Tupu (pin)

This object is a tupu, a Quechua word for pin (pithu in Aymara and alfiler in Spanish). Women in the Andes wear tupus in order to fasten textile garments. Tupus, made of metal, usually consist of two parts: a head and a stem. On the present example, the width of the head gradually broadens moving away from the stem. While the long sides of the head are rectilinear, its top edge is circular. The tupu’s stem slightly narrows near its end, farther from the head. The stem may have terminated in a point, a useful feature of tupus for pushing them into the textile garments. Today, the stem appears incomplete. At some stage in this object’s itinerary, the pointed end may have broken off. This end is especially fragile considering the substantial corrosion that is evident.

Similar to Metropolitan Museum of Art 64.228.606, there is no perforation visible on the head. This suggests that a person wore this tupu without necessarily threading it onto a cord. Such a practice is suggested by archaeological tupus (please see the discussion in 64.228.701). In the illustration of Mama Huaco, the female leader of the Collas, by Guamán Poma de Ayala ([1615] 1980, pl. 120), she wears two tupus that are connected by a cord from which hang various other ornaments. The tupus, which are perforated in their heads, are not tied to the cord in these locations but possibly are tied at their stems. Today, women in Tupe, Peru may wear tupus in a similar fashion, with the stems at top and the heads at bottom (see Vetter 2009, fig. 6). The tupus fasten the women’s garments, but may be kept in place more securely with the use of a cord to connect them. In the Chimborazo and Tungurahua provinces of Ecuador, people may attach a pair of tupus to a cord that passes through a loop near the tupu’s head (see Rowe 1998, figs. 132, 170).

To make this tupu, metalworkers may have started with a rod of metal. Such rods are blanks, or stock metal, that were pre-fabricated for metalworkers to shape into different forms. (Please see 64.228.606 for further discussion of these blanks.) On the present example, an artist hammered the end of the pre-fabricated rod, thinning it and shaping it into the head that is seen today. They may have chiseled the edges of the head in order to refine its shape. The green natural corrosion across the surface of this object suggests that copper is present in the metal.[1]

This tupu is part of a wider form that Owen (2012, fig. 2.4b) refers to as tupus with a “long taper.” The taper relates to the head. There are 52 tupus with this form that Owen identifies dated to the Late Horizon (ca. A.D. 1400-1533). Of the versions that are illustrated, all have perforations, which make them distinct from the present example. The majority of the tupus of this form are from the southern Titicaca Basin while others have been found in central highland Peru, the Inca core region around Cusco, the northeastern Titicaca Basin, the Moquegua and Cochabamba regions, and northwestern Argentina. Given this majority, the present tupu may be tentatively assigned to the southern Titicaca Basin and to the Tiwanaku or later Pacajes or Inca occupations there, but it is certainly possible that people fabricated and/or used the object outside of this region.

Two published examples are important to note. One extends the distribution discussed above to include the north coast of Peru. It is significantly larger, 15 cm in length with a head whose edges flare further outward, and comes from Chornancap in the Lambayeque Valley (Wester La Torre 2016, 253, figs. 155-6). It was found as part of a human burial in Tomb 4 along with a range of spindle whorls and needles. The archaeologists inferred that the person buried in this location was a weaver. Along with seven other women and a camelid, this person was interred around the burial of another woman. Like the present example, this tupu does not appear to have a perforation and the general form of its head—flaring, rectilinear edges on the long sides and a curved edge at top—is similar.

Another example is from the mountaintop site of Ampato, the location of an Inca capac hucha deposition in the southern highlands of Peru that has been dated to ca. A.D. 1466, when the nearby Volcán Sabancaya erupted (Onuki and Rosas 2000, 82-85, cat. no. 159). This tupu was worn by a young woman, aged 12 to 14, who was buried in this location as part of the ritualized performance of capac hucha. (For more information on tupus related to capac hucha, please see 1987.394.620.) This example does have a single perforation in the head, and is more similar in form and size to the one noted above from Chornancap, but does show the basic form of the present tupu.

These two examples from Chornancap and Ampato are reminders of the reality that, besides acting as tools or ornaments that people use to fasten clothing, tupus like the present one also may play a role in burials. These contexts take the tupu outside of its usual visible role. The tupus may participate in the construction of a person’s identity even in death or in an offering to an apu, a sacred mountain being.

Bryan Cockrell, Curatorial Fellow, Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, 2017

[1] Accession records in the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas at the Metropolitan Museum state that the object is possibly silver. It is difficult to determine whether silver or other metals are present in the tupu without a compositional study. For more information on the accession of which this object is a part, please see 64.228.701.

Further reading

Guamán Poma de Ayala, Felipe. El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno, edited by John V. Murra and Rolena Adorno. Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, [1615] 1980.

Onuki, Yoshio, and Fernando Rosas Moscoso. Exposición del gran Inca eterno: La tristeza de la niña “Juanita.” Lima: Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Antropología e Historia del Perú and Museo Santuarios Andinos, 2000.

Owen, Bruce D. “The Meanings of Metals: The Inca and Regional Contexts of Quotidian Metals from Machu Picchu.” In The 1912 Yale Peruvian Scientific Expedition Collections from Machu Picchu: Metal Artifacts, edited by Richard L. Burger and Lucy C. Salazar, 73-189. New Haven: Yale University Department of Anthropology and the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, 2012.

Rowe, Ann Pollard, ed. Costume and Identity in Highland Ecuador. Washington, D.C.: The Textile Museum, 1998.

Vetter Parodi, Luisa. “El uso del tupu en un pueblo llamado Tupe.” In Platería tradicional del Perú: Usos domésticos, festivos y rituales: Siglos XVIII-XX, 175–83. Lima: Universidad de Ricardo Palma, Instituto Cultural Peruano Norteamericano, 2009.

Wester La Torre, Carlos. Chornancap: Palacio de una gobernante y sacerdotisa de la cultura Lambayeque. Chiclayo: Ministerio de Cultura del Perú, 2016.