Leaning against the walls of the Central Chamber of the West Tomb were additional painted cloths measuring rough1y 3 x 1 m with similar sheetmetal backing. In addition to gridded or diagonal supporting cane frameworks, these cloths also had a substantial vertical wooden pole (5 - 7 cm in diameter) at each end. Overall, there were at least 8 large painted cloths with sheetmetal backing placed flat on the floor or nearly vertically against the wall faces of the West Tomb.

Better preserved examples of painted cloth with sheetmetal backing come from a shafttomb excavated at Huaca Las Ventanas. A good example was found carefully laid face up on the middle of a ledge at the southwest comer of the tomb about 4 m below the tomb mouth. It was accompanied by a double-spout ceramic bottle wrapped in sheetmetal and an intentionally broken jar. Only the center (ea. 140x20 cm) of the cloth (250x 150 cm) was plastered and painted (Photograph 5), although the entire cloth had been pasted to a sheetmetal backing. The backing consisted of standardized 25 x 12.5 cm metal sheets carefully laid edge to edge (Photograph 6).

The painting showed the Sicán Deity with a |tumi- knife and trophy head at the center flanked by a red, round "sun" on the right (east) and vale, crescent "moon" on the left (west) - representing what mar be called the Sicán "cosmovision" (Photograph 5). An identical painting was found ea. 8 m below surface along with another large (ea. 2.3 x 0.9 m) painting of the Sicán Deity under the arching body of the double-head Sky Serpent flanked on both sides by an opposing pair of seated, mythical felines. Nearly all preserved paited cloths with shetmetal backing show Sicán religious scenes.

Electron probe microanalysis of four spots on the copper-depleted surface on a corroded sample of |tumbaga sheet backing of the last cloth gave a range of 22-38% gold, 13-39% silver, and 6-7% copper (Merkel et al. 1995:111). Normalized compositional range is 32-54% gold, 18-58% silver, and 10-27% copper. Metallographic and electron probe microanalysis (McLoughlin 1996; Merkel et al. 1995) reveal that these sheets are similar in composition and manufacture to both the |tumbaga sheets that wrapped ceramic vessels and the ea. 500 kg of |tumbaga scrap deposited in the Huaca Loro East Tomb (see Fig. 4; Shimada 1995:93-95; Shimada and Griffin 1994; Shimada and Merkel 1993). For example, wavelength dispersive x-ray spectrometric analysis of a |tumbaga scrap piece indicates that its surface composition is ea. 28% gold, 25% silver, and 41% copper (the Test assumed to be corrosion products; McLoughlin 1996:70; also see Gordus and Shimada 1994) and that it had been depletion-gilded (McLoughlin 1996:44). The inner portion had been more extensively corroded and compositional data are not available, though, it is most likely that copper was substantially higher in its weight percent than in the outer portion.

The quantity of |tumbaga sheetmetal scraps documented in the East Tomb not only represents an enormous investment of valued precious metals and manpower, but al so reflects the intensity of sheetmetal production and its diverse uses. The intensity of production is also seen in the Huaca Las Ventanas tomb where the total estimated surface area of cloth with |tumbaga sheet backing used to line its interior alone exceeded 100 m ^|2 Additionally, various types of objects in the Huaca Loro East Tomb were sheetmetal- wrapped.

|Discussion

This paper presented specific Middle Sicán examples of combined materials, knowledge, and/or techniques of various crafts in the production and/or use of sumptuary goods. The examples also illustrated the divergent ways in which multiple crafts related to each other and the different organizational implications they carry.

Ceramic or metal objects with stone or shell insets are "multi-craft" products that simply utilized finished products from one or more crafts in the final assembly of items being manufactured. In many cases it is doubtful the inset pieces were specifically made for the metal objects in question. On the other hand, the high-karat gold mask from the Huaca Loro East Tomb constitutes our strongest case for "inter-craft" interaction, a continuous and creative interplay, whereby "hardware" (e.g., raw materials and tools) and "software" (e.g., technical knowledge) both played an active role from designing and manufacture. The amber pieces, for example, were matched in color and carefully shaped to be a part of the complex eye construction.

Cross-craft products may be more common than imagined. For example, examination of Middle Sicán double-spout blackware bottles in the Brüning Museum (Lambayeque) and the National Museum of Anthropology, Archaeology and History (Lima) by Kate Cleland (1994, personal communication) and I revealed some vessels with traces of |tumbaga sheet wrapping intentionally or unintentionally removed during cleaning. It is worth reiterating here the finding from the Huaca Loro West Tomb that |tumbaga sheetmetal wrapping was not restricted to fine blackware vessels but includes utilitarian jars.

In addition, some effects of cross-craft interaction mar not be readily recognizable or even have been intended or foreseen (Shimada n.d.). The press-molded relief decorations on ceramic vessels that rapidly spread throughout the northern Peruvian coast during late Middle Horizon (e.g., Menzel 1977¡ Schaedel 1979) may have started as an effective way to reproduce the chasing-repoussé effects found on the more prestigious, precious metal objects. Similarly, some graphitized Cupisnique vessels may well have resulted from an effort to reproduce the jet-black metallic sheen of rare, carved Cupisnique anthracite cups. A thin layer of graphite results when carbon deposited on ceramic vessels being fired under a reducing atmosphere is heated sufficiently high to crystallize (D. Wagner, personal communication, 1997). In these two examples, efforts to reproduce the appearance of high status items in one medium mar have brought about important (albeit unintentional) technica1 and technological developments in another medium.

What do the cases described earlier tell us of the organization of relevant crafts? For example, did lapidarists and goldsmiths work in clase coordination in a single workshop in manufacturing gold-alloy objects with mineral or shell insets? What can be said about their functional interdependence?

We will address these questions in the process of answering another question: Why are the shell and mineral insets found in Sicán metal objects (or, for that matter, in those of other prehispanic Andean cultures) so often |drilled? In the case of the eye of the Sicán mask, a gold wire passed through both the amber and emerald. However, there is no apparent reason for perforations in the amber eyes of the |tumbaga mask covering the face of the principal personage of the Huaca Loro West Tomb (Photograph 7) or the turquoise inlay of a nose ornament from the East Tomb (Photograph 2).

The widespread use of drilled beads as insets illuminates the Sicán goldsmithing-lapidary relationship. Examination of tour large bead clusters found in the East Tomb of Huaca Loro, together weighing ea. 75 kg and composed of hundreds of thousand of beads (Photograph 8), provides important insights. These clusters differ in the identity of the most abundant or prominent bead - either shell |(Spondylus), sodalite, or turquoise. Other beads were fashioned out of agate (reddish brown), amber, calcareous minerals including calcite, and fluorite (white and pale green). The largest amethyst, quartz crystal, and sodalite beads are roughly the size and shape of small chicken eggs (ea. 3 x 5 cm). Many large turquoise pieces are irregular in shape and though perforated and polished, appear to be pre-forms. At the same time, numerous sodalite and turquoise beads are relatively small and tabular (ea. 1-2 cm to a side and 1.5 to 3 mm in thickness), well suited to be used as insets. Shell beads are invariably disks having a thiekness and diameter of ea. 0.3 to 2 mm and 1.3 to 20 mm, respectively.

Photograph 7: Thubaga mask that covered the face of the principal personage of the Huaca Loro West Tamb, Note the differences in the eyes and overall construction in comparison with the mask shown in photograph 3, Photograph by 1. Shimada.