Beaker, Figure with Shell 9th-11th century Lambayeque (Sicán) Gold beakers, both plain and ornamented with embossed designs, were markers of status and authority on Perus north coast in the centuries before the rise of the Inca Empire. This vessel was sculpted in the shape of the torso and head of an individual wearing a cap and holding a shell. One side of the beaker features the embossed face and hands, while the other side is rendered as the back of the individuals head. The figure wears round ear ornaments, and the hair, on the back of the vessel, is rendered in two layers; the longer layer is decorated at the bottom with a row of disks. Two wide bands with a chevron pattern hang down from the cap over the hair, meeting in a central medallion of two concentric circles surrounded by seven smaller ones. The shell depicted between the hands of the figure is most likely Spondylus, a bivalve found in the warm tropical waters north of the Santa Elena Peninsula in Ecuador. Often called