UA Anthropologist Goes for the Gold

While scientists today use gold to treat cancer, detect toxins and more, for most of us, it’s simply that shiny symbol of wealth and achievement. And symbols matter, even when you're just getting by. That’s the story suggested by the 4000-year-old gold necklace -- six hundred years older than other gold artifacts discovered in the Americas - unearthed in the Peruvian Andes by UA anthropologist Mark Aldenderfer. The necklace hails surprisingly from a simple village of people living at the subsistence level. Hardly a place to find jewelry, the site and its treasures suggest that even in the poorest early societies, people used symbols to convey power and prestige, pointing the way for generations of hereditary rule.