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New Perspectives on Moche Metallurgy: Techniques of Gilding Copper at Loma Negra, Northern Peru

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Heather Lechtman ,
Antonieta Erlij  and
Edward J. Barry Jr.
Heather Lechtman
Affiliation:
Laboratory for Research on Archaeological Materials, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Room 8-138, Cambridge, MA 02139
Antonieta Erlij
Affiliation:
Technical assistants in the MIT Laboratory between 1976 and 1978 when this research was conducted.
Edward J. Barry Jr.
Affiliation:
Technical assistants in the MIT Laboratory between 1976 and 1978 when this research was conducted.
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Abstract

The metal objects found in 1969 at the north Peruvian site of Loma Negra, in the region of Cerro Vicús, form one of the largest and most important single groups of Moche metal artifacts known. Since the objects were looted from burials at the site, they are without context, seriously compounding the problems of their relative chronology within the Moche sequence and of their relations with Moche material from the coast farther to the south. Metallurgical studies of a group of gilt copper objects from Loma Negra have shown that the gilding was achieved by an electrochemical replacement plating process in which gold and silver are dissolved in an aqueous solution of corrosive minerals. The precious metals are then plated from solution onto the copper objects. Moche metal craftsmen can now be credited with having developed the two most sophisticated of Andean gilding procedures: depletion gilding and electrochemical replacement plating.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , January 1982 , pp. 3 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1982

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References

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