Lambayeque Silver Beakers: Further Considerations

Abstract

Two silver beakers now in the collection of the Denver Art Museum bear some of the most complex iconography known from the ancient Andes. The vessels are stylistically associated with Lambayeque, a culture that at its greatest extent thrived in the coastal valleys between Chicama and Piura from the 8th–14th centuries. Based on recent technical and iconographic studies of the vessels, this paper sheds light on metalworking, ceremonial behavior, cosmology, and funerary practices in the centuries between the fall of the earlier Moche culture and the rise of the Chimú state.