Pectoral (Chest Plaque)

Cleveland Museum of Art

Pectoral (Chest Plaque)

Date
400–900
Medium
gold alloy
Culture
Intermediate Region, Panama, Conte style, 5th-10th Century
Department
Art of the Americas
Institution
Cleveland Museum of Art
Object ID
130039

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

Harvard archaeologists excavated this and seven other ornaments from several burials at Sitio Conte, a cemetery famous for its lavish graves of powerful chieftains. The young man buried in Grave 26 was such a chief. His status was stunningly memorialized by 21 human companions and 475 objects, many of them personal ornaments made of gold, including a large chest plaque and a rod-shaped ear ornament. The creature on the chest plaque, found close to the chief’s body, has reptile claws and perhaps the head crest of an iguana. Its meaning is unknown but perhaps, as in later periods, reptilian imagery and the warm gleam of gold linked rulers with the sun’s creative force. Panning for gold was viewed as a sacred activity among the ancient inhabitants of Costa Rica and Panama.

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Provenance & credit

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Credit line
Gift of Mrs. R. Henry Norweb, Mrs. Albert S. Ingalls, with additions from the John L. Severance Fund
Provenance
1930s-1952: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., to John Wise Ltd. Galleries, New York, NY | 1952: (John Wise Ltd. Galleries, New York, NY, 1952, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) | 1952-present: The Cleveland Museum of Art

Part of a LinkedCulture topic

  • Representative object from the topic Pre-Columbian Body Adornment
    Pre-Columbian Body Adornment

    These objects are personal ornaments and jewelry worn by ancient Mesoamerican and Andean cultures, including ear ornaments, nose ornaments, plaques, and costume decorations made from precious metals, stone, shell, and ce

    359 objects from 4 institutions

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