Like drinking vessels made with a simpler form (cats 132–134), face beakers have a flat base and flaring sides. The kero shape was known also in the Huari and Inca cultures, and indeed evolved separately in many civilisations around the world. But in ancient Peru their use was less domestic: ‘The beakers may have been used during the lifetime of the owner and in funerary rituals before interment.’¹ Complex ceremonial etiquette was followed in drinking rites and religious libations; pairs of cups were often used to reinforce the roles of giver and receiver. The vessels were then buried with the dead dignitary, sometimes in large numbers.

To create a beaker, the smith hammered a gold ingot into an extremely thin sheet of metal, approximating the surface area required for the finished product. Fine-grained hammer stones and stone anvils, with or without pieces of hide either side of the metal, were used, and the types of stone included haematite and green porphyry. The form of the beaker and its repoussé ornamentation were created by hammering the sheet around a wooden template.² Sometimes the template was used several times, demonstrated by the many identical beakers found in some Sicán burials.

The inverted head has a ‘broad frontal repoussé face with comma-shaped eyes and a straight nose with flaring nostrils’³ 
and a feline-fanged mouth. The person, almost certainly an effigy of a Sicán deity,⁴ wears a band headdress and ear ornaments, and the back bears ‘vertical lines (probably in order to represent hair or the weave of a fabric) along which there are two diagonal bands with chevron motifs which intersect to form a braid-like circle’.⁵ The headdress band was echoed around the rim, either representing a pectoral ornament or repeated for aesthetic reasons, or both. The beaker’s face was only upright when the vessel was upside down, that is, useless in terms of containing liquids. Perhaps the purpose was to mark an end to the ceremony.

Christine Dixon

1. Heidi King, cat. 154, in Kathleen Berrin (ed.), The spirit of ancient Peru: Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera, New York: Thames and Hudson 1997, p. 203.

2. Andrew Fyfe, catalogue entry for National Gallery of Australia 1986.698, October 2003.

3. King, p. 203

4. Luisa Maria Vetter Parodi, ‘Beverages, music and libations in pre-Columbian rituals: Cups as guiding elements’, in Paloma Carcedo de Mufarech (ed.), Inca: Origins and mysteries of the civilisation of gold, Venice: Marsilio 2010, p. 150.

5. Vetter, cat. 165, in Carcedo (ed.), p. 226.

Like drinking vessels made with a simpler form (cats 132–134), face beakers have a flat base and flaring sides. The kero shape was known also in the Huari and Inca cultures, and indeed evolved separately in many civilisations around the world. But in ancient Peru their use was less domestic: ‘The beakers may have been used during the lifetime of the owner and in funerary rituals before interment.’¹ Complex ceremonial etiquette was followed in drinking rites and religious libations; pairs of cups were often used to reinforce the roles of giver and receiver. The vessels were then buried with the dead dignitary, sometimes in large numbers.

To create a beaker, the smith hammered a gold ingot into an extremely thin sheet of metal, approximating the surface area required for the finished product. Fine-grained hammer stones and stone anvils, with or without pieces of hide either side of the metal, were used, and the types of stone included haematite and green porphyry. The form of the beaker and its repoussé ornamentation were created by hammering the sheet around a wooden template.² Sometimes the template was used several times, demonstrated by the many identical beakers found in some Sicán burials.

The inverted head has a ‘broad frontal repoussé face with comma-shaped eyes and a straight nose with flaring nostrils’³ 
and a feline-fanged mouth. The person, almost certainly an effigy of a Sicán deity,⁴ wears a band headdress and ear ornaments, and the back bears ‘vertical lines (probably in order to represent hair or the weave of a fabric) along which there are two diagonal bands with chevron motifs which intersect to form a braid-like circle’.⁵ The headdress band was echoed around the rim, either representing a pectoral ornament or repeated for aesthetic reasons, or both. The beaker’s face was only upright when the vessel was upside down, that is, useless in terms of containing liquids. Perhaps the purpose was to mark an end to the ceremony.

Christine Dixon

1. Heidi King, cat. 154, in Kathleen Berrin (ed.), The spirit of ancient Peru: Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera, New York: Thames and Hudson 1997, p. 203.

2. Andrew Fyfe, catalogue entry for National Gallery of Australia 1986.698, October 2003.

3. King, p. 203

4. Luisa Maria Vetter Parodi, ‘Beverages, music and libations in pre-Columbian rituals: Cups as guiding elements’, in Paloma Carcedo de Mufarech (ed.), Inca: Origins and mysteries of the civilisation of gold, Venice: Marsilio 2010, p. 150.

5. Vetter, cat. 165, in Carcedo (ed.), p. 226.