Museum Expedition 1933, Purchased with funds given by Jesse Metcalf

A. Augustus Healy Fund

Ceramic funerary mask decorated with colored resin enamels. Mask is composed of a Paracas bowl to which the details have been applied by incision or application. Eyes consist of 2 interior cones decorated with concentric circles. 11 tabs project from rim of the face, 8 of which represent serpent heads. A 12th projection at the top of the mask forms the head of a human who is impersonating the Oculate Being by wearing this deity's mask. It's body is represented two dimensionally by incisions embellished with red, yellow and green resin enamel. Its nose is a smaller version of the huge probocis of the mask.

Bequest of Mrs. Carl L. Selden

Gift of the Ernest Erickson Foundation, Inc.

These ivory figurines may be high-status versions of the miniature clay examples that have been found in burial contexts throughout the Andean region of South America. The small and delicate male and female carvings are decorated with stone and shell inlays that suggest that they possibly functioned as treasured talismans or ritual offerings.


Estas figurillas de marfil pueden tratarse de versiones de alto rango de los ejemplos de miniaturas de barro que se han encontrado en contextos funerarios a través de la región Andina de Sudamérica. Los pequeños y delicados tallados masculino y femenino están decorados con incrustaciones de piedra y concha, sugiriendo que tuvieron una función como amuletos atesorados o como ofrendas rituales.

Gift of the Ernest Erickson Foundation, Inc.

Gift of Dr. Werner Muensterberger

The whistle is in the form of a human face with an open mouth and the instrument is likely to have been used during the Hamatsa initiation ceremony. Cotton cord is wrapped around the "neck."

This pottery doll wears hanging earrings and a necklace (both of dark blue and white beads), bracelets on either wrist (of sea-blue beads), and purplish-black yarn around waist which holds a red skirt. The black, thick hair falls straight with a bang effect at the forehead. Openings in ear lobes, nostrils, and mouth--eyes are black and white. Slight suggestion of breasts: toes and fingers defined. Brown line designs cross the eyes, jaws and chin and begin at the collar bone on the torso and continue, vertically, down the chest, arms and legs. Her skirt is wrapped around the waist and fastened with a yarn waistband.