Warrior figure

This small, complex figure of a warrior is one of at least three highly similar objects known in museum collections. A second warrior is in the Met’s collection (MMA 1981.459.31) and a third is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (accession number 2010.960; see also a related pair in the same institution, 2010.959.1, 2). Composed of six pieces of gilded copper cut from a larger sheet, it was shaped to create a figure of a warrior. The figure likely once had a circular shield affixed to his left wrist and a weapon in his right hand; both are now lost.

The torso is made up of front and back halves held in place by pressure, whereas each limb was constructed with a single sheet joined to the body by small tabs. The figure’s face was completed with inlaid shell eyes with stone pupils. The figure wears a hat, and a collar is indicated in repoussé. The warrior is shown wearing an animal skin on his back, perhaps that of a feline; its tail was attached separately. Rectangular and circular dangles were attached via wires.

A conical element with a closed top with gilded dangles is attached to the back of the head. This element may be a metallic representation of a feather headdress ornament as found in a few elite Moche burials (Donnan, 2003: 64; Strong and Evans, 1952) and seen in depictions of warriors in a ceramic style known as fineline (Mujica Barreda, 2007: 83). The figure has a thick wire that extends from the back of the neck and ends in a hook, suggesting that it was meant to be suspended from something else.

The Moche (also known as the Mochica) flourished on Peru’s North Coast from 200-900 CE, centuries before the rise of the Incas. Over the course of some seven centuries, the Moche built thriving regional centers from the Nepeña River Valley in the south to as far north as the Piura River, near the modern border with Ecuador, developing coastal deserts into rich farmlands and drawing upon the abundant maritime resources of the Pacific Ocean’s Humboldt Current. Although the precise nature of Moche political organization is unknown, these centers shared unifying cultural traits such as religious practices (Donnan, 2010).

These figures were said to have been found at a site or sites known as Loma Negra, anorthern outpost of Moche culture. Loma Negra works in metal share similar iconography with ceramics and metalwork found at Moche sites father to the south, such as Ucupe (Bourget, 2014). The exact relationship between Loma Negra and the Moche “heartland” remains a subject of debate, however (Kaulicke, 2006).

References and Further Reading

Alva, Walter and Christopher Donnan. Royal Tombs of Sipan. Los Angeles: Fowler Museum of Cultural History, University of California, Los Angeles, 1993, p. 168, fig. 183.

Bourget, Steve. Les rois mochica: Divinité et pouvoir dans le Pérou ancient. Paris: Somogy éditions d'art; Geneva: MEG, Musée d'ethnographie de Genève, 2014.

Donnan, Christopher B. Moche Portraits from Ancient Peru. Austin: Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Series in Latin American and Latino Art and Culture, University of Texas Press, 2003, p. 64.

Donnan, Christopher B. “Moche State Religion.” In New Perspectives on Moche Political Organization, edited by Jeffrey Quilter and Luis Jaime Castillo, pp. 47-69. Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2010.

Kaulicke, Peter. “The Vicús-Mochica Relationship.” In Andean Archaeology III, edited by William H. Isbell and Helene Silverman, pp. 85-111. Boston, MA: Springer, 2006.

Marzio, Frances. Masterworks of Pre-Columbian, Indonesian, and African Gold, The Glassell Collections of the Museum of Fine Arts. Houston: Distributed by Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2012, pp. 48-49.

Mujica Barreda, Elías. El Brujo: Huaca Cao, Centro Ceremonial Moche en el Valle de Chicama/Huaca Cao, a Moche Ceremonial Center in the Chicama Valley. Lima: Fundación Wiese, 2007, p. 83.

Schorsch, Deborah. "Silver-and-Gold Moche Artifacts from Loma Negra, Peru." Metropolitan Museum Journal vol. 33 (1998), p. 113, figs. 7, 8.

Strong, William D. and Clifford Evans, Jr. Cultural Stratigraphy in the Virú Valley Northern Peru. The Formative and Florescent Epochs. New York: Columbia University Press. 1952, p. 166.