Collection record · Small worlds
Ornament from Sitio Conte: Animal Pendant(?)
The collection record classifies this work as jewelry. It is dated c. 400–900. Recorded culture or place: Panama, Conte style, 5th - 10th century.
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A closer look at the details.
- Museum title
- Ornament from Sitio Conte: Animal Pendant(?)
- Date
- c. 400–900
- Culture / origin
- Panama, Conte style, 5th - 10th century
- Materials and technique
- manatee bone
- Dimensions
- Overall: 4.3 x 5.5 cm (1 11/16 x 2 3/16 in.)
- Artist / maker
- Not specified by the museum
- Museum
- The Cleveland Museum of Art
- Accession number
- 1951.318
FROM THE MUSEUM
In the museum’s words
The following description is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art’s original English record.
Harvard archaeologists excavated the eight ornaments in this case 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 the large chest plaque (no. 2) and the rod-shaped ear ornament (no. 3) shown here. The creature on the chest plaque, found close to the chief’s body, has reptile claws and perhaps the head crest of an iguana. Its meaning is unknown but perhaps, as in later periods, reptilian imagery and the warm gleam of gold linked rulers with the sun’s creative force.
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Text and image sources
The Cleveland Museum of Art · John L. Severance Fund · CC0
The summary is based on public collection data. Refer to the museum’s latest record for the title, date and attribution.
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