The band, embossed with circles, has 20 pendants of pairs of stylised birds, each with four danglers attached by rings. Such gold and silver ornaments and jewellery were worn in life by members of the ruling elite for lengthy ceremonies and festivals. As the objects generally had sharp edges, how did the nobles and priests bear the discomfort? The metal may not have touched the skin:

The crowns used by pre-Inca cultures (in fact, there are no extant specimens of crowns from the Inca culture) must have had an internal cloth or reed lining that functioned as a cap onto which the sheets of metal were attached.¹

After death, when they accompanied their owners to the grave, comfort did not matter, and so the diadems were worn into the afterlife sewn onto cloths. The dead were also accompanied by many items placed near the body.

Because the object was excavated in line with correct archaeological practice, much more information than usual is known about the burial cache:

The artefact was uncovered in 1992 by the Proyecto Arqueológico Sicán in deposit 1 of the eastern tomb at Huaca Loro, or Oro, at the Santuario Histórico de Pómac. This deposit was a veritable ‘treasure chest’ made of vegetable fibre matting and sheets of tumbaga. It contained 24 superimposed layers of gold, silver and tumbaga ceremonial ornaments, for a total of more than 70 main objects composed of sets of diadems, crowns, plumes, rattles, fans, headdresses in the form of tumi, disks, wooden arrows and other artefacts [see cats 108–111, 113, 115] … The objects, placed in the chest according to the strictest order, most probably constituted a sort of death dowry for the main personage and two young women who had been sacrificed to accompany him.²

Christine Dixon

1. Paloma Carcedo de Mufarech, ‘Metal in ancient Peruvian cultures’, in Paloma Carcedo de Mufarech (ed.), Inca: Origins and mysteries of the civilisation of gold, Venice: Marsilio 2010, p. 122.

2. Carcedo de Mufarech, cat. 261, in Carcedo de Mufarech (ed.), pp. 233–34.

The band, embossed with circles, has 20 pendants of pairs of stylised birds, each with four danglers attached by rings. Such gold and silver ornaments and jewellery were worn in life by members of the ruling elite for lengthy ceremonies and festivals. As the objects generally had sharp edges, how did the nobles and priests bear the discomfort? The metal may not have touched the skin:

The crowns used by pre-Inca cultures (in fact, there are no extant specimens of crowns from the Inca culture) must have had an internal cloth or reed lining that functioned as a cap onto which the sheets of metal were attached.¹

After death, when they accompanied their owners to the grave, comfort did not matter, and so the diadems were worn into the afterlife sewn onto cloths. The dead were also accompanied by many items placed near the body.

Because the object was excavated in line with correct archaeological practice, much more information than usual is known about the burial cache:

The artefact was uncovered in 1992 by the Proyecto Arqueológico Sicán in deposit 1 of the eastern tomb at Huaca Loro, or Oro, at the Santuario Histórico de Pómac. This deposit was a veritable ‘treasure chest’ made of vegetable fibre matting and sheets of tumbaga. It contained 24 superimposed layers of gold, silver and tumbaga ceremonial ornaments, for a total of more than 70 main objects composed of sets of diadems, crowns, plumes, rattles, fans, headdresses in the form of tumi, disks, wooden arrows and other artefacts [see cats 108–111, 113, 115] … The objects, placed in the chest according to the strictest order, most probably constituted a sort of death dowry for the main personage and two young women who had been sacrificed to accompany him.²

Christine Dixon

1. Paloma Carcedo de Mufarech, ‘Metal in ancient Peruvian cultures’, in Paloma Carcedo de Mufarech (ed.), Inca: Origins and mysteries of the civilisation of gold, Venice: Marsilio 2010, p. 122.

2. Carcedo de Mufarech, cat. 261, in Carcedo de Mufarech (ed.), pp. 233–34.