Nose Ornament with Shrimp 6th–7th century Moche (Loma Negra) This stunning gold and silver nose ornament featuring two shrimp is an excellent example of the metal-working skills of Moche artists. Centuries before the rise of the Incas, the Moche thrived on Peru’s North Coast between 200–850, founding impressive regional centers from the Nepeña River Valley in the south to perhaps as far north as the Piura River, near the modern border with Ecuador. They developed extensive irrigation systems that transformed the coastal deserts into rich farmlands and drew upon the abundant maritime resou

Nose Ornament with Shrimp 6th–7th century Moche (Loma Negra) This stunning gold and silver nose ornament featuring two shrimp is an excellent example of the metal-working skills of Moche artists. Centuries before the rise of the Incas, the Moche thrived on Peru’s North Coast between 200–850, founding impressive regional centers from the Nepeña River Valley in the south to perhaps as far north as the Piura River, near the modern border with Ecuador. They developed extensive irrigation systems that transformed the coastal deserts into rich farmlands and drew upon the abundant maritime resources of the Pacific Ocean’s Humboldt Current. They also built some of the largest adobe structures known in the ancient Americas, many of them richly adorned with polychrome murals and reliefs. Although the Moche likely never formed a single centralized political entity, they shared unifying cultural traits such as religious practices (Donnan 2010).Moche metallurgists were unrivaled in ancient Peru and this example illustrates their skills. Here they combined two precious metals, gold and silver, to produce an object of great aesthetic quality. The two shrimp, made of gold sheet, were attached to the silver crescent (with squared off points) by small tabs. The contrast between the silver and gold highlights the masterful working of the two facing shrimp. Their bodies, rendered in repoussé, were depicted in considerable detail, from their eyes—here indicated by green stones—to their tail fans, which extend free above the silver crescent. The animal represented is probably a freshwater shrimp, Cryphiops caementarius, which can grow to roughly seven inches in length, and is still found in the rivers of Peru. This species would have been much easier to harvest than maritime shrimp. The symbolic meaning of the shrimp in the context of this nose ornament, however, is unknown. As there was no tradition of writing in South America prior to the arrival of Europeans in the

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