Beaker with rattle

This flared beaker likely once held ritual liquids, possibly chicha, a fermented corn beverage imbibed widely throughout what is now South America. Created by artists of the Lambayeque (also known as Sicán) culture, the vessel was fashioned from a blank or ingot that was first hammered into a thin sheet then shaped over a wooden mold. Such standardization allowed the culture to develop a highly sophisticated large-scale industry around smelting and metalworking, so much so that a single high-status burial could feature hundreds of metal objects. One such tomb, found at a site called Batán Grande (c. 900-1100 CE) on the northern Pacific coast of Peru, is said to have contained 176 gold beakers that were originally stacked or nestled together according to size, shape, and iconography.

This particular vessel is commonly called a “rattle beaker” due to its false bottom—the lower third of the vessel, demarcated by cross-shaped openings—which holds small stones that produce a rattling noise when the beaker is moved. The upper edge of this hollow chamber has been carefully crimped to the actual base of the beaker, the seam cleverly disguised as part of the repoussé line designs flanking a chevron-patterned band. Such noise-producing beakers may have played performative roles within funerary contexts, possibly in service of larger traditions involving the sharing of ceremonial drink between the living and the dead.

Lambayeque beakers also sometimes feature precious stones, as illustrated by the vessel seen here, which has seven turquoise inlays that circumscribe the upper-middle register of the beaker. Above these inset stones is a series of stylized zoomorphs with beak-like mouths shown in profile. Visual allusions to seabirds and other marine animals appear throughout Lambayeque art and architecture, often denoting the importance of maritime resources and the necessity of life-sustaining water on the desert coast of Peru.

Ji Mary Seo

Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, 2023-2024

References

Carcedo Muro de Mufarech, Paloma. “Los vasos en la orfebrería sicán.” In Cultura Sicán: Esplendor preincaico de la costa norte, edited by Izumi Shimada, 107-146. Lima: Fondo Editorial del Congreso del Perú, 2014.

Carcedo Muro de Mufarech, Paloma, and Izumi Shimada. “Behind the Golden Mask: Sicán Gold Artifacts from Batán Grande, Peru.” In The Art of Precolumbian Gold: The Jan Mitchell Collection, edited by Julie Jones, 60-75. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1985.

Elera Arévalo, Carlos Gustavo. “The Cultural Landscape of the Sicán.” In Sicán: L’or du Pérou antique, edited by Joyce Hildebrand and Karen Buckley, 62-71. Calgary: The Nickle Arts Museum, 2006.

Mackey, Carol J., and Joanne Pillsbury. “Cosmology and Ritual on a Lambayeque Beaker.” In Pre-Columbian Art & Archaeology: Essays in Honor of Frederick R. Mayer, edited by Margaret Young-Sánchez, 115-141. Denver: Mayer Center for Pre-Columbian & Spanish Colonial Art at the Denver Art Museum, 2013.