Ear Spool (c. 400–900): Art, History and Details

Ear Spool (c. 400–900) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Harvard archaeologists excavated this and seven other ornaments from several burials at Sitio Conte, a cemetery famous for its lavish graves of powerful chieftains. The young man buried in Grave 26 was such a chief. His status was stunningly memorialized by 21 human companions and 475 objects, many of them personal ornaments made of gold, including a large chest plaque and a rod-shaped ear ornament.

Object facts

• Title: Ear Spool
• Date: c. 400–900
• Culture: Panama, Conte style, 5th - 10th century
• Type: Metalwork
• Technique: hammered gold
• Dimensions: Diameter: 3.1 cm (1 1/4 in.); Overall: 2.9 cm (1 1/8 in.)
• Collection: AA - Intermediate Region
• Department: Art of the Americas
• Accession number: 1958.191.b

Collection credit

Roberta Holden Bole Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art. The CMA Companion: A Guide to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2014.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.