Ornament Magazine

VOL38.1 2015

Ornament is the leading magazine celebrating wearable art. Explore jewelry, fashion, beads; contemporary, ancient and ethnographic.

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48 ORNAMENT 38.1.2015 Intact Ancient Jewelry Precolumbian ingenuity S trung ancient jewelry is rarely found intact, unless climatic conditions or well-protected burials prevent the rotting of the organic fibers used in assembling the jewelry. Two geographic regions, parts of the Middle East, especially Egypt, and the arid north coast of Peru are known to yield finds of intact jewelry, as well as the prehistoric American Southwest and northern Mexico (Liu 2008). The most spectacular of such finds is the faience broadcollar of Wah (Liu 2005: 57) but much intact precolumbian jewelry, especially necklaces or their fragments (Gessler 1988; Liu 2008) come from the north coast of Peru. In this article, I show some amazing Wari jewelry, that may date to circa A.D. 700 - 1000, which is strung in ways not usually employed in assembling beads/ components into necklaces and are among the most intact precolumbian jewelry I have seen. In fact, the ingenious ways employed by ancient Peruvians to string jewelry may very well make us re-think how necklace components can be used, not-considered by either modern necklace designers nor archaeologists. Peruvian precolumbian jewelry can be massive, as in the beaded pectorals of Moche royalty at Sipan, measuring sixty centimeters wide (Donnan 1993), or can have large individual elements, as in the inlaid shell components of INTACT PRECOLUMBIAN NORTH COAST PERUVIAN NECKLACE AND BRACELETS of mother-of-pearl (MOP) components, mostly likely strung on cotton cord; probably of middle horizon Wari influence, circa A.D. 700 - 1000. Intact bracelets are 1.7 centimeters wide, while the necklace, in four fragments, is 28.4 centimeters wide as laid out for photography. The MOP elements are probably from Pacific black-lipped oysters that occur off Ecuador and thus are an imported luxury material. Ex-Jean Lions collection, obtained before 1980; Robert Duff collection since 2007. Photographs by Robert K. Liu/Ornament. ancient jewelry Robert K. Liu Tiahuanaco-Wari necklaces (Gessler 1988: 50-51). However, most intact jewelry fragments I have seen are modest in scale and not complex, except possibly in their construction, sometimes involving braiding (Gessler 1988). The fragments of the Wari influenced necklace differ in both the delicacy of their components and in the intricacy of how these elements were assembled with cord. Just like how ancient Peruvian beaders at Chancay employed simple disk beads as spacers, as well as real spacers with multiple perforations (Liu 2008: 52), I do not think contemporary necklace designers, with our linear thinking, would have been able to put together this necklace like their original stringers did some one thousand to thirteen hundred years ago, using the ingenuity of stringing via grooves or knotting together thin elements into broader masses. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank Robert Duff for the opportunity to study and photograph this batch of north coast Peruvian jewelry, as well as others in the past. SUGGESTED READING Donnan, C.B. 1993 "Royal Tombs of Sipan. Moche Ornaments of Sipan." Ornament 17 (1): 44-49, 115. Gessler, T. 1988 "Precolumbian Jewelry from Peru." Ornament 11 (3): 50-55. Liu, R. K. 2005 "Tutankhamun's Broadcollars. Unusual and Otherwise." Ornament 29 (1): 56-59. —2008 "Ancient Shell Ornaments of the Americas." Ornament 31 (4): 50-55. —2009 "Set in Stone. Prehistoric Southwest Ornaments." Ornament 33 (2): 34-39. —2011 "Prehistoric Southwest Jewelry and Their Sites." Ornament 34 (4): 64-69.

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