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Course: Art of the Americas to World War I > Unit 3
Lesson 8: MocheTomb of Señora de Cao
The funerary bundle of the Señora de Cao, headdress ornament and six nose ornaments, found in what is now the El Brujo Archaeological Complex, c. 400 C.E., Moche (Museo Cao, Magdalena de Cao, Peru)
A conversation with Dr. Sarahh Scher and Dr. Steven Zucker. Created by Smarthistory.
Video transcript
(jazzy piano music) - [Steven] We're in the
Golden Kingdoms exhibition looking at burial objects
from the Moche culture from the ancient Andes. Because ancient Andean cultures commonly buried their elite
dead with valuable objects, they became targets of looters. The result is that we have
very few untouched tombs, tombs that could be
excavated scientifically using up-to-date archaeological methods. - [Sarahh] And we're very lucky to be able to look at a couple pieces here from one of those tombs, and it's the tomb of a woman known as the
Senora or the Dama de Cao, the Lady of Cao. - [Steven] She's named after the site. This was not actually her name. - [Sarahh] We have no
idea what her name was, and so she is thought of as
the ruler over this site. - [Steven] But thanks
to forensic archaeology, we do know that she was in her 20s and there is the possibility that she died soon after childbirth. - [Sarahh] One of the things
about her that is exceptional is not just the wealth of her tomb, but how well her body was preserved. Normally, what we have is just bones, but with the Senora de Cao, we
actually have mummified skin. - [Steven] But in addition, what makes this tomb so exceptional is what we found with her body. For example, we used to
think that nose rings were exclusively found with men, but in this tomb, we
found dozens of nose rings of extraordinary variety. - [Sarahh] What we're relying on is not just what's in graves, but also what we see in the art, and what we see is that
women don't wear nose rings. And so for a woman to be buried
with all of these nose rings is really something
exceptional and something that does make her a
little bit more masculine. - [Steven] But it's not
just the nose rings. She was buried with weapons. - [Sarahh] Yes, she was
buried with two five-foot tall ceremonial maces covered in gold leaf as well as a whole series of
spear throwers and spears, which were used both as hunting implements and as implements of war. One of the things that we
used to think about the Moche was that it was an exclusively
masculine run society, that men were in charge,
men were the only rulers, men were the ones who were the
true highest of the elites. And what we're starting to find
in several different places, like at Cao, is tombs of women
who are buried in such a way that we see lots of elite indicators. - [Steven] And indicators
that we once thought were exclusively masculine. - [Sarahh] Things that are
seemingly borrowed by these women in order to express status. - [Steven] The objects and the body were not relegated to
different parts of the tomb. There was a kind of
interrelationship between them. Two of the nose rings
were found in her mouth and she was interred in
an elaborate mummy bundle. - [Sarahh] She was basically
placed inside the center of a concentric series of wrappings of different kinds of cloth. There were several dresses in there, all of this jewelry, and
all of these weapons. - [Steven] Most impressive
is this headpiece. - [Sarahh] This would have
been attached to a headband, and so it would have sat on
the front of her forehead when it was being worn. It's one of a series of them
that were included in the tomb, so there's multiple of these. Like the nose rings, you
also have women in Moche art not normally wearing any
kind of head covering, and so to have a headdress like this is something, again, that
makes her sort of masculine. And what it tells us is that this idea of
power itself is masculine. The idea is that you cannot be the ruler unless you carry the clothes. You cannot be the ruler
unless you wear the crown. And if we think of a
cross-cultural comparison of Hatshepsut. - [Steven] The ancient New
Kingdom Egyptian ruler, a woman who ruled as king and as a god. - [Sarahh] First of all, we
do find sculptures of her where she has the body of
a man and then her face to show her strength as king. And we also find in texts that the scribes had a real
problem writing about her because all of their
vocabulary about kingship was gendered male, and so there's texts that refer to Hatshepsut
as His Majesty Herself. And so this is kind of
a corollary of that, where you have a female in power, or who appears to be in power, and in order to show that
power, you have to adopt things that are not normally
worn and used by women. - [Steven] Although we
know this Egyptian ruler was, in fact, a ruler, we don't know that this woman who was found at Cao was a ruler. We know nothing about her actual life. - [Sarahh] Now it is quite possible that she was a female ruler or
that she had political power. She could've, perhaps, been
a priestess but not a ruler. It is very to say that
how a person is buried reflects what they were in life, but that doesn't always
mean that this is the case. We need to remember a famous
anthropological phrase: The dead don't bury themselves. - [Steven] She could have filled an important ceremonial role that had nothing to do with
her actual living existence. - [Sarahh] As people become
powerful ancestors in death, maybe more so than they
were ever powerful in life, they're being presented in a way, and their status only came
from what they were in death. - [Steven] But nevertheless, this is an incredibly impressive grave. And the metalwork looks
as if it's repousse, that is, it was hammered from the back, and it gives a real
sense of dimensionality. You have this ovoid face
with a kind of wave motif that's framing it and
then this ferocious face. - [Sarahh] It's a very abstracted version of a snarling feline
face, as a symbol of power and supernatural status. It's something that we see in giant beads that were found with the Lord of Sipan, to the north of where Cao is, and it is something that really goes back to the legacy of Cupisnique and Chavin, this imagery of the snarling feline. - [Steven] And it's something that we see in cultures far to the north as well, for example, in the Kunz Axe,
this ancient Olmec object. And that snarling face is full frontal, but the small figures below
it are seen in profile. - [Sarahh] They're these sort
of wiggly looking figures with open mouths and they
look like they're intended to represent what we
call the crested being, a creature that is associated
with the moon very frequently. - [Steven] Some of the
most spectacular objects that were found in the
tomb are the nose rings, and there's a lot of them. - [Sarahh] And one of
the main features of them is that they tend to be combinations of gold and silver metal. This combination of gold and silver was highly symbolic in the Andes. It was a expression of
duality, like sun and moon, so gold and silver, but
also male and female. You also have the idea
that duality governs the geography of the coast,
the high mountain peaks and the low coastal areas. - [Steven] Looking at
one particular nose ring, I see two crawfish that are
curving away from each other, and then tucked in
between and slightly below is this beautiful full frontal crab. - [Sarahh] You also have emphasis on the legs of the crawfish and crab. - [Steven] What the artist has
been able to show us though is the ability to render
movement, even in static metal. These are animated figures. They're both graceful and arcing. - [Sarahh] And it's a very
naturalistic representation, which contrasts the geometric
elements that we see in one of the other nose ornaments. - [Steven] So whereas we see
a complex, curvilinear contour in the nose ring we were just discussing, here we have something that is
almost perfectly rectilinear. - [Sarahh] And in fact,
it's based on the idea of how you construct a textile. When you construct a textile, you have vertical and horizontal threads. You're creating a grid. And so what we see in Moche art is at least some geometrization based on this kind of gridding. Even though the lower
part of the nose ring does look like a early '80s Space Invader, it's actually meant to be
either a manta ray or a catfish. - [Steven] What the rectilinear and the curvilinear nose rings have in common though in this case are inset inlays of semi-precious stones, in this case, turquoise. - [Sarahh] The turquoise
is not completely local to where the Moche are,
so it's showing the extent of trade networks, and
it's a very popular stone. - [Steven] The fact that
this woman was buried with dozens of these
elaborate pieces of jewelry is fascinating, and perhaps someday we'll know what the meaning was. Was it a representation of her wealth? Did these nose rings come
from specific people? It's a lovely reminder that archaeology is solving puzzles. (jazzy piano music)