Word: alva
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...display in New York City's American Museum of Natural History, along with a full-size reproduction of the burial site of a ruler called the Warrior Priest, or the Lord of Sipan. The wealth of information gained from the tombs' contents outshines the dazzling finds. Says archaeologist Walter Alva, director of the Museo Nacional Bruning de Lambayeque, who has overseen the excavation since the first days: "Sipan's importance for science transcends the glitter of the gold...
...exhibit, notes Museum of Natural History curator Craig Morris, combines art with science to highlight the objects' aesthetic appeal and at the same time emphasize modern archaeological techniques. "Each piece must be understood in relationship to everything else," he explains. Alva and his team made sure that the position of the items in each grave was recorded and analyzed. An ornament in closest proximity to the body, for example, had the greatest symbolic significance and conveyed the role of the person in the highly organized Moche society...
...from an Indiana Jones movie. International collectors and dealers in antiquities joined huaqueros, the Peruvian term for grave robbers, in a rush for Sipan gold. During raids, police were able to confiscate some stolen material, and one huaquero was killed. Then, with the digging site secured and under guard, Alva and a team of archaeologists and workers located tombs that had been sealed off since their occupants were buried. He began what would stretch into years of patiently peeling away layers of debris and removing the delicate objects of metal, shell and stone that gradually unraveled the mysteries surrounding...
...riches or produced so powerful a ruling elite. Donnan compares interpreting the Moche with no information about Sipan's Senor to "trying to reconstruct ancient Egypt without knowing anything of the existence of the pharaohs." Our understanding of Moche social organization, religion, art and technology is now divided, says Alva, into periods he calls "before Sipan and after Sipan...
...high point of the seven centuries of Moche civilization, Alva estimates, 5,000 people lived in the sandy foothills near Sipan. There too were the busy workshops of the masterly skilled artisans who created the richest treasures found in the Western hemisphere. They perfected an alloying technique, using gold, silver and copper and formulated a method of gilding copper by electrochemical plating...