Cleveland Museum of Art

Ear Spool

Date

c. 400–900

Medium

hammered gold

Culture

Panama, Conte style, 5th - 10th century

Department

Art of the Americas

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Harvard archaeologists excavated these 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.

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