Lea este ensayo en español: El trabajo del metal entre las comunidades andinas del primer milenio e.c.
Metals were greatly prized resources for the ancient Peruvians, esteemed for their importance in the cosmology of their communities. Metals such as gold, silver, copper, and their alloys were associated with the environment; they represented the colors, luminescence, and sounds found in nature and were assigned a corresponding symbolic value. In the Andean worldview, the world was organized around relationships between complementary opposites: male and female, day and night, sun and moon, and so on. Gold was associated with men, daylight, and the sun; silver with women, night, and the moon.
The geography of the Andes is characterized by great diversity and ordinary sensory experiences such as the sounds of warbling birds, falling leaves, and crawling animals caught the attention of ancient Peruvians. Artists reproduced some of these sounds by having different pieces of metal strike one another. The colors associated with sunrise, sunset, and the moon’s different phases inspired shimmering metal ornaments that embellished the attire of rulers or were exhibited in temples.
Native gold was first extracted—in the form of nuggets probably found in rivers—in the Andean region around 2100 BCE in the Titicaca Basin in the southern mountains of Peru. These nuggets were shaped through hammering into sheets. Around 1000 BCE metalworkers on the central coast of Peru were applying gold coatings to objects, a technique that involved attaching a sheet of gold to a copper core by hammering and the application of heat. Around 800 BCE metalworkers of the northern Peruvian mountains were making larger pieces in a wide variety of forms, using embossing, repoussé, and openwork to express a rich iconography of symbolically powerful animals such as felines, reptiles, and birds of prey ; . Tiny sheets of metal, also bearing diverse images, were attached with staples to some pieces to produce sound and shine with movement.
The period between 200 BCE and 600 CE saw the emergence of a number of highly complex societies in Peru: Vicús, Salinar, and Moche on the north coast; Recuay in the central highlands, and Nasca on the south coast. Artists from these societies introduced major technological changes in metalworking, with metalsmiths of the North Coast playing a pivotal role in perfecting a remarkable range of techniques.
Artists of the Salinar culture, which emerged between the regions of La Libertad and Lambayeque, made ornaments from thin sheets of gold. Some are comparatively plain ; others are exquisitely intricate, including nose ornaments ; . Such ornaments were suspended from the nasal septum, covering the lower face, and were reserved for high-status members of the community. Some nose ornaments were shaped into zoomorphic figures that often included soldered filigree ; .
The use of filigree or metal wire is also found on pieces discovered in the Piura Mountains in the northernmost reaches of Peru, where the style was known as Frías. Also made of gold, these objects are composed of a series of thin sheets soldered together; fine wires of the same metal were then soldered to the resulting form ; ; ; ; . These objects bear a strong resemblance to pieces from the Tolita-Tumaco and Zenú cultures in Ecuador and Colombia. Indeed, recent studies have shown that metalworkers from the north brought their technological know-how to the Piura region, where they made gold objects reflecting their native iconographic characteristics with local raw materials. Some Tolita-Tumaco nose ornaments featuring wires and hemispheres made by embossing ; are comparable to Salinar and Frías pieces, as are Zenú nose ornaments made with a false-filigree technique ; . True filigree is fashioned from thin wires that are joined mechanically or soldered, whereas false filigree is created using the lost-wax casting technique.
The Vicús culture flourished in the coastal valleys of the Piura region. Vicús metalworkers made nose ornaments out of thin sheets of gold decorated with embossed hemispheres to accentuate the outline of the piece, as we find in the nose ornament worn by this Tolita-Tumaco standing figure . Small pieces such as nose ornaments ; are well known, but metalworkers also made larger, thicker pieces such as pectorals , crowns , plaques , and war clubs out of copper sheet or copper alloys, many of them accompanied by mechanically joined pendants. By gilding the surfaces of their objects, Vicús artists made pieces crafted from a base metal core look like gold.
This gilding or silvering technique, which began with the Salinar, reached its pinnacle with Moche metalsmiths. They combined gold sheet and silver sheet, joined mechanically or soldered, to make objects that represented a cosmologically significant duality between male and female or the sun and moon. Metal objects of the Loma Negra style, from a Moche site or sites near Piura, are magnificent examples of this dynamic combination ; ; ; ; ; . Moche metalworkers achieved an impressive command of manufacturing and decoration techniques. Subject matter on Moche ceramics is also found on metal objects, but the latter medium enabled makers to create sounds, shimmering effects, and colors the former could not . Moche artists also embellished works with colorful semiprecious stones and shell (such as Spondylus), among other materials, to create eye-catching ornaments . Openwork, repoussé, and engraving were among the techniques Moche artists used with consummate skill to make intricate and symbolically charged objects.
The Recuay communities in the mountains of the Ancash region differed from their Moche neighbors on the coast in their use of casting to make objects. Large quantities of copper and gilded copper pins known as tupus (used to fasten mantles) have been identified as belonging to this culture ; . Lastly, the metalwork of the Nasca culture that flourished around Ica, on the south coast of Peru, is characterized by the use of hammered gold sheet cut to the desired shape and often decorated with details rendered in repoussé. Ornaments worked in the shape of disks, birds, feathers, and supernatural beings were stitched to textile garments or affixed to headdresses ; .
Around 600 CE, the Moche, Recuay, and Nasca communities began to feel the influence of the Wari, an Andean empire that had emerged in the Ayacucho region and whose cultural and technological impact would dominate the Central Andes in the following centuries. The Wari introduced a major innovation in the use of bronze—the alloying of copper and tin minerals from the altiplano in the south, and copper and arsenic minerals on the North Coast—to make more resilient objects for various purposes, including agriculture.
It is important to note that the critical breakthroughs in Andean metalworking all occurred in the first millennium CE. The Moche, in particular, were crucial to the evolution of metalworking, improving innovative techniques of their Salinar predecessors such as gilding and silvering where copper-gold, copper-silver, and copper-gold-silver alloys known as tumbaga were used to give objects with a mainly copper chemical composition the appearance of silver or gold. The techniques invented by the Moche in the first millennium CE continued to influence Andean societies, shaping metalworking practices for centuries to come.