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Puerto Hormiga

4000 BC – 3100 BC
CultureSouth America

Caribbean-coast Colombian site (Bolívar department, near Cartagena) built around a large clam-shell midden ring, yielding some of the earliest fiber-tempered pottery yet found in the Americas, made by a semi-sedentary community of fishers, shellfish-gatherers, and incipient horticulturalists.

The crude fiber-tempered tradition gave way to more developed sand-tempered coiled pottery at the same site and, over subsequent millennia, to later named Caribbean-coast ceramic traditions (e.g. Malambo) further along the Colombian coast; the shell-ring site itself was abandoned.

Borders in 4000 BC · drawn from 1 sourced border frame
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Further reading

Sources