Pectoral (Chest Plaque)
Unknown Artist
400–900
Medium
gold alloy
Dimensions
25.1 × 26.7 cm
Classification
Metalwork
Department
Art of the Americas
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Gift of Mrs. R. Henry Norweb, Mrs. Albert S. Ingalls, with additions from the John L. Severance Fund
Accession Number
1952.459
About this artwork
Harvard archaeologists excavated this 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. The creature on the chest plaque, found close to the chief’s body, has reptile claws and perhaps ...