Goldsmith-farmers of the Sinú and San Jorge river valleys on Colombia's Caribbean lowlands, who laced 500,000 hectares of flood-prone plain with a vast system of drainage canals and raised fields.
Decimated over 1510-1535 by disease and Spanish conquest, which looted the gold-rich burial mounds; descendant Zenú communities persist in Córdoba and Sucre — 307,091 people in the 2018 Colombian census — and won restoration of the San Andrés de Sotavento reserve in 1990.
Focused archaeological study of Zenú/Sinú goldworking traditions and their regional context.
Broad continental survey that situates the Zenú hydraulic and goldworking achievement among the pre-Columbian Andes and northern lowlands (broad context).