Nose ornament

The earliest examples of worked gold in the Americas, from the region that is now Peru, date to perhaps as early as the second millennium BCE. Most, if not all, of these early objects were personal ornaments designed to be worn on the head, face, and chest. Made from hammered gold sheet cut into desired shapes, some were further embellished with repoussé designs, achieved by working the sheet from behind.

The kingdoms of Peru’s northern coastal valleys were particularly assiduous in their acquisition and use of precious metals. This nose ornament, worn by attachment to the nasal septum, was made by metalsmiths of the Vicús culture, which thrived on Peru’s far north coast, near Piura and the modern border with Ecuador. There, accomplished metalsmiths excelled at creating ornaments using the repoussé technique, often featuring felines and birds. Here, the abstract creature may be a stylized feline or octopus. But unlike works created by artists in neighboring Moche communities that project a sense of domination and power, this image has a lyrical feeling. The circular shapes with center nubs may represent lucuma fruits, as illustrated in other ancient Peruvian artwork (see, for example, Metropolitan Museum of Art accession number 1978.412.205).

In the first millennium CE, nose ornaments became quite popular with the elite as indicated by the numbers of ornaments found in tombs and in depictions of high-status individuals seen on painted ceramics (Donnan and McClelland, 1999). The lustrous gold surface of this ornament is the result of the high percentage of elemental gold (71.3% vs silver 19.3% and copper 9.4%).

References and Further Reading

Ikehara, Hugo. "La colección vicús en el Museo Central." Revista Moneda 193 (2023), pp. 56-63.

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

Makowski, Krzysztof, Christopher B. Donnan, Ivan Amaro Bullon, Luis Jaime Castillo, Magdalena Diez Canseco, Otto Elespuro Revoredo, and Juan A. Murro Mena. “Vicús.” Colección Arte y Tesoros del Perú. Lima: Banco de Crédito, Peru, 1994.