Especialización económica de comunidades y su relación con el desarrollo de complejidad social: El caso de Chengue, Parte Tairona, Colombia

Abstract

Community economic specialization and its relationship with the development of social complexity. The Case of Chengue, Parque Tairona, Colombia. Specialized production and the development of a regional economy may have been key factors in the consolidation of the Tairona political economy. This study focuses on the community of Chengue, in a cove of the northern coast of Colombia, where there are few options for agriculture and the reliance on the exchange of salt and a few marine products with neighboring villages was crucial in the process of socio-political change from the XI century on. The evidence collected shows how a subsistence economy was transformed by regional economic system into a component of a complex chiefdom during a sequence that spans 1700 years.