has survived from Spanish colonial times down to the present day.

Around 650 A.D., the everyday, political, economic and ritual activities of the groups living in the Calima region underwent a change. Features like the fact that they went on building their houses on natural or artificial terraces on hillsides and continued to farm on ridges nevertheless suggest continuity from the Yotoco period. People during this period also appear to have coexisted with people from the previous one, probably occupying the same sites as their predecessors. Settlements spread during the Sonso period over the whole of the El Dorado valley, where the present-day towns of Darién, Yotoco, Restrepo and La Cumbre are situated. The part of the valley that was used for agriculture was restricted to the mountain slopes and the far end of the valley itself.

The population increased during the Sonso period, and food production therefore increased as well, as there were more mouths to feed. One of the most important features of this period is thus the importance that everyday activities like fishing, hunting and domestic chores came to take on. These were extensively represented in everyday objects like pottery vessels that were used for preparing, cooking or eating foodstuffs, and stone utensils.

Potters during the Sonso period made a wide range of different types of pottery that included diverse designs and decoration techniques. The principal items were things like pots with high base and keel-like body, three-handled pitchers, bowls, plates, goblets, anthropomorphous vases, spindle whorls and stamps, adorned with miscellaneous geometric motifs - mostly linear -, painted outside with black negative paint on red.

The human body was also important for these societies, not only because of the pottery representations of it or the faces which were shown on that pottery, but also because of the stamps that were used for painting it.

A large number of stone artefacts were made as well, and these were remarkably similar to those of the Ilama period. The principal items include scrapers and polishers that were used in activities like making other artefacts from different types of material, such as bone, shell or animal skins, or for processing food - for cutting or skinning joints that were then cooked and served in pottery vessels. Pointed lances have also been found, as used in hunting and fishing activities. One of the more notable artefacts used for fishing was the 'Brazilian'-type harpoon, which widened towards one end, where there was a round hole for the index finger.

Typical gold ornaments during the Sonso period were markedly different in terms of shape, design and subjects depicted from those of previous periods.

These costumes and ornaments, as with those from the Yotoco period, could have been associated with ritual, shamanistic or offering-type activities, as their symbolic content is high. However, if it is remembered that every object is part of an individual's natural, everyday world, and that only the historical, social and cultural context in which that object is set determines its meaning, then we could say that the costumes and ornaments that were made during the Sonso period are the material representation of a society whose political, social and economic characteristics differed from those of previous periods. Archaeological research perhaps suggests a change in the way political and religious power was exercised in these late societies. Power was less personalised and was highlighted by less exquisite goldwork; in other words, it was a power that was more institutionalised and based around economic or political matters rather than individual ones. These gold ornaments were, in fact, smaller and less exquisite, and were even heavier, and although we cannot rule out the fact that they could have had a ritual or funerary use, at the same time we cannot fail to relate them to the everyday world.

An interesting way of showing how these ornaments were used, probably in everyday activities, was the different representations of pottery faces that portray them and the place they occupied in the human body. These pottery vessels emphasize the representation of the human face through masks with annular nose rings on them, just like the gold ones but made of clay, and schematised human figures where the features of the face and the limbs are no more than hinted at.

It was mainly facial ornaments that were made, most of these being plaited, annular, and open rounded nose rings, shaped like a letter 'n', and either with or without an end piece. Ear rings, meanwhile, were made of wire and sheets in the form of a hairgrip, with spirals, sheets and hanging plates.

Items that were applied to the skin, mainly on the face, often end in small spheres and cones in the shape of a hat. The most common shape, however, is the circle, frequently adorned with embossed points.

As far as the techniques that were used are concerned, perhaps the most common one was hammering on a cast, for making flat, laminar objects that were then embossed. Extremely pure gold was used for these, or in some cases gold - copper alloys in variable proportions, these latter mainly for objects that were made using the gilding technique.

Collective needs were perhaps more important than individual or ritual ones for people in the Sonso period. Objects found in tombs and sarcophagi were connected with everyday, subsistence activities that involved various persons. This does not mean to say that dance, chants and exquisite gold and pottery offerings, used as a way of representing the power of special persons or power groups, were no longer used during the funeral act, just that they were no longer the most common manifestation.

Many Ilama period cemeteries were reused in the Yotoco period and yet again in the Sonso period. They were situated away from areas where homes were built, on sites specially levelled for the purpose, on hillsides or on the top of ridges. Deep, rectangular shaft tombs have been found, with chambers of differing shapes and sizes opening off one end of the shaft, and sometimes sealed off by a wall of trunks erected across the threshold. The corpse was placed inside the chamber, almost always on the ground, and wedged in place with stones; on occasions, however, it was placed on a mat made from vegetable fibres.

Much less frequently, simple, shallow shaft tombs with a small chamber were dug. The funerary regalia in these tombs generally consisted of pottery vessels like globular pots and bowls. A small number of the tombs contained gold objects, such as small, plaited nose rings.

Wooden sarcophagi were used on other occasions - probably when more important people were involved - to place the corpse in. Tombs containing these sarcophagi were between five and fifteen feet deep, and had funerary chambers running off them in which the sarcophagus was placed. The funerary regalia that accompanied the corpse consisted of wooden objects like darts, lances and benches, together with pottery items such as bowls, pots and necklace beads.

These sarcophagi have survived because the tombs were kept flooded, and the lack of oxygen meant that the organic matter did not decompose.

Calima and the Gold Museum Exhibition

Ilama: Nature and Society

Social Inequality in the Yotoco - Malagana Period

Life and Death during the Sonso Period