New perspectives on Moche metallurgy: techniques of gilding copper at Loma Negra, Northern Perú.
Heather Lechtman
- Estados Unidos-US : Society for American Archaeology, 1982.
- páginas 3-30: ilustraciones en blanco y negro.
- Trimestral
- vol.47; n.1 (Jan.1982)
- American Antiquity. Journal of the Society for American Archaeology ; no.1 .
- Soociety for American Archaeology. .
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, the 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. Metallurigcal 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 anto 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.