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Andean Value Systems and the
Development of Prehistoric Metallurgy
HEATHER LECHTMAN
Ms. LECHTMAN is professor of archaeology and ancient technology at MIT where she
holds a joint appointment in the Anthropology-Archaeology Section and the Depart
ment of Materials Science and Engineering. She is also director of the interinstitutiona
Center for Materials Research in Archaeology and Ethnology. Portions of this articl
were read at the 1978 meeting of the Society for the History of Technology, in th
session on "Metals in History," organized as a symposium honoring Cyril Stanley Smith
The present article is dedicated to Prof. Smith.
? 1984 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved.
0040-165X/84/2501-0002$01.00
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2 Heather Lechtman
and the Middle East, and a great depth of time, spanning the Bro
Age [ca. 3000-1200 B.C.] and Iron Age [ca. 1200 B.C.-A.D. 300].)
In Europe and in the Near East, both in the hand-to-hand comb
of the foot soldier and in equestrian battle, the effectivenes
weapons was based largely on their piercing and cutting acti
Knives, daggers, long and short swords, lance heads, spears, javeli
and battle-axes of bronze and later of iron became the new arsenal,
replacing stone, wood, and bone weapons that could not compare in
strength and durability. The manufacture of such offensive weapons
was accompanied by the equally important production of their defen-
sive counterparts, namely, body armor, some of the finest examples of
which-such as the 7th-century-B.c. Cretan bronze helmets, corselets,
and mitrai in the Norbert Schimmel collection-are often exhibited
today in museums of art. Iron armor scales have been found that date
to the 11th century B.C., accompanying the early use of iron for of-
fensive weaponry in the Near East and the Aegean.
Although few examples remain of metal-rimmed wheels from
chariots, wagons, carts, and other such vehicles, it is clear that the
availability of bronze, and more especially of iron, for the manufac-
ture of animal-drawn wheeled conveyances had a profound effect on
long-distance travel and the movement of goods. In Europe during
the period between 700 and 400 B.C., most weapons and tools of
bronze disappeared and were replaced by iron. Nevertheless, iron was
still an "expensive" metal. Many of the iron artifacts excavated from
this period come from graves of the wealthy. Among these items are
iron fittings of princely chariots: tires and nails, nave fittings, clamps,
and wheel pegs. By the end of the 5th century B.C., however, complex
bridge bits and wheel pegs for chariots were much more common.1 By
Roman times, the effectiveness of military legions in their movements
throughout Europe in particular was dependent on ease of transport
of the gear and provisions that accompanied them, much of it con-
veyed on wagons of wood and iron. Etruscan chariots, with bronze
fittings and iron-rimmed, spoked wheels, gave way to Roman models,
some of the most elegant of which-called by David Mitten the "Rolls
Royces" of Roman chariots-have recently been found near the vil-
lage of Siskovci in Bulgaria, ancient Thrace, with dates in the late 3d
or early 4th century A.D.2
'Jane C. Waldbaum, "The First Archaeological Appearance of Iron and the Transi-
tion to the Iron Age," in The Coming of the Age of Iron, ed. Theodore A. Wertime and
James D. Muhly (New Haven, Conn., 1980), pp. 69-98; Radomir Pleiner, "Early Iron
Metallurgy in Europe," ibid., pp. 375-415; Anthony M. Snodgrass, "Iron and Early
Metallurgy in the Mediterranean," ibid., pp. 335-374.
2David G. Mitten, personal communication; Ivan Venedikov, Trakiiskata Kolesnitsa,
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (Sofia, 1960).
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Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy 3
The agricultural use of both bronze and iron was important in the
Old World, although it was not primarily through the manufacture of
metal tools for farming that the technology of metal production re-
ceived its greatest impetus. The Early Iron Age (ca. 1200-900 B.C.)
was a period of transition away from the use of bronze for all weapons
and implements made of metal. We see a change from the exclusive
use of bronze for plowshares, axes, adzes, and hoes at 12th-
century-B.c. habitation sites in Cyprus and Palestine, for example, to
the preferred use of iron for those same agricultural tools, as well as
sickles, by the 10th century.3 Iron approached something akin to
common use throughout the eastern Mediterranean, both for
weapons and for tools, by the end of the 10th century B.C.
Turning to the Andes, we find that in neither the sphere of war nor
that of transport did metals play an extraordinary role. There was no
cavalry in South America prior to the introduction of the horse by the
invading Spaniards. All combat was on foot. Hand-to-hand fighting
involved the use of clubs of various kinds that depended on the
crushing force of the blow delivered rather than on cutting or pierc-
ing. Of equal importance, however, were long-distance weapons that
utilized missiles. Of these, spears and spear throwers, slings and shot
were crucial to Andean styles of battle.4
It is of interest to explore why metals had such a small impact on
Andean warfare, an otherwise obvious route for the development of
metal technologies. What were the competitors of metals on the field
of battle? It may come as a surprise that one of the chief competitors
was cloth, a material used in both offense and defense.
Around 1615-roughly eighty years after the Spanish conquest of
Tawantinsuyu, the Inca empire-Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, an
Andean Indian, wrote a 1,200-page "letter" to King Philip III of
Spain. His letter, Nueva cor6nica y buen gobierno, constitutes the first
codex written in the Andes.5 Its purpose was to inform the Spanish
king of the richness of Andean civilization as it was lived under the
Inca and before the Inca and to decry the villainies of the Spaniards
who had destroyed that great heritage. The letter is illustrated with
some 397 line drawings Poma executed to accompany his text. Poma
3Waldbaum.
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4 Heather Lechtman
depicts the first and greatest of all the Inca emperors, Pacha
Yupanqui (whose name meant "cataclysm"), in his role as soldier a
as conqueror (fig. 1). The weapon that Poma chose above all to den
Pachakuti as warrior-emperor is the sling. Slings made by weavin
braiding, and plaiting animal and vegetable fibers were among
most important weapons used throughout Andean prehistory (fig
They are, essentially, tools of cloth. Clearly, whether an adversar
were hit by shot of stone or metal could not have made any g
difference.
For body armor, soldiers wore quilted cotton tunics or else wound
layers of cloth around their bodies. Most of the Spanish soldiers
adopted quilted armor from the Inca, regarding it as superior to
European steel breastplates, at least in the humid sierra.6 Inca soldiers
hung round shields of hard chonta palm slats and cotton on their
backs. Their heads were protected by quilted or wooden helmets.
Instead of a shield made of wood and deerskin-such as the one
Pachakuti holds in Poma's drawing-soldiers sometimes wra
cloth around one arm to pad it against blows.
In his other hand, Pachakuti holds the second most widely
Andean weapon, the club. Inca clubs such as his usually had poin
star-shaped heads made of stone or bronze. Copper mace-he
similar shape had been used much earlier, however-for exa
those produced by the Mochica, a people who flourished alon
north coast of Peru from about A.D. 0 to 600 (see table 1). Agai
effectiveness of metals as contrasted with stone in delivering a c
ing blow was not of great significance.
Pottery was often a medium of sculpture through which cera
craftsmen portrayed a wide range of activities of Mochica life.
soldiers are shown, with their typical heavy clubs and padded o
and-cotton helmets (fig. 3). One of the most important and quite
scenes of Mochica battle is painted along the flaring inner li
pottery vase currently in the collection of the Museum fur Vo
kunde, Berlin (fig. 4). A group of Mochica warriors leads its cap
who are bound with ropes tied round their necks. The soldiers
the typical Mochica club, but the important feature of this vic
scene lies in the nakedness of the vanquished. Among And
peoples, cloth was undoubtedly the item of greatest value, im
with ritual significance, a symbol of rank, wealth, and power.
not only used as a tool of war, both offensively and defensively,
had a magico-military significance of its own, embodying the i
strength and force.7 An enemy stripped of his garments w
6Gosta Montell, Dress and Ornaments in Ancient Peru (Goteborg, 1929).
7John V. Murra, "Cloth and Its Functions in the Inca State," American Anthro
64 (August 1962): 710-28.
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ELI/1OVEI0 VELI4Q J
.5u( rJ .tti
. ...... y
fa L/04 f
FIG. 1.-Pachakuti Yupanqui, ninth Inca ruler and first emperor of Tawantinsuyu, the
Inca empire, is shown as a great warrior, wearing the earspools reserved for Inca
-oyalty and wielding his sling and star-headed mace. This is one of 397 line drawings
Guaman Poma de Ayala rendered to illustrate his 1,200-page letter to Philip III of
Spain in 1613. The original manuscript is in the Royal Library of Copenhagen, Den-
mark.
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6 Heather Lechtman
enemy without retaliatory capacity. His force and his energy lay
clothing.
Through ethnohistoric and archaeological study we have been able
to reconstruct the panoply of weapons as they existed in the Andean
highlands during Inca domination: the sling; the star-headed mace;
the spear with tip of fire-hardened wood or of bronze; the long,
sword-shaped double-edged club made of hard chonta palm wood;
and the halberd with bronze head.8 Given the style of warfare in the
Andes among both coastal and highland peoples, with weapons that
depended on strength at impact rather than on a cutting edge, metal
weapons did not confer great advantage either to the aggressor or to
the defender.
FIG. 2.-This pre-Columbian sling of wool, from a burial located on the south Peru-
vian coast, is typical of Late Nasca culture there (ca. A.D. 400-500). Less ornamented,
utilitarian slings of identical form were used by herders to control flocks of llama and
alpaca, and as offensive weapons in times of war. A slit in the cradle helped secure the
shot-a rock or occasionally a lead ball-in place. It was the custom to carry utilitarian
slings by wrapping them around one's head. Gradually they became more elaborately
designed, and some were for purely ceremonial use; the sling illustrated here was
probably never a functional tool. (Collection of the Peabody Museum, Harvard Univer-
sity; photograph by Hillel Burger.)
8John H. Rowe, "Inca Culture at the Time of the Spanish Conquest," in Handbook of
South American Indians, ed. Julian H. Steward, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin
143 (Washington, D.C., 1946), pp. 183-330.
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TABLE 1
1534
Colonial Period Spanish Empire
- 1500 - Late Horizon
1476 -
Inca Empire
Kingdom of Chimor
Late t
Intermediate
Period 3
3
- 1000 - -
Middle
Horizon Huar-i EmpireI
T
.
- 500 -
cu
A.D. Early ud
0
Intermediate C5
-0 -
B.C. Period
1
- 500 -
Paracas-Nasca
Tradition
u
Early Q
- 1000 - Horizon r-
3
-=c
-a
u
ed
JZ
- 1500 -
Initial
Period
- 2000 -
Preceramic
Period
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8 Heather Lechtman
FIG. 3.-A Mochica ceramic vessel in the form of a soldier, with his cone-shaped
heavy club, round slatted shield, and caplike helmet. An excellent example of such a
helmet, in the Museum fur Volkerkunde in Berlin, is constructed of a spiral wooden
slatted frame, tightly wound with cotton wool. This pottery rendition of a Mochica
warrior suggests a padded chest, but we do not know how early in Andean prehistory
padded armor was used. (Collection of the British Museum, London.)
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Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy 9
FIG. 4.-A painted scene of victors and vanquished on the flaring, inner lip of a
Mochica ceramic vessel. The Mochica soldiers, in full battle dress, lead their naked
prisoners, bound with ropes. The clubs shown here are identical with that held by the
kneeling soldier of the sculpted vessel in fig. 3. (Collection of the Museum fur Volker-
kunde, Berlin.)
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10 Heather Lechtman
FIG. 5.-A splendid earspool from the site of Loma Negra, on the far north coa
Peru. This example dates to the period when the Mochica held sway on the nort
(ca. A.D. 300-400). The raptorial bird, probably a harpy eagle, is fashioned from
silver and mechanically attached to a round, flat plaque of hammered sheet gold
bird has often been identified as a condor-I labeled it as such in Heather Lechtman,
Antonieta Erlij, and Edward J. Barry, Jr., "New Perspectives on Moche Metallurgy:
Techniques of Gilding Copper at Loma Negra, Northern Peru," American Antiquity 47
[January 1982]: 3-30-but this is probably an error. Donald Lathrap argues con-
vincingly that raptors such as this one, when depicted on Andean artifacts with mas-
sive tarsi, markedly recurved bills, and crests, probably represent the harpy eagle. See
Lathrap, "The Tropical Forest and the Cultural Context of Chavin," in Dumbarton Oaks
Conference on Chavin, ed. Elizabeth P. Benson [Washington, D.C., 1971], pp. 73-100.)
But the rear disk of that same plaque as well as the cylindrical spool that passes through
the ear lobe (not visible here) are made of tumbaga, a copper-gold alloy containing only
10 percent gold. The golden surfaces of the rear disk and the cylinder were achieved
through depletion gilding. (Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Michael C.
Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979; photograph
by Thomas A. Brown.)
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Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy 11
FiG;. 6.-Elaborate Mochica nose ring of gold and plated silver from the site of Loma
Negra, on the far north coast of Peru. Originally, round gold sequins dangled from the
earspools and from the broad horizontal headband, as they still do in a few areas at the
upper extremities of the headdress. The crescent ornament that dangles from the
nose of this impressive figure is made of sheet silver, now heavily tarnished. But the
other silvered areas-at the collar, on the earspools, in the headdress-are thin films of
silver which have been deposited onto the gold through a mechanism we have not yet
determined. (Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Michael C.
Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979.)
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12 Heather Lechtman
FIG. 7.-This is the largest golden mummy mask of Chim6 origin extant, measuring
29 inches wide by 16 inches high. Originally some of its surfaces were painted with r
cinnabar, traces of which remain, and the holes in the eyes, the ears and earspools, an
along the bottom edge of the mask indicate that other decorations-such as plaques
copper, precious stones, or fibers-were attached when the mummy bundle was i
terred. In spite of its lushly golden color, the mask is not made of gold but of a terna
copper-silver-gold alloy (12 percent Cu, 49 percent Ag, 39 percent Au). Once ham
mered to shape, the surfaces of the mask were treated chemically to enrich them in gold
through processes known as depletion gilding. (Collection of the Metropolitan Museu
of Art, New York, Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson
Rockefeller, 1979.)
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Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy 13
extremely rich graves have been excavated at the south coast site of
Paracas. The mummy bundles, not all of which have been un-
wrapped, have yielded some of the finest cloth preserved from the
prehistoric New World. Characteristic of these textiles are large,
magnificent embroidered mantles that formed part of the mummy
wrappings of high-status individuals of Paracas. A particularly fine
mantle in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts of Boston dis-
plays, in many-colored embroidery, masked and costumed cult
figures in the form of birds, each holding a trophy head in one hand,
two heads displayed on its chest, and two on its wings (fig. 8). The Ic
River valley on the south Peruvian coast, not far from Paracas an
Nasca, has yielded pairs of miniature gold trophy heads-each only 1
or 2 centimeters in height-that probably belong to a somewhat later
Nasca version of related cult practice. They are compelling "charms";
their monumentality, despite their small size, is extraordinary (fig. 9)
*e *e *
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14 Heather Lechtman
I M: o ^^^'sgip^ y :I
FI(;. 9.-A pair of hollow gold trophy heads of Nasca style, slightly
centimeters high, from a grave in the Ica Valley on the Peruvian south co
is composed of nineteen individual pieces of sheet gold, hammered
soldered together to produce the final form. These are metallurgical as w
tours de force, despite their small size. They are currently in a private co
United States.
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Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy 15
of metallic gold and silver. It was important that metal objects have
the appearance of gold and silver-their colors and their
reflectivity-even if they incorporated very little of these precious
metals in their structure. In fact, a large proportion of the gold- and
silver-looking objects we have from the Andes are not made of the
pure metals. Many-such as the mummy mask (fig. 7) and the eagle
earspool (fig. 5)-contain relatively small amounts of gold or of silver.
The social arena in which metallurgy received its greatest stimulus
in the Andes was the arena dominated by status and political display.
An underlying cultural value system that appears to have strongly
influenced the visual manifestation of status and power was a color
symbolism oriented around the colors of silver and of gold. The most
innovative and interesting aspects of Andean metallurgy arose from
attempts by Andean metalsmiths to produce metallic gold and metal-
lic silver surfaces on metal objects that were made of neither metal.
These efforts resulted in the purposeful manufacture of binary and
ternary alloys of copper, silver, and gold, and in a remarkable set of
metallurgical and electrochemical procedures for gilding and silver-
ing objects made of copper.
On the basis of the relatively small remaining corpus of metal ob-
jects of pre-Columbian date assigned to the Mochica culture, it has
often been claimed, and rightly so, that the Moche peoples were
among the most sophisticated of Andean metalworkers and that their
products in metal were unequaled by those of the cultures that suc-
ceeded them, including the Inca. The discovery in the late 1960s of a
large group of metal objects of Mochica style in the far north of Peru,
at a site called Loma Negra near the Ecuadorean border, was of great
importance, for it added substantially to the number of known objects
either made or profoundly influenced by the Moche craftsmen.10 The
majority of these objects are made of hammered sheet copper, indi-
vidual, shaped pieces of which were often joined to produce a three-
dimensional form (fig. 10). These artifacts are entirely covered with
green corrosion products of copper that formed during burial, but
originally their outside surfaces-and occasionally their inside sur-
faces also-were covered with extremely thin coatings of gold or
silver. Such gilt or silvered surfaces can occasionally be seen when the
green mineral layers are removed, revealing surface plating beneath.
Thus, in their original condition, the objects appeared to be made of
gold or silver.
10A more detailed discussion of Mochica metallurgy as practiced at Loma Negra can
be found in Heather Lechtman, "A Pre-Columbian Technique for Electrochemical
Replacement Plating of Gold and Silver on Objects of Copper," Journal of Metals 31
(December 1979): 154-60, and in Lechtman et al.
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16 Heather Lechtman
Studies of the gold and silver surface coatings on the Loma Neg
objects, carried out at MIT's Laboratory for Research on
chaeological Materials, proved difficult. The coatings are so th
measuring 0.5-2 microns, that they often were not visible in cross
tion at a magnification of 500. After many metallographic exami
tions of small samples removed from the objects, we came to three
clusions: (1) that the metal coatings on any one object are of a
tively uniform thickness and cover all surfaces, including the of
paper-thin edges of the object; (2) that there is a solid-state diffu
zone between the gold and the copper indicating that, at some stag
the coating process, heat was applied; and (3) that there is no evid
of mercury gilding, the use of gold leaf or foil, or the flushing-o
molten gold on any of the objects.
The most impressive characteristic of these coatings is their
treme thinness and evenness. They look, indeed, very much
modern electrodeposits, which they could not possibly be. Howev
all of the features of the coatings could have been the result of s
form of electrochemical replacement. After our experiments
vinced us that the Loma Negra objects were not gilt by immersion
bath of molten gold or gilt through any sweat welding or Sheffi
a_ a
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Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy 17
plating type of process, and after mercury gilding was definitely ruled
out, we attempted to reproduce the gross characteristics and the
microstructures of these coatings using systems of electrochemical
deposition that might have been available to ancient Andean metal-
workers-that is, to deposit gold or silver onto copper without the use
of modern chemicals, such as cyanide or aqua regia for dissolving the
gold, and without the use of an external source of current.
We have been successful in dissolving gold and silver in mixtures of
corrosive minerals which were available to Andean metalworkers and
which our earlier studies had shown were frequently used by them.
The simplest and most effective method we have used for putting
gold into solution consists of heating it gently for two to five days in an
aqueous solution of equal parts of common salt (NaCI), potassium
nitrate (KN03), and potassium aluminum sulfate (KAl[S04]2-
12H20). This solution contains inter alia the same ions as are present
in aqua regia to dissolve the gold in the form of trivalent ions.
Chloroauric acid, H(AuC14) ? 3H20, would crystallize from the solu-
tion.
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18 Heather Lechtman
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Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy 19
Bunsen flame for fifteen seconds, closely reproduced the Loma Negra
microstructures and formed a well-bonded golden surface (fig. 12).
The dissolution of gold in aqueous solutions of corrosive salts is not
a modern technique by any means. In fact, the gilding of iron and
steel armor was achieved by such methods in 18th-century Europe
and probably far earlier, as described by Godfrey Smith in his London
edition of The Laboratory or School of Arts (1720). In these procedures,
however, the original, aqueous gold solution was not used directly but
was heated to dryness, and the resulting gold chloride (AuCl3) dis-
solved from the complex mixture of salts by extraction with alcohol. It
is the alcoholic solution that has traditionally been used to plate cop-
per, iron, or steel with gold. By the 19th century, ether had replaced
the alcohol for extraction.
Our method is much more direct. Through the simple expedient of
neutralizing the aqueous gold solution with a common alkali such as
sodium carbonate or bicarbonate or calcium carbonate, we can use the
original solution, and no further extractions are required. Some such
straightforward procedure is what we suspect the Andean metal-
workers employed. Our previous studies had already demonstrated
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20 Heather Lechtman
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Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy 21
anisms should therefore be characterized by small anodic areas sur-
rounded by much larger cathodic ones. Such an anodic pit can be seen
in the photomicrograph in figure 11, a section through a sample of
gilt metal removed from the Loma Negra artifact in the form of a
seated man. These small pits, passing through and lying beneath the
gold, are anodic spots that have dissolved to drive the deposition of
gold onto adjacent smooth and uninterrupted cathodic areas.
Mochica metalsmiths were not limited solely to gilding and silvering
objects made of copper. Their desire to achieve culturally valued
color effects was played out in the alloy systems they developed or
invented, some of which have come to be considered the hallmark of
Andean prehistoric metallurgy.
The alloy systems developed during the Early Intermediate Period
are extremely important, for they continued to be used in later
periods, and some of them dominated the Andean metallurgical
scene up to the time of the Spanish invasion.12 The earliest of these
that has been identified archaeologically is the alloy of copper and
silver which the Mochica used over a wide range of silver concentra-
tion, from a few percent to over 30 percent, by weight, of silver. The
alloy became particularly popular both on the north coast, within
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22 Heather Lechtman
Chimu territory, and on the south coast, where it was used extens
by Chincha metalworkers during the Late Intermediate Period.
Copper-silver alloys have two properties that were important f
Andean craftsmen: their toughness when hammered and thei
velopment of enriched silver surfaces when hammered and anne
These alloys were used almost exclusively for the manufactu
objects made of sheet metal. Even with silver concentrations as l
about 5 percent by weight, the metal becomes hard but not brit
when hammered into thin sheet. The flexibility and toughne
copper-silver sheet metal allowed it to be shaped easily and,
formed, to retain its shape with far greater strength than pure s
or even sterling silver (7.5 percent copper). It was thus an excelle
material for metalworkers whose forte was the production of it
from elaborately hammered and joined pieces of metal sheet, obj
such as those illustrated in figures 5, 6, 9, and 10.
The surface-enrichment properties of copper-silver alloys are w
understood. Particularly for alloys containing about 10 percen
more of silver by weight, the repeated sequences of hammering,
nealing, and removing the surface copper oxide scale forme
annealing-sequences necessary to the fabrication of sheet m
from the alloy ingot-produce enriched silver surfaces on the res
ing sheet as the surface copper is removed. Thus metal made
such alloys, of mottled copper color when cast, is bright silver in
after having been hammered into sheet. The formation of silv
surfaces on objects hammered from these alloys is an inescap
consequence of annealing and of the attendant loss of surface cop
through oxidation. There is, essentially, no way of preventing it
Copper-silver alloys were used by the Mochica to produce objec
sheet metal because the sheet was hard and tough and because ob
made of such sheet looked like silver. In later periods, these a
continued to be used for the same reasons, and the well-known va
retratos, or effigy beakers, of Chimu and Chincha origin, said to
silver, are sometimes made of copper-silver alloy.
By far the most important alloy system developed during the E
Intermediate Period and often used by the Mochica in the manuf
ture of sheet metal objects was that of copper-gold. Copper and
when melted together form a complete solid solution series thro
out the entire range of possible alloy compositions, and objects v
ing widely in composition have been encountered. Silver is also o
found in these Andean alloys either because the gold used contai
some silver, as placer gold from the Andes often does, or because
was added to a copper-silver alloy. For example, an ingot of Moch
origin, excavated by Max Uhle in the Moche Valley and analyzed
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Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy 23
'3Clair C. Patterson, "Native Copper, Silver, and Gold Accessible to Early Metal-
lurgists," American Antiquity 36 (July 1971): 286-321; A. L. Kroeber, Peruvian Archeology
in 1942 (New York, 1944).
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24 Heather Lechtman
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Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy 25
MIT 356.
MIT 352
FS.
Au 100%
Ag 100%
FS Cu 80%
C . ? " . *j A
J X ;- ; . 'Ag 100%
:- ':I Cu 20% - 6
_:j~A . u Cu, /
Au, '
I : Ii 1
a b
Fi(;. 1
remo
illust
small
tions
as th
trave
surfa
evide
and s
samp
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26 Heather Lechtman
ingot causes the metal to become brittle with the possibility of fractur
if the hammering proceeds too far (fig. 16). When the metal reaches
this stage, the smith anneals it. The heavily worked metal grains re-
crystallize and regain their ability to be plastically deformed. Ham-
mering can then proceed until, once again, the metal becomes highly
stressed and brittle. Annealing serves to relax the crystalline structure
so that forging can proceed. At each anneal, however, some of th
copper atoms in the near vicinity of the metal surface move to the
surface under the action of the heat and oxidize there, forming
// // Co01<1 rl - Cl&0
// / // //
// /
Aai?i~iii;?;liAi +A%.
ingot, containing Cu, Ag, and Au, is cold woked (hammeed at oom tempeatue) to
-ERV, YiN PE..E'~ o IL~IN G
in -efteted
i-educe lightand
its thickness t. annealed. At each anneal, a scale of copper oxide (Cu20) forms
on the sur-face. This is pickled off, and the foriging continues. Afteri many sequences of
hammer-ing, annealing, and pickling, the thin sheet has lost sufficient copper at its
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Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy 27
brown to black scale that covers the surface. This scale must be re-
moved before hammering can continue. Andean smiths could hav
used certain acid plant juices or stale urine to pickle off the copper
oxide scale quite easily. After many sequences of hammering, an
nealing, and pickling, the resulting thin metal sheet will have lost s
much surface copper that the surface becomes effectively enriched in
silver and gold through copper depletion. A mummy mask at thi
stage of manufacture would appear as if made of silver, since th
binary silver-gold alloy remaining at the surface is silvery white in
color.
But the mummy masks are brightly golden. Chimii smiths, ap-
proaching the task of gilding from the same point of view as that of
silvering, were faced with the problem of removing the silver in the
~4,
V~+A~ e Au- <
AA
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28 Heather Lechtman
surface silver-gold binary alloy in order to leave only the gold in sit
A modern chemist might use various cyanide solutions or distill
nitric acid to part silver from gold, but we can assume that suc
distilled acids were not available to Andean smiths. What they d
have at hand and apparently used, however, were combinations o
naturally occurring acid minerals-such as ferric sulfate an
sodium chloride (common table salt)-which, in an aqueous enviro
ment, effectively remove silver from a silver-gold alloy, leaving th
gold in place.
This set of procedures-which removes first copper, then silve
from the surface of a ternary alloy containing copper, silver, and gol
thereby gilding the surface-is known as depletion gilding and a
counts for the configuration of the electron microprobe concentratio
profiles of the cross section removed from the Metropolitan's mumm
mask. We cast an ingot with precisely the same ternary composition
the Metropolitan's mask and hammered it into thin sheet throug
many rounds of annealing and pickling. When we were through, ou
sheet looked like silver. We covered the sheet with aqueous pastes of
ferric sulfate and salt or ferric sulfate, salt, and iron oxide. These
were allowed to remain at room temperature for two days, when they
were removed and washed. The resulting sheet had a reddish-brown
color, the color of parted gold in finely divided, particulate form. But
when burnished or gently heated at about 300? C for half an hour, the
gold immediately became a rich, smooth, and shiny yellow color.
Nothing could be simpler!
Ferric sulfate is a highly corrosive substance, acting in solution
almost as a mixture of ferrous sulfate and sulfuric acid. Both copper
and silver are dissolved by it, the reaction (ignoring the detailed elec-
trochemistry of the ions) being Cu + Fe2+++ (S4--)3 -> Cu++S04-- +
2Fe++SO4--. A similar reaction occurs with silver. The presence of
Cl- ions from the salt addition would accelerate the reaction and
perhaps externally precipitate relatively insoluble AgCl. The action
ceases when all the Fe+++ ions have been reduced, though it would
continue through atmospheric oxidation. But more than electro-
chemistry is involved: physically the residual gold is left in situ in a
submicroscopically porous state that is easily made coherent by bur-
nishing or heating.
Depletion gilding, which relies on the removal from the surface of
an alloy of its baser metal constituents in order to leave the noblest
metal in place, was used effectively by the Chimd to gild sheet meta
objects that contained as little as 12 percent gold by weight, the
remainder of the alloy being principally copper with some silver.
The tumbaga alloys with their inherent gold enrichment properties
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Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy 29
swept through the Americas from Peru to Mexico and were in com-
mon use in that entire region when the Spaniards invaded Central
and South America in the 16th century. They constitute the most
significant contribution of the New World to the repertoire of alloy
systems developed among ancient societies. In the Central Andes,
copper-rich tumbagas continued to be used after the Early Inter-
mediate Period primarily to produce gold-colored objects of sheet
metal in contrast to their use in Colombia, the Isthmian area, and
Mexico, where they were employed primarily in castings.
* * *
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30 Heather Lechtman
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Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy 31
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32 Heather Lechtman
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Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy 33
20In thinking about the underlying similarities behind aspects of Andean prehistoric
metallurgical and cloth technologies, I have benefited greatly from discussions with two
scholars of Andean cloth production, William Conklin and Edward Franquemont.
21Regina Harrison, "Modes of Discourse: The Relacion de antigiiedades deste reyno del
Piru by Joan de Santacruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamaygua," in From Oral to Written
Expression: Native Andean Chronicles of the Early Colonial Period, ed. Rolena Adorno (Syra-
cuse, N.Y., 1982), pp. 65-99; Gerald Taylor, "Camay, camac, et camasca dans le manu-
scrit quechua de Huarochiri,"Journal de la Societe des Americanistes 63 (1974-76): 231-44.
221 am most grateful to the Andean ethnologist Tristan Platt for calling my attention
to the Harrison article (n. 21 above) and to the possible relevance of the concept camay
to the technology of essences. In a personal communication of June 1982, while discuss-
ing Andean metallurgy, Platt speculated that "the notion of a divine force 'animating' a
particula- object could be equivalent to a divine metal 'giving life' to an alloy."
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34 Heather Lechtman
ern Ecuador).23 For each of these two areas she describes the over
riding metallurgical-technological style, the political organization, and
the ideologies of the ruling elites of the societies in question, seekin
interpretations that correlate metallurgical traditions with the role o
political elites. Her discussion of Incaic metalworking includes no
only its bias toward gold or gold-appearance but its commitment to
long-standing Andean tradition of handling metal, a tradition based
on forging and joining pieces of metal to achieve three-dimensional
forms,24 as contrasted with the tradition of casting metal by the lost
wax method which was overwhelmingly the practice in the Inter
mediate Area. The Andean style she calls "architectural" in the sense
that objects were built or constructed from thin metal sheets. For th
ruling Inca elite, such constructions were often of gold or gold-
appearing metal:
In short, clothing, buildings, utensils, even (as effigies) people
and animals-all fundamental elements of the cultural setting in
which the nobility lived either symbolically or, to the extent
allowed by actual use of these golden goods, behaviorally-could
be built from sheets of gold and silver....
A simple and obvious message seems to be communicated by
such constructions. The Inca nobility apparently wished to be
construed as living in a world inherently composed of the qualities
of the celestial realm from which they were descended and of
which, therefore, they too were inherently a part. Celestial qual-
ities were expressed in the colors of gold and silver and pos-
sibly encapsulated in the composition of gilded tumbagas.... If
we work with Lechtman's suggestion that in Andean thought the
surface material or condition of something expressed its inherent
essence, then to cover or sheath a wall or object or person in
golden color or to entirely create an object from segments of
golden (or gilded tumbaga) sheets was simply to state that the
structure, object, or person internally contained, or was composed
of, golden (celestial) qualities. In other words, the realm of the
Inca nobility, including the nobility themselves and all that sur-
rounded them, was not just associated with celestial goldness but
was considered as inherently "golden" in essence, quality, and con-
cept by virtue of being composed or constructed of goldness.
In this interpretive context, then, Incaic golden objects are not
viewed simply as golden imitations of nature or as beautiful utili-
tarian or decorative items but as tangible expressions of the
2:IMary W. Helms, "Precious Metals and Politics: Style and Ideology in the Inter-
mediate Area and Peru,"Journal oJ Latin American Lore 7 (1981): 215-37.
2-I echtman, "The Central Andes-Metallurgy without Iron" (n. 14 above).
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Andean Value Systems and Prehistoric Metallurgy 35
political ideology legitimizing the superiority of the elite of the
Inca state.25
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36 Heather Lechtman
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