The Cleveland Museum of Art
Collection Online as of April 20, 2024
Ornament from Sitio Conte: Animal Pendant(?)
c. 400–900
Overall: 4.3 x 5.5 cm (1 11/16 x 2 3/16 in.)
John L. Severance Fund 1951.318
Location: 233 Mesoamerican and Intermediate Region
Description
Harvard archaeologists excavated the eight ornaments in this case from several burials at Sitio Conte, a cemetery famous for its lavish graves of powerful chieftains. The young man buried in Grave 26 was such a chief. His status was stunningly memorialized by 21 human companions and 475 objects, many of them personal ornaments made of gold, including the large chest plaque (no. 2) and the rod-shaped ear ornament (no. 3) shown here. The creature on the chest plaque, found close to the chief’s body, has reptile claws and perhaps the head crest of an iguana. Its meaning is unknown but perhaps, as in later periods, reptilian imagery and the warm gleam of gold linked rulers with the sun’s creative force.- Grave 1, excavated by the Harvard Peabody Museum, 1930
- Cleveland Museum of Art. The CMA Companion: A Guide to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2014. Mentioned and reproduced: P. 337
- Treasures of Peruvian Gold. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (February 23-April 3, 1966).Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art; February 23-April 3, 1966. "Treasures of Peruvian Gold."Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art; November 9, 1945- January 6, 1946. "Art of the Americas."
- {{cite web|title=Ornament from Sitio Conte: Animal Pendant(?)|url=false|author=|year=c. 400–900|access-date=20 April 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}
Source URL:
https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1951.318