Cleveland Museum of Art

Ornament from Sitio Conte: Small Plaque

Date: c. 400–500
Medium: hammered gold
Culture: Panama, Conte style, 5th - 10th century
Department: Art of the Americas
Institution: Cleveland Museum of Art
Object ID: 131817

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 this 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.

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Provenance & credit

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Credit line: John L. Severance Fund
Provenance: Peabody Museum | Peabody Museum

Part of a LinkedCulture topic

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