Chavin Stone Mace Head, Spiked Cylinder

Pre-Columbian, Peru, North Coast, Chavin culture, 1200 BCE. A weapon head bristling with authority, carved from dense gray hardstone into a tapered cylinder studded with four staggered rows of conical spikes. The upper collar is drilled straight through the core, a socket sized to receive a wooden haft lashed tight for combat. Ground and polished entirely by abrasion, without metal tools, the surface carries a deep earthen patina. Mace heads of this class served as both striking weapons and emblems of rank among Andean elites, their labor-intensive manufacture and hard stone signaling status as much as lethality. Mounted on a custom metal display base. Size: 3.5" Diam x 5" H (8.9 cm Diam x 12.7 cm H).

The Chavin horizon, radiating from the highland ceremonial center of Chavin de Huantar, unified much of the Peruvian coast and sierra in a shared religious and artistic idiom during the first millennium BCE. Stone mace heads circulated widely within that sphere, and the spiked or star-form type persisted for centuries afterward in Andean weaponry, later rendered in copper alloy by Moche, Chimu, and Inca smiths. Working a stone of this hardness required pecking, grinding, and long hours of abrasive drilling with sand and reed or bone bits, an investment of labor that placed such objects well beyond ordinary armament and into the vocabulary of prestige.

Provenance: Ex. H. J. Westermann collection, Germany, active 1950’s - 1960’s.

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Item #

73166

Condition
Minor ancient chip on the collar edge, ancient loss to one spike and three with ancient tip loss, otherwise intact.

Buyer's Premium
30%