Female Figurine 1400–1533 Inca This figurine is hollow and originally was comprised of five pieces of relatively pure silver sheet joined by metallurgical means. Similar to other Inca female figurines in terms of its appearance and design, it depicts a standing woman with hair pulled back and arms drawn to the chest. The figurine was likely deposited as an Inca offering, and may have been dressed in textiles fastened with tupus (pins), whether as part of the ritual practice of capac hucha, or as another form of Inca dedication of/to huacas, sacred beings that included points in the natural lan
Female Figurine 1400–1533 Inca This figurine is hollow and originally was comprised of five pieces of relatively pure silver sheet joined by metallurgical means. Similar to other Inca female figurines in terms of its appearance and design, it depicts a standing woman with hair pulled back and arms drawn to the chest. The figurine was likely deposited as an Inca offering, and may have been dressed in textiles fastened with tupus (pins), whether as part of the ritual practice of capac hucha, or as another form of Inca dedication of/to huacas, sacred beings that included points in the natural landscape (Bray 2009; Cruz 2007). These female anthropomorphic figurines may be fabricated in metal or in the shell Spondylus spp. One such figurine of Spondylus princeps was deposited in an Inca offering in Unit 16, Platform 1 of the Moche site of Huaca de la Luna, where it was wrapped in three separate textiles, an aksu, lliclla, and faja, tied with tupus, two of which are threaded on a cord from which Spondylus plaques hang (Rojas et al. 2012). While made of different materials, the metal and shell female anthropomorphic figurines tend to indicate the same bodily details in similar designs: textured hair pulled back into two tresses tied at their ends in a rectangular bar or tassel, open, almond-shaped eyes, nose, mouth, ears, breasts, hands drawn close to the chest, and vagina. Across this corpus of Inca anthropomorphic figurines in metal, there are usually three height groups (5-7 cm, 13-15 cm, 22-24 cm) (see McEwan 2015, 282, n. 15), and this figurine is in the middle height group. The five sheet components of this figurine are: the hair, the tassel at the end of the hair, the head, torso, and legs all as one piece, and the two individual feet that are now missing. Like and other Inca female figurines made of metal, the helmet-like hair section was placed over and soldered to the open top/back of the head during fabrication (see image 4, profile view). In this f
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