Cleveland Museum of Art

Ear Rod

Date

c. 700–900

Medium

hammered gold, with greenstone

Culture

Panama, Conte style, 5th - 10th century

Department

Art of the Americas

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

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 the rod-shaped ear ornament shown here.

The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.