Head-shaped bead

This head is one of at least six likely from the same necklace (see also MMA 1991.419.53-.57). The beads depict the head of a high-status individual of ancient Peru’s Moche culture. Made by shaping a sheet of hammered gold over a mold, the individuals wear circular ear ornaments, a feature indicative of their social position. Pairs of perforations on either side of the head suggest the beads were double strung, as was customary for Moche necklaces (see, for example, Alva and Donnan, 1993: 93, fig. 95).

In the first millennium of the Common Era, Moche communities transformed the strip of desert between the Pacific Ocean and the Andean highlands into a rich agricultural landscape through the invention and expansion of complex irrigation systems. Peru’s North Coast was dotted with monumental buildings made of mudbrick that were the center of Moche ceremonial life. These centers were often hubs for craft production, places where Moche artists achieved new heights technologically and aesthetically.

References and Further Reading

Alva, Walter, and Christopher B. Donnan. Royal Tombs of Sipán. Los Angeles: Fowler Museum of Culture History, 1993.

Donnan, Christopher B. Moche Art of Peru: Pre-Columbian Symbolic Communication. Los Angeles: Museum of Cultural History, 1978, p. 20, fig. 33.

Pillsbury, Joanne, Timothy Potts, and Kim N. Richter. Golden Kingdoms: Luxury Arts in the Ancient Americas, edited by Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2017.