Encyclopedia of the Incas

Incas dispatched Chimú metalsmiths to Cuzco and other leading Inca centers to
continue their specialized craft as retainers of the state. When the invading
Spaniards in the^ sixteenth century carried out assays of bullion melted in Peru
and in Spain from the great quantities of gold and silver objects they ransomed
or looted from the Incas (see Invasion, Spanish), they expressed surprise at
finding that most of the silver and much of the gold was impure, containing
significant concentrations of copper and other metallic components.
Throughout Andean prehistory, items in metal served primarily to convey
social status, to demonstrate political power, and to generate awe inspired by
religious or political ritual enactments. The Andean metal inventory was tool-
poor. Small tools such as needles, spindle whorls, depilatory tweezers, chisels,
and axes were made of copper or from a variety of bronze alloys. But the
purpose of body and clothing ornaments such as earspools, nose rings, and
mouth masks, or of ritual paraphernalia, staffs of office, military regalia, and
drinking vessels was to communicate messages of social significance. Such
objects carried and imparted information through their form, their color, and by
the technological processes by which they were made.
Archaeological data from elite tombs of Moche lords and priestesses suggest
strongly that gold, silver, and copper metals carried gender: gold/male,
silver/female, and copper/female. Ethnohistoric studies of Colombian
communities that continue to curate and to wear ornaments made of ternary
copper-silver-gold (tumbaga) alloys consider these materials, in alloyed,
inseparable association, as representing generative or procreative forces.
Sixteenth-century Spanish chronicles that report Inca origin myths relate that the
first member of the Inca royal ayllu was the progeny of the wedding of the Sun
and the Moon (see Myths, Origin). The Inca described the metal gold as the
sweat of the Sun, silver as the tears of the Moon. These two metals were the
birthright of the Inca. When alloyed alone or with copper they reinforced the
continued generation of the royal panacas and their celestial beginnings.
The notable change that accompanied Inca metallurgy is evident in the scale of
imperial operations, in both the mining and processing of ore and the production
of metal objects. Gold and silver, the sacred metals and the prerogative solely of
the royal panacas, sheathed interior palace walls and were shaped into large
discs to represent Inti, the Sun god at the center of the state religion. Inca
expansion from Cuzco deep into the south-central Andes was stimulated, in part,
by the presence there of rich gold, silver, and cassiterite (tin oxide) ores—the
latter indispensable for the production of tin bronze (see Mining).