sign in sign up
<<
Home , Metallurgy

Andean Value Systems and the Development of Prehistoric Author(s): Heather Lechtman Source: and Culture, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Jan., 1984), pp. 1-36 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press and the Society for the Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3104667 Accessed: 18-03-2016 19:36 UTC

REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3104667?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents

You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

The Johns Hopkins University Press and Society for the History of Technology are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Technology and Culture. http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Andean Value Systems and the

Development of Prehistoric Metallurgy

HEATHER LECHTMAN

The rich development of metallurgical technology that arose and

was sustained in the New World prior to the Spanish invasion in the

16th century took place in the Andean zone of western South

America in that area which is today Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Co-

lombia. Although Andean peoples supported a highly sophisticated

metallurgical tradition with the production of a broad range of

and alloys, little interest or attention has been paid to Andean

metallurgy, perhaps because archaeologists and historians cannot

boast of a " age" or an " age" as characteristic of New

World . Iron metallurgy was never developed in the Andes.

Although both ancient varieties of bronze were invented there-the

alloys of and and of copper and -and tin bronze was

widely used and disseminated throughout its vast empire by the Inca

dynasty, nevertheless these metals did not have the same impact on

Andean that they had among peoples of and the

ancient .

If we were to ask the question, "What was the sphere of activities

and interests from which metallurgy derived its greatest stimulation

and achieved its most important developments among ancient

societies of the New World and the Old?" we would come to see that

the two metallurgical "revolutions" associated with bronze and iron in

the Old World resulted from the demand for and impact of those

metals primarily in two domains of life, warfare and transport, with

agriculture running a close third. (In this discussion, the Old World

covers a broad geographic area, including most of modern Europe

Ms. LECHTMAN is professor of and at MIT where she

holds a joint appointment in the Anthropology-Archaeology Section and the Depart-

ment of Materials and . She is also director of the interinstitutional

Center for Materials Research in Archaeology and Ethnology. Portions of this article

were read at the 1978 meeting of the Society for the History of Technology, in the

session on "Metals in History," organized as a symposium honoring Cyril Stanley Smith.

The present article is dedicated to Prof. Smith.

? 1984 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved.

0040-165X/84/2501-0002$01.00

1

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 2 Heather Lechtman

and the , and a great depth of time, spanning the Bronze

Age [ca. 3000-1200 B.C.] and [ca. 1200 B.C.-A.D. 300].)

In Europe and in the Near East, both in the hand-to-hand combat

of the foot soldier and in equestrian battle, the effectiveness of

weapons was based largely on their piercing and cutting action.

Knives, daggers, long and short swords, lance heads, , javelins,

and battle- of bronze and later of iron became the new arsenal,

replacing stone, wood, and bone weapons that could not compare in

strength and durability. The manufacture of such offensive weapons

was accompanied by the equally important production of their defen-

sive counterparts, namely, body armor, some of the finest examples of

which-such as the 7th-century-B.c. Cretan bronze helmets, corselets,

and mitrai in the Norbert Schimmel collection-are often exhibited

today in museums of art. Iron armor scales have been found that date

to the B.C., accompanying the early use of iron for of-

fensive weaponry in the Near East and the Aegean.

Although few examples remain of metal-rimmed from

chariots, wagons, carts, and other such , it is clear that the

availability of bronze, and more especially of iron, for the manufac-

ture of animal-drawn wheeled conveyances had a profound effect on

long-distance travel and the movement of goods. In Europe during

the period between 700 and 400 B.C., most weapons and tools of

bronze disappeared and were replaced by iron. Nevertheless, iron was

still an "expensive" metal. Many of the iron artifacts excavated from

this period come from graves of the wealthy. Among these items are

iron fittings of princely chariots: tires and nails, nave fittings, clamps,

and pegs. By the end of the 5th century B.C., however, complex

bridge bits and wheel pegs for chariots were much more common.1 By

Roman times, the effectiveness of military legions in their movements

throughout Europe in particular was dependent on ease of transport

of the gear and provisions that accompanied them, much of it con-

veyed on wagons of wood and iron. Etruscan chariots, with bronze

fittings and iron-rimmed, spoked wheels, gave way to Roman models,

some of the most elegant of which-called by David Mitten the "Rolls

Royces" of Roman chariots-have recently been found near the vil-

lage of Siskovci in , ancient Thrace, with dates in the late 3d

or early 4th century A.D.2

'Jane C. Waldbaum, "The First Archaeological Appearance of Iron and the Transi-

tion to the Iron Age," in The Coming of the Age of Iron, ed. Theodore A. Wertime and

James D. Muhly (New Haven, Conn., 1980), pp. 69-98; Radomir Pleiner, "Early Iron

Metallurgy in Europe," ibid., pp. 375-415; Anthony M. Snodgrass, "Iron and Early

Metallurgy in the Mediterranean," ibid., pp. 335-374.

2David G. Mitten, personal ; Ivan Venedikov, Trakiiskata Kolesnitsa,

Bulgarian Academy of (Sofia, 1960).

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy 3

The agricultural use of both bronze and iron was important in the

Old World, although it was not primarily through the manufacture of

metal tools for farming that the technology of metal production re-

ceived its greatest impetus. The Early Iron Age (ca. 1200-900 B.C.)

was a period of transition away from the use of bronze for all weapons

and implements made of metal. We see a change from the exclusive

use of bronze for plowshares, axes, , and hoes at 12th-

century-B.c. habitation sites in Cyprus and Palestine, for example, to

the preferred use of iron for those same agricultural tools, as as

sickles, by the 10th century.3 Iron approached something akin to

common use throughout the eastern Mediterranean, both for

weapons and for tools, by the end of the 10th century B.C.

Turning to the Andes, we find that in neither the sphere of war nor

that of transport did metals play an extraordinary role. There was no

cavalry in South America prior to the introduction of the horse by the

invading Spaniards. All combat was on foot. Hand-to-hand fighting

involved the use of clubs of various kinds that depended on the

crushing force of the blow delivered rather than on cutting or pierc-

ing. Of equal importance, however, were long-distance weapons that

utilized missiles. Of these, spears and throwers, slings and shot

were crucial to Andean styles of battle.4

It is of interest to explore why metals had such a small impact on

Andean warfare, an otherwise obvious route for the development of

metal . What were the competitors of metals on the field

of battle? It may come as a surprise that one of the chief competitors

was cloth, a material used in both offense and defense.

Around 1615-roughly eighty years after the Spanish conquest of

Tawantinsuyu, the Inca empire-Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, an

Andean Indian, wrote a 1,200-page "letter" to King Philip III of

Spain. His letter, Nueva cor6nica y buen gobierno, constitutes the first

codex written in the Andes.5 Its purpose was to inform the Spanish

king of the richness of Andean civilization as it was lived under the

Inca and before the Inca and to decry the villainies of the Spaniards

who had destroyed that great heritage. The letter is illustrated with

some 397 line drawings Poma executed to accompany his text. Poma

3Waldbaum.

4Manfred Korfmann, in his article on "The Sling as a Weapon," Scientific American

229 (October 1973): 34-42, devotes one brief paragraph to the Andean use of the sling,

vi-tually neglecting its key role in Andean prehistory. The sling is still used in the Andes

today by shepherds and for hunting small game; see Adele Cahlander, Sling Braiding of

the Andes, in Weaver's Journal Monograph 4 (Boulder, Colo., 1980).

5Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, Nueva cor6nica y buen gobierno, facsimile ed., Institut

d'Ethnologie (Paris, 1936 [1613]); the most recent and best-edited and documented

edition is that by John V. Murra and Rolena Adorno, eds., Siglo veintiuno, 3 vols.

(Mexico, 1980).

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 4 Heather Lechtman

depicts the first and greatest of all the Inca emperors, Pachakuti

Yupanqui (whose name meant "cataclysm"), in his role as soldier and

as conqueror (fig. 1). The weapon that Poma chose above all to denote

Pachakuti as -emperor is the sling. Slings made by ,

braiding, and plaiting animal and vegetable fibers were among the

most important weapons used throughout Andean prehistory (fig. 2).

They are, essentially, tools of cloth. Clearly, whether an adversary

were hit by shot of stone or metal could not have made any great

difference.

For body armor, soldiers wore quilted cotton tunics or else wound

layers of cloth around their bodies. Most of the Spanish soldiers

adopted quilted armor from the Inca, regarding it as superior to

European breastplates, at least in the humid sierra.6 Inca soldiers

hung round shields of hard chonta palm slats and cotton on their

backs. Their heads were protected by quilted or wooden helmets.

Instead of a shield made of wood and deerskin-such as the one

Pachakuti holds in Poma's -soldiers sometimes wrapped

cloth around one arm to pad it against blows.

In his other hand, Pachakuti holds the second most widely used

Andean weapon, the club. Inca clubs such as his usually had pointed,

star-shaped heads made of stone or bronze. Copper mace-heads of

similar shape had been used much earlier, however-for example,

those produced by the Mochica, a people who flourished along the

north coast of Peru from about A.D. 0 to 600 (see table 1). Again, the

effectiveness of metals as contrasted with stone in delivering a crush-

ing blow was not of great significance.

Pottery was often a medium of through which ceramic

craftsmen portrayed a wide range of activities of Mochica life. Often

soldiers are shown, with their typical heavy clubs and padded or slat-

and-cotton helmets (fig. 3). One of the most important and quite rare

scenes of Mochica battle is painted along the flaring inner lip of a

vase currently in the collection of the Museum fur Volker-

kunde, Berlin (fig. 4). A group of Mochica its captives,

who are bound with tied round their necks. The soldiers carry

the typical Mochica club, but the important of this victory

scene lies in the nakedness of the vanquished. Among Andean

peoples, cloth was undoubtedly the item of greatest value, imbued

with ritual significance, a symbol of rank, wealth, and power. It was

not only used as a tool of war, both offensively and defensively, it also

had a magico-military significance of its own, embodying the idea of

strength and force.7 An enemy stripped of his garments was an

6Gosta Montell, Dress and Ornaments in Ancient Peru (Goteborg, 1929).

7John V. Murra, "Cloth and Its Functions in the Inca State," American Anthropologist

64 (August 1962): 710-28.

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ELI/1OVEI0 VELI4Q J

.5u( rJ .tti

...... y

fa L/04 f

FIG. 1.-Pachakuti Yupanqui, ninth Inca and first emperor of Tawantinsuyu, the

Inca empire, is shown as a great warrior, wearing the earspools reserved for Inca

-oyalty and wielding his sling and star-headed mace. This is one of 397 line drawings

Guaman Poma de Ayala rendered to illustrate his 1,200-page letter to Philip III of

Spain in 1613. The original manuscript is in the Royal Library of Copenhagen, Den-

mark.

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 6 Heather Lechtman

enemy without retaliatory capacity. His force and his energy lay in his

clothing.

Through ethnohistoric and archaeological study we have been able

to reconstruct the panoply of weapons as they existed in the Andean

highlands during Inca domination: the sling; the star-headed mace;

the spear with tip of fire-hardened wood or of bronze; the long,

sword-shaped double-edged club made of hard chonta palm wood;

and the halberd with bronze head.8 Given the style of warfare in the

Andes among both coastal and highland peoples, with weapons that

depended on strength at impact rather than on a cutting edge, metal

weapons did not confer great advantage either to the aggressor or to

the defender.

FIG. 2.-This pre-Columbian sling of wool, from a burial located on the south Peru-

vian coast, is typical of Late Nasca culture there (ca. A.D. 400-500). Less ornamented,

utilitarian slings of identical form were used by herders to control flocks of llama and

alpaca, and as offensive weapons in times of war. A slit in the cradle helped secure the

shot-a rock or occasionally a ball-in place. It was the custom to carry utilitarian

slings by wrapping them around one's head. Gradually they became more elaborately

designed, and some were for purely ceremonial use; the sling illustrated here was

probably never a functional tool. (Collection of the Peabody Museum, Harvard Univer-

sity; photograph by Hillel Burger.)

8John H. Rowe, "Inca Culture at the Time of the Spanish Conquest," in Handbook of

South American Indians, ed. Julian H. Steward, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin

143 (Washington, D.C., 1946), pp. 183-330.

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TABLE 1

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE FOR CENTRAL ANDEAN PREHISTORY

Yeals Relative Chronology Histo-ical Events

Colonial Period Spanish Empire

1534

- 1500 - Late Horizon Inca Empire

1476 -

Kingdom of Chimor

Late t

Intermediate

Period 3

3

- - 1000 -

E

Middle

Horizon Huar-i EmpireI

.

T - 500 -

a

cu

a

ud Early

A.D. 0

Intermediate C5

-0 -

Period B.C.

z

1 - 500 -

Paracas-Nasca

Tradition

u

Early Q

1

Horizon r-

3 - 1000 - a -=

c

-a ed

u

rt

JZ

- 1500 -

Initial

Period

- 2000 -

Preceramic

Period

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 8 Heather Lechtman

Those who have traveled in the Andean area of South America-

whether to visit Quito, Cuzco, or Machu Picchu-will have been im-

pressed by the topography of that great land mass, a topography

entirely dominated by the rugged and almost impassable Andes

mountain chain. The Pacific coast of the central Andean zone consists

of a narrow strip of barren, sandy desert from which the precipitous

mountain slopes rise abruptly to the east. The wheel was neither

invented nor could it have been utilized in this part of the world.

Local fauna provided no animals or beasts of burden. The

largest domesticated animals of the Andes are the camelids, the llama

and alpaca. An adult llama typically carries only about 60 pounds.

Movement, including the long distances traveled by the Inca armies,

was entirely on foot along narrow roads, often hewn out of rock,

which covered the entire length of the approximately 3,000-mile ex-

FIG. 3.-A Mochica ceramic vessel in the form of a soldier, with his cone-shaped

heavy club, round slatted shield, and caplike helmet. An excellent example of such a

helmet, in the Museum fur Volkerkunde in Berlin, is constructed of a spiral wooden

slatted frame, tightly wound with cotton wool. This pottery rendition of a Mochica

warrior suggests a padded chest, but we do not know how early in Andean prehistory

padded armor was used. (Collection of the British Museum, London.)

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy 9

panse of the empire. There was, in essence, no transport technology

into which metals could be incorporated.

The combination of a steep, vertical terrain and the unavailability

of local fauna large and strong enough to be suitable as draft animals

resulted in highland agricultural technologies based on terracing and,

where terraces were not used, on long periods of fallow combined

with the most conservative amounts of soil movement in tillage to

minimize erosion and the ever present threat of downslope loss of soil

by gravity. Thus the chaqui taclla, the Andean foot plow-a tool that

functions as both hbe and -became the most important

implement for planting, and in many highland areas it remains so.

The of such tools were typically of stone, though bronze blades

are known from the Peruvian north coast that date to about A.D. 1000,

and modern blades are forged from iron. The animal-drawn plow

was introduced by the Spaniards in the 16th century.

In the Andes, metals performed in the realm of the symbolic, in

both the secular and the religious spheres of life. They carried and

displayed the content or message of status, wealth, and political power

and reinforced the affective power of religious cult objects. We can

FIG. 4.-A painted scene of victors and vanquished on the flaring, inner lip of a

Mochica ceramic vessel. The Mochica soldiers, in full battle dress, lead their naked

prisoners, bound with ropes. The clubs shown here are identical with that held by the

kneeling soldier of the sculpted vessel in fig. 3. (Collection of the Museum fur Volker-

kunde, Berlin.)

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 10 Heather Lechtman

recognize these functions in a series of artifacts ranging from the

earliest consistent use of metal in the Andes to its employment during

the Inca hegemony.

Status among Andean peoples, as in many societies, was instantly

conveyed by what one wore in life and by what one wore at death.

Earspools, for example, were the appurtenances of men of high

rank-perhaps kings or priests. Some of the earliest and most splen-

did examples are of Mochica origin (fig. 5). Although we have spools

of wood and others covered with feathers or inlaid with precious

stones and shells, the finest are often made from metal.9 Their im-

FIG. 5.-A splendid earspool from the site of Loma Negra, on the far north coast of

Peru. This example dates to the period when the Mochica held sway on the north coast

(ca. A.D. 300-400). The raptorial bird, probably a harpy eagle, is fashioned from sheet

and mechanically attached to a round, flat plaque of hammered sheet . (The

bird has often been identified as a condor-I labeled it as such in Heather Lechtman,

Antonieta Erlij, and Edward J. Barry, Jr., "New Perspectives on Moche Metallurgy:

Techniques of Gilding Copper at Loma Negra, Northern Peru," American Antiquity 47

[January 1982]: 3-30-but this is probably an error. Donald Lathrap argues con-

vincingly that raptors such as this one, when depicted on Andean artifacts with mas-

sive tarsi, markedly recurved bills, and crests, probably represent the harpy eagle. See

Lathrap, "The Tropical Forest and the Cultural Context of Chavin," in Dumbarton Oaks

Conference on Chavin, ed. Elizabeth P. Benson [Washington, D.C., 1971], pp. 73-100.)

But the rear disk of that same plaque as well as the cylindrical spool that passes through

the ear lobe (not visible here) are made of tumbaga, a copper-gold containing only

10 percent gold. The golden surfaces of the rear disk and the cylinder were achieved

through depletion gilding. (Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Michael C.

Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979; photograph

by Thomas A. Brown.)

9Julie Jones, "Mochica Works of Art in Metal: A Review," in Pre-Columbian Metallurgy

of South America, ed. Elizabeth P. Benson (Washington, D.C., 1979), pp. 53-104;

Heather Lechtman, Antonieta Erlij, and Edward J. Barry, Jr., "New Perspectives on

Moche Metallurgy: Techniques of Gilding Copper at Loma Negra, Northern Peru,"

American Antiquity 47 (January 1982): 3-30.

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy 11

portance as conveyers of status and worldly or spiritual power was

formally institutionalized by the Inca who alone were permitted to

wear them. Poma's drawing of Pachakuti (fig. 1) shows the emperor

wearing such earspools. In Poma's illustrations, we can distinguish

between members of the royal lineage and other individuals on the

basis of their garments and whether they wear earspools. In fact, the

Spaniards referred to the Inca as orejones-big ears-reflecting this

practice.

Nose rings are another form of dress that was highly elaborated in

the Andes, somewhat more among the peoples inhabiting what is

today Ecuador and Colombia than among those in Peru. Neverthe-

less, recent finds along the far north coast of Peru, in the Piura River

valley near the Ecuadorean border, have included some large, ex-

tremely fine nose rings of hammered silver and gold. Figure 6 illus-

trates such a ring fashioned to represent a personage with impressive

headdress who himself wears a silver nose ring dangling from his

pierced nasal septum, a symbol of his rank and perhaps also of his

ethnic affiliation.

At death, it was the custom in many parts of the Andes to inter the

deceased in the form of a , the body wrapped around with

cloth of a quality that denoted the individual's position within the

FiG;. 6.-Elaborate Mochica nose ring of gold and plated silver from the site of Loma

Negra, on the far north coast of Peru. Originally, round gold sequins dangled from the

earspools and from the broad horizontal headband, as they still do in a few areas at the

upper extremities of the headdress. The crescent ornament that dangles from the

nose of this impressive figure is made of sheet silver, now heavily tarnished. But the

other silvered areas-at the collar, on the earspools, in the headdress-are thin films of

silver which have been deposited onto the gold through a mechanism we have not yet

determined. (Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Michael C.

Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979.)

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 12 Heather Lechtman

community during his lifetime. In addition, those of highest status

were sometimes also provided with masks of metal sewn onto or lying

just beneath the outermost layers of cloth (fig. 7). The finest and

usually the largest mummy masks are golden, though originally they

were painted and decorated with plaques of copper and other mate-

rials. Those that are most often exhibited by museums and that ap-

pear in traveling shows, such as the recent "Gold of Peru" exhibit

which toured the United States and Canada, are from the Chimu

kingdom which dominated the north coast of present-day Peru be-

tween about A.D. 1000 and 1400.

The use of certain metals in the manufacture of religious objects as

conveyers of spiritual power and for charismatic effect was no less

important than their use in the secular realm. For example, during

the Early Intermediate Period (ca. 200 B.C.-A.D. 600) on both the

north and south coasts of Peru, a cult grew up around the practice of

head taking during raids or wars on enemy groups. Archaeologists

have called it the "trophy-head" cult, and its clearest manifestations

occur among artifacts of the Paracas and Nasca cultures of south

coastal Peru, from about 300 B.C. to A.D. 400. Large numbers of

FIG. 7.-This is the largest golden mummy mask of Chim6 origin extant, measuring

29 inches wide by 16 inches high. Originally some of its surfaces were painted with red

cinnabar, traces of which remain, and the holes in the eyes, the ears and earspools, and

along the bottom edge of the mask indicate that other decorations-such as plaques of

copper, precious stones, or fibers-were attached when the mummy bundle was in-

terred. In spite of its lushly golden color, the mask is not made of gold but of a ternary

copper-silver-gold alloy (12 percent Cu, 49 percent Ag, 39 percent Au). Once ham-

mered to shape, the surfaces of the mask were treated chemically to enrich them in gold

through processes known as depletion gilding. (Collection of the Metropolitan Museum

of Art, New York, Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A.

Rockefeller, 1979.)

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy 13

extremely rich graves have been excavated at the south coast site of

Paracas. The mummy bundles, not all of which have been un-

wrapped, have yielded some of the finest cloth preserved from the

prehistoric New World. Characteristic of these textiles are large,

magnificent embroidered mantles that formed part of the mummy

wrappings of high-status individuals of Paracas. A particularly fine

mantle in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts of Boston dis-

plays, in many-colored embroidery, masked and costumed cult

figures in the form of birds, each holding a trophy head in one hand,

two heads displayed on its chest, and two on its wings (fig. 8). The Ica

River valley on the south Peruvian coast, not far from Paracas and

Nasca, has yielded pairs of miniature gold trophy heads-each only 1

or 2 centimeters in height-that probably belong to a somewhat later

Nasca version of related cult practice. They are compelling "charms";

their monumentality, despite their small size, is extraordinary (fig. 9).

*e *e *

FIG. 8.-Detail of a figure, executed in wool embroidery, on a Paracas mantle that

formed one of the wrappings of a mummy bundle interred on the south coast of Peru

in the period roughly between 400 and 200 B.c. The figure wears face paint and a gold

diadem. It holds a trophy head in its left hand; two others are displayed on its shirt and

two on its wings. (Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Ross Collection.)

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 14 Heather Lechtman

All of the metal objects from the Andes described and illustrated

here as symbols of rank, power, and religious force are made of

gold, silver, or a combination of those metals. Indeed, gold and silver

had special ritual and political significance throughout Andean pre-

history from their first important use as carriers of religious icono-

graphic motifs associated with the Chavin cult that swept through the

central Andes about 1000 B.c. up until their employment by the Inca

royal dynasty as symbols of political power used solely by the em-

peror. All the vast mineral wealth of the Andean empire belonged to

the Inca, and among the metals he controlled, gold and silver played a

prominent role. They were his birthright, for the Inca dynasty began

with the offspring of the sun and the moon. The first Inca was the son

of the sun. In Inca cosmology, gold represented the sweat of the sun,

silver the tears of the moon. Thus these two metals were intimately

associated with the origin myth of the ruling dynasty and were second

only to cloth as visible indexes of its wealth and power. Everyone is

familiar with the stories recounted by invading Spaniards of Inca

palaces whose walls were covered with sheets of silver and gold, with

special rooms of miniature gardens that sprouted golden plants

through whose leaves flew gold and silver birds. Of course, little of

this wealth remains, for it was converted to bullion in the European

melting pot.

Nevertheless, we do have a sufficient number of objects from all of

the major periods of Andean prehistory to indicate a trend in Andean

metallurgy that persisted throughout its development. That trend was

motivated by a strong and consistent interest in the colors and quality

I M: o ^^^'sgip^ y :I

FI(;. 9.-A pair of hollow gold trophy heads of Nasca style, slightly less than 2

centimeters high, from a grave in the Ica Valley on the Peruvian south coast. Each head

is composed of nineteen individual pieces of sheet gold, hammered to shape and

soldered together to produce the final form. These are metallurgical as well as aesthetic

tours de force, despite their small size. They are currently in a private collection in the

United States.

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy 15

of metallic gold and silver. It was important that metal objects have

the appearance of gold and silver-their colors and their

reflectivity-even if they incorporated very little of these precious

metals in their structure. In fact, a large proportion of the gold- and

silver-looking objects we have from the Andes are not made of the

pure metals. Many-such as the mummy mask (fig. 7) and the eagle

earspool (fig. 5)-contain relatively small amounts of gold or of silver.

The social arena in which metallurgy received its greatest stimulus

in the Andes was the arena dominated by status and political display.

An underlying cultural value system that appears to have strongly

influenced the visual manifestation of status and power was a color

symbolism oriented around the colors of silver and of gold. The most

innovative and interesting aspects of Andean metallurgy arose from

attempts by Andean to produce metallic gold and metal-

lic silver surfaces on metal objects that were made of neither metal.

These efforts resulted in the purposeful manufacture of binary and

ternary alloys of copper, silver, and gold, and in a remarkable set of

metallurgical and electrochemical procedures for gilding and silver-

ing objects made of copper.

On the basis of the relatively small remaining corpus of metal ob-

jects of pre-Columbian date assigned to the Mochica culture, it has

often been claimed, and rightly so, that the Moche peoples were

among the most sophisticated of Andean metalworkers and that their

products in metal were unequaled by those of the cultures that suc-

ceeded them, including the Inca. The discovery in the late 1960s of a

large group of metal objects of Mochica style in the far north of Peru,

at a site called Loma Negra near the Ecuadorean border, was of great

importance, for it added substantially to the number of known objects

either made or profoundly influenced by the Moche craftsmen.10 The

majority of these objects are made of hammered sheet copper, indi-

vidual, shaped pieces of which were often joined to produce a three-

dimensional form (fig. 10). These artifacts are entirely covered with

green products of copper that formed during burial, but

originally their outside surfaces-and occasionally their inside sur-

faces also-were covered with extremely thin coatings of gold or

silver. Such gilt or silvered surfaces can occasionally be seen when the

green mineral layers are removed, revealing surface beneath.

Thus, in their original condition, the objects appeared to be made of

gold or silver.

10A more detailed discussion of Mochica metallurgy as practiced at Loma Negra can

be found in Heather Lechtman, "A Pre-Columbian Technique for Electrochemical

Replacement Plating of Gold and Silver on Objects of Copper," Journal of Metals 31

(December 1979): 154-60, and in Lechtman et al.

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 16 Heather Lechtman

Studies of the gold and silver surface coatings on the Loma Negra

objects, carried out at MIT's for Research on Ar-

chaeological Materials, proved difficult. The coatings are so thin,

measuring 0.5-2 microns, that they often were not visible in cross sec-

tion at a magnification of 500. After many metallographic examina-

tions of small samples removed from the objects, we came to three con-

clusions: (1) that the metal coatings on any one object are of a rela-

tively uniform thickness and cover all surfaces, including the often

paper-thin edges of the object; (2) that there is a solid-state diffusion

zone between the gold and the copper indicating that, at some stage of

the coating process, heat was applied; and (3) that there is no evidence

of mercury gilding, the use of gold leaf or foil, or the flushing-on of

molten gold on any of the objects.

The most impressive characteristic of these coatings is their ex-

treme thinness and evenness. They look, indeed, very much like

modern electrodeposits, which they could not possibly be. However,

all of the features of the coatings could have been the result of some

form of electrochemical replacement. After our experiments con-

vinced us that the Loma Negra objects were not gilt by immersion in a

bath of molten gold or gilt through any sweat or Sheffield

a_ a

FIG. 10.-Seated figure from the site of Loma Negra, on the Peruvian north coast.

The three-dimensional form is constructed from many pieces of sheet copper, ham-

mered to shape and joined mechanically by a tab-and-slot system. Each preshaped piece

of copper was gilt by electrochemical replacement plating of gold onto the copper

before the figure was assembled. Although the object is almost entirely covered with

green corrosion products that formed during burial, here and there the gold surface

coating can be seen where the corrosion has worn thin. The earspools are decorated

with pieces of . (Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Michael

C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979.)

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy 17

plating type of process, and after mercury gilding was definitely ruled

out, we attempted to reproduce the gross characteristics and the

of these coatings using systems of electrochemical

deposition that might have been available to ancient Andean metal-

workers-that is, to deposit gold or silver onto copper without the use

of modern chemicals, such as cyanide or aqua regia for dissolving the

gold, and without the use of an external source of current.

We have been successful in dissolving gold and silver in mixtures of

corrosive minerals which were available to Andean metalworkers and

which our earlier studies had shown were frequently used by them.

The simplest and most effective method we have used for putting

gold into solution consists of heating it gently for two to five days in an

aqueous solution of equal parts of common salt (NaCI), potassium

nitrate (KN03), and potassium aluminum sulfate (KAl[S04]2-

12H20). This solution contains inter alia the same as are present

in aqua regia to dissolve the gold in the form of trivalent ions.

Chloroauric acid, H(AuC14) ? 3H20, would crystallize from the solu-

tion.

The resulting gold solution is highly acidic and immediately attacks

copper dipped into it, causing a layer of copper corrosion products to

form on the surface of the metal. It was thus necessary to neutralize

the gold solution before introducing the copper. Among various salts

that can be used for this purpose, we found sodium bicarbonate most

effective. The optimum conditions for the gold in solution to plate

onto the copper surface occur at a pH of 9. Copper sheet dipped into

such a solution will be uniformly coated on all its surfaces (including

the edges) with a film of gold approximately 1 micron thick after five

minutes of gentle boiling.

We found that depositing a thin film of gold onto a copper sub-

strate by simple electrochemical plating was only occasionally suf-

ficient to bond the gold permanently to the copper. A more durable

bond could be effected, however, by heating the gilt copper at a

high enough to produce solid-state diffusion of the gold

and copper across their common interface. We proceeded to heat our

gilt metal at ranging from about 500? C to 800? C for

various periods of time. In the higher temperature ranges, excellent

bonding occurred after only seconds of heating.

Most of the gold that has been analyzed from objects made on the

north coast of what is today Peru, as well as native gold panned re-

cently from rivers in that area, contains silver in amounts that range

from a few percent to as much as about 15 percent by weight. We

decided, therefore, to see if we could plate copper with alloys of gold

and silver stemming from an aqueous salt solution containing various

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 18 Heather Lechtman

proportions of those two metals. We used copper pennies and suc-

cessfully plated them by dipping them into a series of hot solutions/

suspensions of silver and gold containing gold in concentrations of

100-5 percent by weight. We have not analyzed the actual plate to

determine the silver:gold ratio on the surface of each penny, but it is

clear that both gold and silver are deposited simultaneously and that

the final color of the plate, which varies markedly from coin to coin,

depends on the relative amounts of silver and gold in suspension and

in solution at the moment of contact with the copper.

Ultimately, we were successful in achieving plates that were quite

close in their visual characteristics and in their microstructures to the

platings on the Loma Negra objects. The microstructures (fig. 11) are

typified by large, annealed grains within the copper sheet and, at the

surface of the sheet, by heat-induced solid-state diffusion of the

plated coating along the grain boundaries. Our copper sheet, plated

by immersion with an 85 gold:15 silver coating, then annealed in a

FIG;. 11.-Photomicrograph of an etched cross section cut through one surface of a

tiny sample removed from beneath the base of the seated figure from Loma Negra (fig.

10). The metallic structures are shown at a magnification of 500. The annealed grains

within the hammered copper sheet are large, and extensive corrosion has occurred

along grain boundaries. The sheet also contains some spherical inclusions. At the

surface of the copper sheet, the electrochemically deposited gold layer is just visible.

Annealing of the gilt sheet stimulated solid state diffusion to occur between the copper

and the gold. That diffusion proceeded preferentially along grain boundaries and is

recognizable in the photomicrograph as small dips or inverted peaks in the gold layer

where the gold has entered along a grain boundary.

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy 19

Bunsen flame for fifteen seconds, closely reproduced the Loma Negra

microstructures and formed a well-bonded golden surface (fig. 12).

The dissolution of gold in aqueous solutions of corrosive salts is not

a modern technique by any means. In fact, the gilding of iron and

steel armor was achieved by such methods in 18th-century Europe

and probably far earlier, as described by Godfrey Smith in his London

edition of The Laboratory or School of Arts (1720). In these procedures,

however, the original, aqueous gold solution was not used directly but

was heated to dryness, and the resulting gold chloride (AuCl3) dis-

solved from the complex mixture of salts by extraction with alcohol. It

is the alcoholic solution that has traditionally been used to plate cop-

per, iron, or steel with gold. By the 19th century, ether had replaced

the alcohol for extraction.

Our method is much more direct. Through the simple expedient of

neutralizing the aqueous gold solution with a common alkali such as

sodium carbonate or bicarbonate or calcium carbonate, we can use the

original solution, and no further extractions are required. Some such

straightforward procedure is what we suspect the Andean metal-

workers employed. Our previous studies had already demonstrated

FIG. 12.-Photomicrograph of an etched cross section through a piece of hammered

sheet copper, gilt in the laboratory by immersion into an aqueous salt solution/

suspension of 85 percent gold:15 percent silver. After electrochemical replacement

plating, the sheet was flame annealed for fifteen seconds. The magnification of this

photomicrograph is 1,000. The structures produced in the laboratory are almost iden-

tical with those in the metal sample removed from the Loma Negra seated figure (fig.

11): large, annealed copper grains; spherical oxide inclusions; a thin gold-silver surface

plate which has penetrated the copper along grain boundaries through solid-state

diffusion.

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 20 Heather Lechtman

the probable use by these smiths of aqueous solutions of salt and niter

or salt and ferric sulfate to gild objects by surface depletion

methods.11 Such corrosive minerals were available to them and ap-

parently were in common use.

When considering the plating mechanisms by which these in-

credibly thin and uniform layers of gold and silver were produced in

the Andes, we recognize two categories of electrochemical plating

without the use of an external battery or other source of electric

current: "electroless" plating and "electrochemical replacement." In

electroless plating, the solution itself contains its own reductant, and it

will deposit metal on any surface that will catalyze the necessary elec-

tron exchange. In electroless plating, therefore, there is no chemical

reaction with the basis metal-in our case, with the copper sheet.

By contrast, plating by electrochemical replacement occurs when a

metal such as copper, high in the electromotive series (at the "nega-

tive" or "base" end of the series), is placed in an containing

ions of a metal, such as gold, lower in the series (at the "positive" or

"noble" end). Chemically, a simple replacement reaction occurs, such

as 2AuCl3 + 3Cu -> 2Au + 3CuCl2. But such an equation does not

reveal the mechanism, which is identical with that in the simple cells

used by the first electroplaters. It is necessary to have anode and

cathode areas, both of which have to be in contact with an electrolyte,

and a complete circuit for to flow from the anode through

the metal to the cathode area, balanced by the return flow of ions

through the electrolyte. Unless the geometry is such that anode areas

are continually in contact with the electrolyte, there will be only an

infinitesimal deposit before the potential is everywhere the

same and the action stops.

In replacement plating, different parts of the same metal surface

provide both the anode and the cathode. In our case, as in the case of

the Loma Negra objects, we assume that small pits or irregularities on

the surface of the copper sheet (fig. 13) initially act as anodes and

continue their anodic activity until they are completely blocked or

protected from the electrolyte by the deposit-the gold-which plates

onto adjacent cathodic surfaces. The anodic and cathodic areas will be

in delicate balance, depending on the details of availability and

polarization. A good deposit occurs only when the anode areas shrink

to the point of near invisibility, but they must not become completely

sealed off from the electrolyte. Plating formed by replacement mech-

" Heather Lechtman, "The Gilding of Metals in Pre-Columbian Peru," in Application

of Science in Examination of Works of Art, ed. William J. Young (Boston, 1973), pp. 38-52.

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy 21

anisms should therefore be characterized by small anodic areas sur-

rounded by much larger cathodic ones. Such an anodic pit can be seen

in the photomicrograph in figure 11, a section through a sample of

gilt metal removed from the Loma Negra artifact in the form of a

seated man. These small pits, passing through and lying beneath the

gold, are anodic spots that have dissolved to drive the deposition of

gold onto adjacent smooth and uninterrupted cathodic areas.

Mochica metalsmiths were not limited solely to gilding and silvering

objects made of copper. Their desire to achieve culturally valued

color effects was played out in the alloy systems they developed or

invented, some of which have come to be considered the hallmark of

Andean prehistoric metallurgy.

The alloy systems developed during the Early Intermediate Period

are extremely important, for they continued to be used in later

periods, and some of them dominated the Andean metallurgical

scene up to the time of the Spanish invasion.12 The earliest of these

that has been identified archaeologically is the alloy of copper and

silver which the Mochica used over a wide range of silver concentra-

tion, from a few percent to over 30 percent, by weight, of silver. The

alloy became particularly popular both on the north coast, within

FI;. 13.-Photomicrograph of an etched cross section through one surface of a

fragment removed from a gilt copper object from the site of Loma Negra. The original

gold plate was removed and the sample replated in the laboratory by electrochemical

replacement. The surface anodic pores are partially covered by the electrochemically

deposited gold-silver plate. This photograph was taken at a magnification of 500.

12Complete technical descriptions of copper-silver and copper-silver-gold alloys and

depletion gilding methods used by pre-Columbian metalsmiths can be found in

Heather Lechtman, "The Gilding of Metals in Pre-Columbian Peru."

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 22 Heather Lechtman

Chimu territory, and on the south coast, where it was used extensively

by Chincha metalworkers during the Late Intermediate Period.

Copper-silver alloys have two properties that were important for

Andean craftsmen: their toughness when hammered and their de-

velopment of enriched silver surfaces when hammered and annealed.

These alloys were used almost exclusively for the manufacture of

objects made of . Even with silver concentrations as low as

about 5 percent by weight, the metal becomes hard but not brittle

when hammered into thin sheet. The flexibility and toughness of

copper-silver sheet metal allowed it to be shaped easily and, once

formed, to retain its shape with far greater strength than pure silver

or even sterling silver (7.5 percent copper). It was thus an excellent

material for metalworkers whose forte was the production of items

from elaborately hammered and joined pieces of metal sheet, objects

such as those illustrated in figures 5, 6, 9, and 10.

The surface-enrichment properties of copper-silver alloys are well

understood. Particularly for alloys containing about 10 percent or

more of silver by weight, the repeated sequences of hammering, an-

nealing, and removing the surface copper oxide scale formed on

-sequences necessary to the fabrication of sheet metal

from the alloy -produce enriched silver surfaces on the result-

ing sheet as the surface copper is removed. Thus metal made from

such alloys, of mottled copper color when cast, is bright silver in color

after having been hammered into sheet. The formation of silvered

surfaces on objects hammered from these alloys is an inescapable

consequence of annealing and of the attendant loss of surface copper

through oxidation. There is, essentially, no way of preventing it.

Copper-silver alloys were used by the Mochica to produce objects of

sheet metal because the sheet was hard and tough and because objects

made of such sheet looked like silver. In later periods, these alloys

continued to be used for the same reasons, and the well-known vasos

retratos, or effigy beakers, of Chimu and Chincha origin, said to be of

silver, are sometimes made of copper-silver alloy.

By far the most important alloy system developed during the Early

Intermediate Period and often used by the Mochica in the manufac-

ture of sheet metal objects was that of copper-gold. Copper and gold

when melted together form a complete series through-

out the entire range of possible alloy compositions, and objects vary-

ing widely in composition have been encountered. Silver is also often

found in these Andean alloys either because the gold used contained

some silver, as placer gold from the Andes often does, or because gold

was added to a copper-silver alloy. For example, an ingot of Mochica

origin, excavated by Max Uhle in the Moche Valley and analyzed by

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy 23

Clair Patterson, contains 60 percent copper, 31 percent gold, and 10

percent silver. By contrast, Alfred Kroeber reports the compositions

of several pieces of Mochica "sheet gold," also excavated by Uhle, as

containing, in one case, 68 percent gold, 13 percent copper, 19 per-

cent silver; and in another, 67 percent gold, 11 percent copper, 22

percent silver by weight.13 Copper-gold alloys such as these are often

referred to in the literature of the New World as tumbaga, a term more

often associated with the metal as it came to be used by the peoples of

Colombia in the remarkable lost-wax they made from it. The

Mochica ingot analyzed by Patterson is a copper-rich tumbaga. The

alloys described by Kroeber may be considered gold-rich tumbagas

with a high concentration of silver. In fact, such metal is equivalent to

16-karat gold.

Copper-gold alloys, like copper-silver alloys, become hard on

hammering but retain their flexibility. They were, therefore, perfectly

suited to the sheet metal tradition already characteristic of north

Peruvian . But these alloys were used and subsequently

highly developed primarily for another property-the gold color that

they confer on articles made from them once the surfaces of such

objects are suitably treated. For example, the Mochica ingot contain-

ing 60 percent copper and 31 percent gold is not golden but distinctly

copper in color in its cast condition. As in the case of the copper-silver

alloys, when such an ingot is hammered to produce thin metal sheet,

copper is lost from the surfaces of the alloy through oxidation on

annealing. Objects made from copper-rich tumbagas of this type soon

develop deep golden surfaces as increasing amounts of surface cop-

per are lost in the hammering and annealing process. When silver is

also present, the surfaces of the object may require additional chemi-

cal treatment to remove some of the silver as well, thereby enriching

the gold. We now know, in fact, that Andean metalworkers were

capable of dissolving silver from such enriched gold-silver surface

alloys with naturally occurring acid minerals, a highly sophisticated

chemical process. Evidently this discovery had already been made by

the Mochica, though it was most widely adopted by the Chimu who,

several centuries later, dominated the entire north coast of Peru.

There is no question but that Chim6 metallurgy was a continuation

of and highly dependent on that of their predecessors, the Mochica.

Chim6 metalsmiths took advantage of Mochica know-how but used it

in a slightly different way. Many of the large and lushly golden

'3Clair C. Patterson, "Native Copper, Silver, and Gold Accessible to Early Metal-

lurgists," American Antiquity 36 (July 1971): 286-321; A. L. Kroeber, Peruvian Archeology

in 1942 (New York, 1944).

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 24 Heather Lechtman

mummy masks from Peru familiar to museum goers are of Chimu

origin. The largest known example of these, presently in the collec-

tion of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, measures

29 inches wide by 16 inches high (fig. 7). Its golden surface is dazzling,

yet the mask is made of a ternary alloy containing only 39 percent

gold, the remainder being silver (49 percent) and copper (12 percent).

Other smaller and less imposing sheet metal ornaments of Chimu

manufacture, all of which are golden in color, are similarly made of

ternary alloys which usually contain about 60-70 percent copper,

between 12 and 30 percent silver, and from 10 to 15 percent gold.

Such alloys, when cast, are light to deep pink in color, depending on

the amount of copper and silver they contain. They are definitely not

golden. When we removed a tiny fragment of metal from a broken

edge of the Metropolitan's mummy mask, metallographic and elec-

tron probe microscopic examinations of the sample in cross section

revealed some of the mechanisms by which the mask's golden surface

had been achieved.

Etched cross sections of the mask fragment show the striated ap-

pearance characteristic of heavily worked sheet metal, the thin bands

of alternating metal phases elongated in the direction of working (fig.

14). Both surfaces of the section, corresponding to the front and back

of the mask, are considerably whiter than the bulk of the metal sheet,

which appears gray in the photomicrograph and pink when viewed in

reflected light. These white surface regions constitute zones of surface

enrichment in silver and in gold. microbeam probe traces

taken as the sample was moved under the electron beam show the

Fi(;. 14.-Photomicrograph of an etched cross section of a tiny fragment of metal

removed from a broken edge of the Chim6 mummy mask now in the collection of the

Metropolitan Museum of Art (fig. 7). The structure is typical of severely worked metal,

with tiny grains and alternating phases of the ternary alloy strung out in the direction of

working. The white zones at both surfaces represent regions of surface enrichment in

silver and gold resulting fiom depletion of the surfaces in copper. The structures are

shown at a magnification of 200.

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy 25

relative concentrations of copper, silver, and gold in the alloy, begin-

ning at a point at the center of the section and moving out through

one of the enriched surfaces (fig. 15a, b). The probe concentration

curves demonstrate that the metal sheet of which the mask is made is a

ternary alloy of copper, silver, and gold. Furthermore, they indicate

that as one approaches the surface zone of the sheet-within about

8-10 microns of the visible surface-the copper in the alloy is com-

pletely missing, leaving a gold-silver binary alloy near the surface.

This enriched gold-silver alloy looks decidedly white in the metallo-

graphic section when viewed with reflected light. Proceeding toward

the ultimate visible surface, we find that most of the silver has been

removed also, leaving a thin skin of almost pure gold at the visible

surface of the mask. It is this thin skin, only a few microns thick, that

gives the mask its bright, golden appearance.

As in the case of binary silver-copper alloys, when of the

ternary copper-silver-gold alloy are forged into metal sheet, a point is

reached when continued hammering to reduce the thickness of the

MIT 356.

MIT 352

FS.

Au 100%

Ag 100%

FS Cu 80%

C . ? " . *j Au 100%

J X ;- ; . 'Ag 100%

:- ':I Cu 20% - 6

_:j~A . u Cu, /

Au, '

I : Ii 1

a b

Fi(;. 15.-Two sets of concentration profiles of the alloying elements within samples

removed from depletion gilt Chimu mummy masks. a, MIT 352 is the large mask

illustrated in fig. 7 from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. b, MIT 356 is a similar but

smaller mask. The curves represent relative concentrations, not absolute concentra-

tions, of copper, silver, and gold within each sample obtained by electron microanalysis

as the sample was moved under the electron beam. The beam made a continuous

traverse across the cross section, from a point near its center out through one gilt

surface. The depletion first of copper, then of silver as one approaches the surface is

evident as is the enrichment of gold at the visible surface. The relative drop in copper

and silver concentration and attendant rise in gold is particularly dramatic in the

sample from the smaller mask (fig. 15b).

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 26 Heather Lechtman

ingot causes the metal to become brittle with the possibility of fracture

if the hammering proceeds too far (fig. 16). When the metal reaches

this stage, the smith anneals it. The heavily worked metal grains re-

crystallize and regain their ability to be plastically deformed. Ham-

mering can then proceed until, once again, the metal becomes highly

stressed and brittle. Annealing serves to relax the crystalline structure

so that can proceed. At each anneal, however, some of the

copper in the near vicinity of the metal surface move to the

surface under the action of the heat and oxidize there, a

// // Co01<1 rl - Cl&0

// / // //

------co @tL C.AO

Cw +A: i Aw a *.^ cg + A'

/ / / / ., / /// / /

Cu.4A^JJA?. / / '?---- /) /

// /

Aai?i~iii;?;liAi +A%.

ingot, containing Cu, Ag, and Au, is cold woked (hammeed at oom tempeatue) to

-ERV, YiN PE..E'~ o IL~IN G

Fi(.. 16.-Diagiram of the mechanisms by which Andean metalworker-s depletion gilt

slheet metal objects torged firom ingots made of copper-silver-gold alloys. Stage I, The

in -efteted light t.

i-educe its thickness and annealed. At each anneal, a scale of copper oxide (Cu20) forms

on the sur-face. This is pickled off, and the foriging continues. Afteri many sequences of

-ing, annealing, and pickling, the thin sheet has lost sufficient copper at its

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy 27

brown to black scale that covers the surface. This scale must be re-

moved before hammering can continue. Andean smiths could have

used certain acid plant juices or stale urine to pickle off the copper

oxide scale quite easily. After many sequences of hammering, an-

nealing, and pickling, the resulting thin metal sheet will have lost so

much surface copper that the surface becomes effectively enriched in

silver and gold through copper depletion. A mummy mask at this

stage of manufacture would appear as if made of silver, since the

binary silver-gold alloy remaining at the surface is silvery white in

color.

But the mummy masks are brightly golden. Chimii smiths, ap-

proaching the task of gilding from the same point of view as that of

silvering, were faced with the problem of removing the silver in the

~4,

V~+A~ e Au- <

AA

>Q(;.RUIrN "? 4AL'TIo A QIL)IN G

''TA C 2

FIG. 16.-Stage 2, To remove silver from the surface of the metal sheet, the object is

covered completely with an aqueous paste of ferric sulfate and salt. This corrosive

material dissolves the silver from the surface binary alloy of silver and gold, leaving a

thin skin of gold in place. The object is left with a three-layered structure: an inner

of ternary copper-silver-gold alloy, a surface zone of binary silver-gold alloy, and a

visible surface skin of gold.

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 28 Heather Lechtman

surface silver-gold binary alloy in order to leave only the gold in situ.

A modern might use various cyanide solutions or distilled

nitric acid to part silver from gold, but we can assume that such

distilled acids were not available to Andean smiths. What they did

have at hand and apparently used, however, were combinations of

naturally occurring acid minerals-such as ferric sulfate and

sodium chloride (common table salt)-which, in an aqueous environ-

ment, effectively remove silver from a silver-gold alloy, leaving the

gold in place.

This set of procedures-which removes first copper, then silver

from the surface of a ternary alloy containing copper, silver, and gold,

thereby gilding the surface-is known as depletion gilding and ac-

counts for the configuration of the electron microprobe concentration

profiles of the cross section removed from the Metropolitan's mummy

mask. We cast an ingot with precisely the same ternary composition as

the Metropolitan's mask and hammered it into thin sheet through

many rounds of annealing and pickling. When we were through, our

sheet looked like silver. We covered the sheet with aqueous pastes of

ferric sulfate and salt or ferric sulfate, salt, and iron oxide. These

were allowed to remain at room temperature for two days, when they

were removed and washed. The resulting sheet had a reddish-brown

color, the color of parted gold in finely divided, particulate form. But

when burnished or gently heated at about 300? C for half an hour, the

gold immediately became a rich, smooth, and shiny yellow color.

Nothing could be simpler!

Ferric sulfate is a highly corrosive substance, acting in solution

almost as a mixture of ferrous sulfate and sulfuric acid. Both copper

and silver are dissolved by it, the reaction (ignoring the detailed elec-

trochemistry of the ions) being Cu + Fe2+++ (S4--)3 -> Cu++S04-- +

2Fe++SO4--. A similar reaction occurs with silver. The presence of

Cl- ions from the salt addition would accelerate the reaction and

perhaps externally precipitate relatively insoluble AgCl. The action

ceases when all the Fe+++ ions have been reduced, though it would

continue through atmospheric oxidation. But more than electro-

is involved: physically the residual gold is left in situ in a

submicroscopically porous state that is easily made coherent by bur-

nishing or heating.

Depletion gilding, which relies on the removal from the surface of

an alloy of its baser metal constituents in order to leave the noblest

metal in place, was used effectively by the Chimd to gild sheet metal

objects that contained as little as 12 percent gold by weight, the

remainder of the alloy being principally copper with some silver.

The tumbaga alloys with their inherent gold enrichment properties

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 29 Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy

swept through the Americas from Peru to Mexico and were in com-

mon use in that entire region when the Spaniards invaded Central

and South America in the 16th century. They constitute the most

significant contribution of the New World to the repertoire of alloy

systems developed among ancient societies. In the Central Andes,

copper-rich tumbagas continued to be used after the Early Inter-

mediate Period primarily to produce gold-colored objects of sheet

metal in contrast to their use in Colombia, the Isthmian area, and

Mexico, where they were employed primarily in castings.

* * *

There has been considerable discussion about why tumbaga had the

impact it had, why it spread so far and overcame the particular

metalworking traditions of the various cultures that adopted it (e.g.,

the almost diametrically opposed traditions of Peruvian and Colom-

bian artisans, the former exquisite forgers of metal, the latter superb

founders), each tailoring the concept of depletion and enrichment to

its own techniques.14 Explanations have invoked the economy of the

system-that is, one can spread one's gold much farther if objects are

made of tumbaga rather than of pure gold. But if one argues for the

economizing of gold, one has also to bear in mind that in alloys of

tumbaga all the gold inside the alloy is "wasted." Only that at the

surface is functional in the sense that it is visible. Using gold leaf or

other external plating systems would be much more economical. In

fact, metal objects were gilt with gold foil, and William Root examined

a number of objects made of copper-gold tumbaga from Cocle, in

Panama, and from Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Yucatan in which the

gilding was achieved by applying the foil to the surfaces of the tumbaga

castings!15 Clearly in these cases the gold within the alloy was present

for a purpose entirely different from any possible gilding function.

The ternary copper-silver-gold tumbagas were also used, at least in

parts of Colombia, in the manufacture of tools such as awls and axes

which were cast and selectively work hardened to rival the best Inca

products in copper-tin bronze. Thus it was a serviceable alloy for tool

14I have expressed many of the views argued here in previous publications: Heather

Lechtman, "Style in Technology-Some Early Thoughts," in Material Culture: Styles,

Organization, and Dynamics of Technology, ed. Heather Lechtman and Robert S. Merrill

(St. Paul, 1977), pp. 3-20; "Issues in Andean Metallurgy," in Pre-Columbian Metallurgy of

South America, ed. Elizabeth P. Benson (Washington, D.C., 1979), pp. 1-40; and "The

Central Andes-Metallurgy without Iron," in Wertime and Muhly, eds. (n. 1 above),

pp. 267-334.

'5William C. Root, "Gold-Copper Alloys in Ancient America," Journal of Chemical

Education 28 (February 1951): 76-78.

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 30 Heather Lechtman

production, though it was used much less frequently for making tools

than for almost every other variety of object produced by the

Colombians-nose rings, tunjos, vessels, ornaments, and so forth. Root

argued that although tumbaga might have been used because it made

easier, it made objects harder, and it made a small amount of

gold go farther, the most likely reason for its employ was that the

people who made and used it preferred the color of gold to that of

copper-or, to put it another way, they liked the color of tumbaga

more than that of gold or of copper.

While all these explanations certainly enter into the constellation of

tumbaga, there is another consideration that lies more in the realm of

attitudes: attitudes of artisans toward the materials they used and

attitudes of a culture area toward the nature of the technological

events themselves. We are really seeking explanations, not for the use

of the particular copper-gold alloy called tumbaga, but for the de-

velopment, geographical spread, and persistence for over two millen-

nia of systems of surface enrichment that stimulated the invention of

a variety of alloys and that were adaptive to quite disparate traditions

of handling metals.

The basis of Andean enrichment systems is the incorporation of the

essential ingredient-the gold or the silver-into the very body of the

object. The essence of the object, that which appears superficially to

be true of it, must also be inside it. In fact, the object is not that object

unless it contains within it the essential quality, even if the essence is

only minimally present. For, without the incorporation of the essence,

its visual manifestation is impossible. Although these enrichment

systems-whether of silver or gold-have been used by metalworkers

in other areas of the world, the role they played in the Andes is

unique. Almost from the earliest appearance of metallurgy there,

depletion and enrichment processes assumed a special place that per-

sisted throughout the entire course of Andean metallurgical develop-

ment and were responsible for stimulating some of its most interesting

achievements. Although ideological considerations may have had lit-

tle to do with the initial working out of these procedures, it seems

certain that the way in which Andean peoples perceived such

processes-or at least the objects that resulted from their use-had a

great deal to do with the way in which the technology emerged and

matured. Belief systems and attitudes toward materials supported the

technology and gave rise to further developments along similar lines.

On another occasion, I suggested that one of the ways to test the

hypothesis concerning incorporation of essences as an ideological

motif underlying the elaboration of Andean metal gilding tech-

nologies and its possible, more widespread occurrence behind a style

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 31 Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy

of technological behavior within Andean society would be to examine

those technologies that surround what is unequivocally the most im-

portant arena of Andean material culture-cloth production.16 Do

similar concerns appear to have operated in the elaborate weaving

techniques utilized by Andean specialists in the prehistoric period?

No other item of manufacture in the Andes assumed the im-

portance of cloth. By the Incaic period, cloth and agriculture were

considered the dual forms of wealth,17 and textile manufacture had

behind it some 4,000 years of development. In Andean society, cloth

performed in virtually all aspects of life-it had religious and cere-

monial functions, political and military functions; it was the commod-

ity that carried with it the highest status and, for the Inca, was the item

most valued by the state and the individual alike. Textiles were the

primary visual medium for the expression of ideas, the fundamental

art form of Andean peoples. And the manipulation of fibers-

whether for the thatching of roofs, the building of bridges, or the

weaving of garments-formed one of the primary systems of Andean

technology.

Although from quite early periods of Andean prehistory it is clear

that groups of specialists were involved in the production of elite

textiles, it is equally evident that virtually everyone of all ages spun

and all women and some men wove. The technology was a pervasive,

a universal, element of Andean life, and this intense involvement, in

conjunction with the social-ideational significance of cloth, gave rise to

the elaboration of an extremely wide range of highly sophisticated

weaving techniques. All scholars agree that Andean textiles rank

among the finest of preindustrial cloth manufactures.

One of the most impressive aspects of Andean weaving arises from

the preponderant use of "structural" as opposed to "suprastructural"

techniques for realizing the patterns carried by the finished, woven

cloth.l8 When a design or is achieved through suprastructural

means, the design is added to a completed . Its removal from that

web would in no way affect the integrity of the woven cloth which acts

as a support for the design but is otherwise structurally unaffected by

it. Embroidered designs fall in this category, as do brocading and

painted cloth; dyed textiles, achieved by tie-dyeing or, in a sense, ikat,

are also included in this group. Such techniques were used by Andean

weavers, particularly by societies that developed along the Pacific

coast of South America. In contrast, designs achieved by structural

16Lechtman, "Style in Technology-Some Early Thoughts."

17Murra (n. 7 above).

"'Definitions and discussion of these technical weaving terms can be found in Irene

Emery, The Primary Structures of Fabrics (Washington, D.C., 1966).

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 32 Heather Lechtman

means are realized through the manipulation of warp and weft yarns

during the process of weaving so that the design emerges from the

structural rendering of the web. To remove the design would be to

destroy-literally to unweave-the cloth. Tapestry techniques; dou-

ble, triple, quadruple cloth; gauze weaves; and warp patterned weaves

as well as plain weaves are only some of the Andean cloth types whose

characteristics are achieved through manipulation of the structural

elements of the fabric. There is no question but the primary creative

direction of Andean weaving-both synchronic (area to area) and

diachronic (over time)-lay in the rich elaboration of structural tech-

niques, in the playing out of a structural technological style. As Anna

Gayton observed when discussing ancient Peruvian textiles, "This

potency of structure, sufficient to enhance or mar the qualities of

yarns, colors, and designs, was a major motivation for developing the

different methods of interlacing warps and wefts which distinguish

one weaving technique from another."19

When we compare Andean weaving with any of the other great

traditions of cloth manufacture, whether Oriental or European, no-

where else do we find such an elaboration of and commitment to a

broad range of weaving techniques based on loom yarn manipulation.

It is not simply that Andean cloth production greatly emphasized and

relied on patterns structurally rendered but that the complexity of

such structural manipulations-as in quadruple cloth-went far be-

yond mere virtuosity. William Conklin argues persuasively that the

reason behind such a rich field of structural invention in Andean

weaving lies in the role of textiles as the chief carrier of cultural

message in conjunction with the availability of the technology at all

levels of the society.

What we must ask is whether the visual message carried by Andean

cloth, to the extent that that message was borne by the design motifs,

had to be contained in and to be generated by the very structure of

the fabric itself. That is, just as in the case of the depletion gilding of

metal, does there come a point at which the technology per se be-

comes the medium for the expression of message? In the case of

Andean highland weaving, intricate manipulations of many warp

planes and myriad weft yarns were, strictly speaking, unnecessary to

the accomplishment of the designs. Simpler techniques could have

achieved the same patterns. But Andean weaving seems to have re-

sponded to notions that the achievement of visual, surface mes-

'9Anna H. Gayton, "The Cultural Significance of Peruvian Textiles: Production,

Function, Aesthetics," Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers 25 (1961): 111-28; quotation

on p. 117.

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy 33

sage as emerging from underlying, invisible structural relations. An-

dean weaving insists that message be embodied in and expressed by

structure.20

Although this treatment of Andean cloth techniques is perforce

summary, we do see that key technologies associated with cloth and

metal production shared stylistic modes, perhaps because those

modes are expressions of cultural ideals, that is, they incorporate

ideological concerns of the society at large. Lexicographic and ethno-

graphic studies of Andean metallurgical and weaving vocabularies

should certainly help to bridge the realm of technical process with

that of cosmic ideas about universal processes, and ethnohistoric re-

search on production and on Andean cosmologies is absolutely

essential in this regard. For example, both Regina Harrison and

Gerald Taylor, ethnohistorians of the Andes, in recent studies of late

16th- and early 17th-century Quechua religious texts, call attention to

the use in these texts of the Quechua term camay, the act of infusing

life spirit into an inanimate object.21 In various ritual poems that refer

to the acts of creation by Viracocha, the creator, the term camay is used

expressly to denote Viracocha's animating or breathing a spirit into an

object. Camay refers to the domain of the material and of the concrete,

to the domain of people and of the natural and cultural objects they

fashion and use. Perhaps the notions of "technological essence"-of

the visually apprehended aspect of an object as revealing its inner

structure-are related to these fundamental Andean concepts of the

divine animation of all material things.22

In a recent and provocative article about the relations between pre-

cious metals and politics in the pre-Columbian era, Mary Helms com-

pares those sets of relations as they were manifest in the Andean area,

particularly in Incaic Peru, and in the Intermediate Area of lower

Central America and northern South America (including portions of

Nicaragua and Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and north-

20In thinking about the underlying similarities behind aspects of Andean prehistoric

metallurgical and cloth technologies, I have benefited greatly from discussions with two

scholars of Andean cloth production, William Conklin and Edward Franquemont.

21Regina Harrison, "Modes of Discourse: The Relacion de antigiiedades deste reyno del

Piru by Joan de Santacruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamaygua," in From Oral to Written

Expression: Native Andean Chronicles of the Early Colonial Period, ed. Rolena Adorno (Syra-

cuse, N.Y., 1982), pp. 65-99; Gerald Taylor, "Camay, camac, et camasca dans le manu-

scrit quechua de Huarochiri,"Journal de la Societe des Americanistes 63 (1974-76): 231-44.

221 am most grateful to the Andean ethnologist Tristan Platt for calling my attention

to the Harrison article (n. 21 above) and to the possible relevance of the concept camay

to the technology of essences. In a personal communication of June 1982, while discuss-

ing Andean metallurgy, Platt speculated that "the notion of a divine force 'animating' a

particula- object could be equivalent to a divine metal 'giving life' to an alloy."

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 34 Heather Lechtman

ern Ecuador).23 For each of these two areas she describes the over-

riding metallurgical-technological style, the political organization, and

the ideologies of the ruling elites of the societies in question, seeking

interpretations that correlate metallurgical traditions with the role of

political elites. Her discussion of Incaic metalworking includes not

only its bias toward gold or gold-appearance but its commitment to a

long-standing Andean tradition of handling metal, a tradition based

on forging and joining pieces of metal to achieve three-dimensional

forms,24 as contrasted with the tradition of casting metal by the lost-

wax method which was overwhelmingly the practice in the Inter-

mediate Area. The Andean style she calls "architectural" in the sense

that objects were built or constructed from thin metal sheets. For the

ruling Inca elite, such constructions were often of gold or gold-

appearing metal:

In short, clothing, buildings, utensils, even (as effigies) people

and animals-all fundamental elements of the cultural setting in

which the nobility lived either symbolically or, to the extent

allowed by actual use of these golden goods, behaviorally-could

be built from sheets of gold and silver....

A simple and obvious message seems to be communicated by

such constructions. The Inca nobility apparently wished to be

construed as living in a world inherently composed of the qualities

of the celestial realm from which they were descended and of

which, therefore, they too were inherently a part. Celestial qual-

ities were expressed in the colors of gold and silver and pos-

sibly encapsulated in the composition of gilded tumbagas.... If

we work with Lechtman's suggestion that in Andean thought the

surface material or condition of something expressed its inherent

essence, then to cover or sheath a wall or object or person in

golden color or to entirely create an object from segments of

golden (or gilded tumbaga) sheets was simply to state that the

structure, object, or person internally contained, or was composed

of, golden (celestial) qualities. In other words, the realm of the

Inca nobility, including the nobility themselves and all that sur-

rounded them, was not just associated with celestial goldness but

was considered as inherently "golden" in essence, quality, and con-

cept by virtue of being composed or constructed of goldness.

In this interpretive context, then, Incaic golden objects are not

viewed simply as golden imitations of nature or as beautiful utili-

tarian or decorative items but as tangible expressions of the

2:IMary W. Helms, "Precious Metals and Politics: Style and Ideology in the Inter-

mediate Area and Peru,"Journal oJ Latin American Lore 7 (1981): 215-37.

2-I echtman, "The Central Andes-Metallurgy without Iron" (n. 14 above).

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy 35

political ideology legitimizing the superiority of the elite of the

Inca state.25

Of course, the point behind the "technology of essences" is that the

essence must be part of the structure of the item in order to be

realized and made visible on its surface. Helms has turned the argu-

ment around, asserting that the Inca nobility manipulated the ideol-

ogy behind the technology to validate its claim to inherent godliness.

Thus stone walls sheathed with gold or gilt metal or clothed in

gold had conferred on them automatically the essential quality that

ought to have been present internally.

To return to the technology itself: When we step back and look at

the two quite extraordinary metal-coloring systems invented by An-

dean metalworkers-electrochemical replacement and depletion

gilding and silvering-it is striking to realize that we are dealing not

with the metallurgy of gold or of silver but rather with the metal-

lurgy of copper, the metal that served as the basis for all the major

alloys developed in the Andes, including bronze. But unlike its use

in some weaponry, in textile manufacturing tools like needles and

spindle whorls, and in occasional agricultural implements, copper was

transformed when used as the carrier of color.

Most students of early consider "true metallurgy" as

involving two important achievements: the winning of metals from

their and the alloying of metals. We are used to thinking of

copper as the "first" smelted metal and of copper-arsenic as the "first"

alloy system. But that is because our data have been taken almost

exclusively from the Old World, and even there recent evidence in-

dicates that lead may predate copper smelting by several

millennia.26 From a comparative stance and a fresh look at events in

the New World, it seems quite likely that "true metallurgy" in both its

aspects-smelting (of copper-silver ores) and alloying (in the produc-

tion of solders)-was achieved in the Andes by the end of the Early

Horizon and before the emergence of the Mochica state. But the

Mochica put metallurgy on its feet. Copper became the metal on

which all further developments in alloying and in smelting were

based. In and of itself, copper was highly valued among the Mochica;

many of their tools were made of it, and it formed the basis of their

alloys. But in this latter role copper was in the service of attitudes

about metals-metals of adornment, metals of status, metals of

25Helms, quotation on p. 220.

26Noel H. Gale and Zofia Stos-Gale, "Lead and Silver in the Ancient Aegean," Sci-

entific American 244 (June 1981): 176-92.

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 36 Heather Lechtman

power-that influenced those alloys. They were alloys that altered the

properties of copper not so much to make it harder or stronger but to

confer on its surfaces a different color-indeed, to transform it so that

it actually seemed to be another metal altogether, sometimes metallic

silver but primarily metallic gold.

The copper-silver and copper-gold alloy systems developed during

the Early Intermediate Period, particularly on the north Peruvian

coast, had to be malleable, hard, and capable of retaining the shape

they assumed on deformation through hammering. North

coast metallurgy was sheet metal oriented, and the alloys it developed

had to fulfill the requirements of a sheet metal tradition. Both

copper-silver and copper-gold did so admirably. In addition, the

Mochica used these alloys to produce metal qualities that were obvi-

ously paramount for them, goldenness and silveriness. In this sense,

copper, through its alloys, was a for achieving those desired

qualities. It remained a handmaiden to gold and to silver, both of

which continued to be used in the manufacture of the finest objects.

The interest in surfaces and in the display of gold as the significant

visual aspect conveyed by a metal object led to the development not

only of tumbaga alloys but also of gilding copper by means of external

systems as complex as electrochemical deposition. The sophistication

of Mochica metallurgy-one is tempted to say of Mochica

chemistry-is extraordinary. It gives us insight into what "metalness,"

at least in part, may have meant to the Mochica, and certainly what

resourceful means they used for achieving such qualities.

Ultimately, these attitudes became Andean values indoctrinated by

the Inca dynasty. The gold-silver focus within Andean society was, by

Inca times, transformed into a state-monopolized and one to

which the state committed substantial resources of labor and energy,

especially in the extraction and processing of the metals. They re-

mained metals of "charisma," concentrated in the hands of the few

and redistributed as tokens of royal esteem.

Copper and bronze were also highly valued, but the content of that

value is more difficult to assess. The balance between gold and silver,

on the one hand, and copper and its alloys, on the other, was never an

equal balance, probably because the former always had behind them

the weight of religious and political institutions. Copper was

nevertheless the vehicle through which the real achievements in An-

dean metallurgy took place, and it was on the threshold of assuming a

much more important role in Andean life when Andean civilization

was cut down by Spanish invaders in search of the rich gold and silver

deposits of the land.

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:36:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions