Face Mask Ornament

This ornament was made from a larger piece of gilded copper sheet which was then cut and shaped in the form of the front half of a monkey’s head. The teeth and eyes were inlaid with shell, the pupils with stone. Pairs of holes in each ear originally held two thin gilded wires each with a gilded dangle at the end. Small fragments of feathers, perhaps from an adjacent feather textile buried with the head, are embedded in the surface corrosion. This ornament was either the front part of a bead whose back is missing, or it may have been attached to a support such as a banner, now missing.

The Moche (also known as the Mochica) flourished on Peru’s North Coast from 200-850 CE, centuries before the rise of the Inca (Castillo, 2017). Over the course of some seven centuries the Moche built thriving regional centers from the Nepeña River Valley in the south to perhaps 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 Moche never formed a single centralized political entity, they shared unifying cultural traits such as religious practices (Donnan, 2010).

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

References and Further Reading

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.

Castillo, Luis Jaime. “Masters of the Universe: Moche Artists and Their Patrons.” In Golden Kingdoms: Luxury Arts in the Ancient Americas, edited by Joanne Pillsbury, Timothy Potts, and Kim N. Richter, pp. 24-31. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2017.

Castillo, Luis Jaime, Cecilia Pardo, and Julio Rucabado. Moche y sus vecinos: Reconstruyendo identidades. Lima: Museo de Arte de Lima, 2016.

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 H. Silverman, pp. 85-111. Boston, MA: Springer, 2006.

Lechtman, Heather, Antonieta Erling, and Edward J. Barry Jr. "New Perspectives on Moche Metallurgy: Techniques of Gilding Copper at Loma Negra, Northern Peru." American Antiquity vol. 47 (1982), pp. 3-30.

Schorsch, Deborah. "Silver-and-Gold Moche Artifacts from Loma Negra, Peru." Metropolitan Museum Journal vol. 33 (1998), pp. 109-136.