Beaker

Three-dimensional depictions of courtly rituals on Peru’s North Coast in the first centuries of the second millennium CE include a variety of figures, including dignitaries carried aloft on litters, musicians, and maize beer servers. Sometimes these courtly figures take the shape of a vessel. The figure depicted on this silver beaker has a pronounced, rounded upper back, perhaps representing the convex curvature of individuals with kyphosis. Such physical distinction was not unusual in the royal courts of the ancient Americas, where a distinctive physical appearance may have been seen as special, and closer to supernatural powers. This figure is clearly of a high-status, as he is shown wearing a finely woven loincloth and holding a bird effigy vessel.

This vessel was reportedly part of a large group of silver objects recovered from a single site on Peru’s North Coast—in one account, the site of Mocollope, in the Chicama Valley; in another, in the Moche Valley, near Chan Chan, capital of the Chimú kingdom. The group includes a range of forms, from elegantly plain, tall beakers to containers in the form of human figures and animals. Chimú leaders, and the lords of another North Coast dynasty, known as Lambayeque or Sicán, dedicated far more resources to the creation of impressive drinking vessels in silver and gold than their predecessors. The presence of such a large number of capacious beakers speaks to a reorientation in ritual practice toward larger, more inclusive gatherings. Filled with maize beer, known as chicha, such vessels were part of convivial celebrations that were the building blocks of community formation. Drinking rituals were about communing with divine powers, but they were also about establishing, strengthening, and delineating relations among humans. These vessels, so prominent in public and private rituals, were opportunities for the expression of ideas in visual form, and they became a primary means by which such ideas were shared across time and place.

Chan Chan itself was famed for its artists, and a striking percentage of the population, perhaps twelve thousand in this city of forty thousand, was engaged with craft production (Topic, 1990). The city was a rich prize for the Incas when they conquered the North Coast around 1475 CE; later historical accounts note that the Inca captured the Chimú silversmiths and pressed them into service in Cusco, the Inca capital high in the Andes. Other Chimú metalworkers were relocated to the Lake Titicaca region (Zori, 2016). This strategy of breaking up conquered polities was designed to diffuse the Chimú kingdom’s power and potential threat. The Incas’ keen interest in metalworking, however, also reminds us of the importance of these ritual objects and their makers in Andean statecraft.

Joanne Pillsbury, Andrall E. Pearson Curator, Arts of the Ancient Americas, 2025

References and Further Reading

Pillsbury, Joanne. “Drinking with Dead Kings: Ritual and Rulership in the Kingdom of Chimor. World Art, 15(1)(2025): 193–228. https://doi.org/10.1080/21500894.2025.2449865

Topic, John R. “Craft Production in the Kingdom of Chimor.” In The Northern Dynasties: Kingship and Statecraft in Chimor, edited by Michael E. Moseley and Alana Cordy-Collins, 145–76. Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1990.

Zori, Colleen. “Valuing the Local: Inka Metal Production in the Tarapacá Valley of Northern Chile.” In Making Value, Making Meaning: Techné in the Pre-Columbian World, edited by Cathy Lynne Costin, 167–92. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2016.