Pre-Colombian Metallurgy at the Middle Horizon (600–1000 CE) Site of Castllo de Huarmey, Huarmey Valley, Peru

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The site of Castillo de Huarmey, located on the north coast of Peru and dated to the Middle Horizon period (650-1050 CE), is widely known for an important discovery of the first undisturbed Wari royal mausoleum. With multiple burials, rich ceremonial offerings, and a wealth of grave goods, the assemblage embraces a diversity of artistic, iconographic, and technological craft traditions which represent a plethora of Central Andean cultural backgrounds. In 2018 a new primary burial context was discovered which contained the preserved remains of a young male individual with an intriguing set of copper and bronze objects, an argentiferous lead ingot, and metallurgical byproducts such as slag and speiss. The following poster presents an archaeometric and archaeological comparison of the metallurgical materials discovered in both this newly discovered tomb and the royal mausoleum at Castillo de Huarmey. The results indicate that associated craft artisans employed a variety of technological strategies to produce an eclectic mix of copper, arsenic bronze, silver, and gold objects with differing chemical compositions and material properties. These results shed further light on early Middle Horizon metallurgical technologies within the Central Andes, including early arsenic bronze technologies on the North Coast of Peru.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25722