Not on public display: A Peruvian elongated skull with metal surgically implanted after returning from battle, estimated to be from about 2000 years ago. One of our more it is uninteresting and oldest pieces in the collection.
We don’t have much background on this piece, but we know he survived the procedure! Based on the broken bone surrounding the repair and you can see that it’s tightly fused together. It was a successful surgery.
The Inca were well known for their use of gold, silver, copper, bronze, and other metals. Drawing much of their inspiration and style in metalworking from Chimú art, the Incas used metals for utilitarian purposes as well as ornaments and decorations.
The Maya primarily used gold, silver, and copper as metals, primarily for jewelry and decorative items, with gold being considered the most precious metal and often associated with high social status; they also utilized bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, to a lesser extent.
That the ancient Mexicans or Aztec people were familiar with the metallurgy of gold, silver and copper, the process of hammering, fusing and casting, there is no doubt, and that they understood soldering and even the plating of gold and silver on copper is suggested by the specimens in the museum collections.
The Toltecs primarily worked with copper, gold, and sometimes silver; they were known to create metal objects like ornaments, weapons, and tools using these metals, often employing techniques like hammering, casting, and alloying to create various pieces, with copper being the most commonly used metal amongst Mesoamerican civilizations including the Toltecs.
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