Plaque

Metalworkers hammered gold to make this plaque, which is part of the Condorhuasi tradition of Northwest Argentina. This tradition ranges from approximately 500 B.C. to A.D. 450. A person likely would have worn this plaque in burial. Objects like this one only may have been accessible to a few people. This is suggested by the emerging differences in materials with which people were buried at this time in Northwest Argentina.

The plaque is approximately hexagonal, although it can be considered part of an assemblage usually referred to as "oval plaques" (see, for example, A. González 1992, 14). It displays a consistent thickness across its surface, and shows a very slight overall concavity, with the obverse side slightly raised. There are two elliptical holes at the top of the plaque. At the center, there is an hourglass-shaped area of metal that has been removed. Compared to the outer edges of the plaque, which are rounded and relatively smooth, the edges of the hourglass shape are sharper. Especially on the obverse, the surface of the object is highly polished, and some scratches are visible, likely related to this process of polishing.

In creating the plaque, it is uncertain whether the metalworkers began with a pre-formed blank of metal, hammered or cast, or worked directly from nuggets of gold that they joined together through hammering. In turn, the metalworkers hammered the gold to its present thinness and chiseled the object to its hexagonal shape. They also chiseled away the metal at the center to form the hourglass shape. On the reverse, the presence of a slight depression that outlines the shape suggests that the metalworkers undertook chiseling from this side. They used a punch to make the two perforations at top. Polishing was likely carried out at some point, or at several points, after the object’s excavation.

Condorhuasi, which means "house of the condor" in Quechua, has been referred to as a "culture" or as a "socio-cultural entity" (see Nuñez and Tartusi 2002). It is more or less constituted by a set of materials that suggest some degree of shared practice among the people who made them. These materials, including objects of gold, silver, or copper, were recovered from 208 funerary contexts (A. González 1979a, 94 in L. González 2004, 168).[1] Their distribution is concentrated in the Catamarca Province of Northwest Argentina and especially in the Valle de Hualfín. This area belongs to the Northwest’s valliserrana region, which encompasses a range of rivers and valleys at altitudes between 1200 and 3200 m.a.s.l. along with forests of algarrobo and chañar (L. González 2004, 152). People produced pottery and metal objects at early dates (6th/5th century B.C.) in this region as part of the Condorhuasi tradition. While people occupied parts of Northwest Argentina as early as 10,000 B.C., and over time domesticated llamas and cultivated crops like pumpkin, peanut, and chili, they began to form more permanent settlements between the 9th and 6th centuries B.C.

Plaques highly similar to the present example have been found in Northwest Argentina, Northern Chile, and the region of Lake Titicaca. This suggests that communities in the valliserrana interacted with people over significant distances. One such gold plaque from the Valle de Cajón of Northwest Argentina (Museo Arqueológico de la Universidad Nacional de Tucumán 1743) bears an hourglass cut-out at its center, has a single circular perforation at top, and includes embossed designs of concentric circles around its edges. Another from Isla Parita on Lake Titicaca features an hourglass cut-out at center and a single perforation at top. It is more elliptical in shape, however, and includes two circular protrusions in the middle. Each protrusion appears to show a circle of embossed points.[2, 3] In at least one case, a person wore two of these plaques in burial (A. González 1979b, 146).


The presence of these plaques in human burials may have marked out certain social distinctions among people in death. Most are made of gold, but some are made of silver. Their varied details also suggest a possible marker of difference. Central cut-outs of various shapes (hourglass, diamond, etc.) may be present, embossed designs may feature, and their general shapes may be hexagonal, elliptical, or more circular (see A. González 1992, pls. 1-2 for an array of illustrated plaques). The full effects of these distinctions on people, in death or in life, are still uncertain. Of course, the plaques also may have had an effect on the metalworkers who crafted them and who may have interacted with other metalworking communities over long distances, sharing designs and techniques.


No direct evidence of metallurgical production has been found associated with Condorhuasi contexts. Still, archaeologists identified such evidence at sites of the Alamito tradition, which bears some material affiliation with Condorhuasi, the two being relatively contemporaneous. The investigators encountered rocks covered with soot, ceramic tubes, stone instruments that could be used for hammering, slags (by-products of smelting), and pits in the ground that may have served as furnaces (L. González 2004, 175-79). No oval plaques, however, have been found associated with Alamito contexts, leaving the question open of where specifically the plaques were fabricated.


Nevertheless, the plaques and the people who crafted them may have inspired other examples of metalwork in Northwest Argentina. A. González (1992, 205) views them as a possible precursor to later metal objects especially in their design motifs. For example, the human faces in the embossed designs of some plaques reveal similarities to those that appear on the circular plaques fabricated between A.D. 900 and A.D. 1400.[4] It appears that metalworkers experimented with the form of the present example, duplicating it to create ornaments that show the plaque connected to its mirror image. They also created plaques that are half of the shape of the present one (see A. González 1992, pl. 55.9 for more information on these formal relationships).[5]


The plaque-making practices and general material production of the Condorhuasi period became embedded in the Aguada tradition, which shows more cohesive integration of materials across the wider region. Studies of sites in the Campo de Pucará reveal that the transition between Condorhuasi and Aguada also involved transformation in agricultural practices. There was more focus on the cultivation of diverse forms of maize rather than on potato, which was of greater interest in earlier periods (Nuñez and Tartusi 2002). While plaques like the present one may be precursors of other metals related to Condorhuasi or later traditions, they still can be evaluated in their own contexts. In hidden and visible ways, they acted as markers of difference and as emblems of shared practice. The plaques distinguished people through their presence in burial attire and the variation in their appearance, but they also connected metalworkers and wider communities through their fabrication and distribution across Northwest Argentina, Northern Chile, and the Tiwanaku region.


Bryan Cockrell, Curatorial Fellow, Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, 2018


Related objects: 64.228.619, 1979.206.1006, 2015.598, 2016.734.6, 2016.734.8


[1] A. González (1979b, 143) notes that some documentation related to these excavations, which could be helpful for establishing more detail related to the provenance of the metal objects, is housed in the records of the Museo de La Plata.

[2] Both of the plaques detailed in this paragraph are illustrated in A. González 1979b, fig. 4a, b and A. González 1992, pl. 1.12, 21.

[3] Such interaction between communities in Northwest Argentina and the Tiwanaku region, centered on the southern edge of the Titicaca Basin, is also evident in later periods. For example, the Aguada bronze plaques (such as 1979.206.1006) have been found in both regions.

[4] A. González (1992, 205) suggests that the hourglass shape or the triangular shapes that appear as the cut-outs on some of these plaques could imply the outlines of human faces.

[5] The metalworkers do not appear to have literally joined two plaques or cut plaques in half, but experimented with the form conceptually.


Published references


Jones, Julie, and Heidi King. "Gold of the Americas." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 59, no. 4 (2002): 30.


Further reading


González, Alberto Rex. "La metalurgia precolombina del NOA: Secuencia histórica y proceso cultural." In Actas jornadas del noroeste, 88-136. Buenos Aires: Universidad del Salvador, 1979a.


———. "Pre-Columbian Metallurgy of Northwest Argentina: Historical Development and Cultural Process." In Pre-Columbian Metallurgy of South America, edited by Elizabeth P. Benson, 133-202. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1979b.


———. Las placas metálicas de los Andes del sur. Mainz Am Rhein: Verlag Philipp Von Zabern, 1992.


González, Luis R. Bronces sin nombre. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Fundación Ceppa, 2004.


Nuñez Regueiro, Víctor A., and Marta R. A. Tartusi. "Aguada y el proceso de integración regional." Estudios atacameños 24 (2002): 9-19.