Nose Ornament with Spiders 100 B.C.-A.D. 200 Salinar Nose ornaments from the little-known Salinar culture, which flourished in the coastal river valleys of northern Peru from around 200 B.C.-300 A.D., are among the earliest body adornments discovered in the region. While some Salinar ornaments are simple in form and structure, otherssuch as the one shown hereare more complex in assembly and iconography. This ornament features four round-bodied spiders, their spindly legs and pincers carefully rendered in thin gold wire. Minute, circular wirework forms a delicate web spun skillfully around the spiders in a semicircular shape. Spider imagery appears in Andean works of art from the middle of the first millennium B.C. until the Spanish Conquest in the sixteenth century. Spiders were particularly important within the cosmology of Peru’s North Coast for their ability to catch and kill live prey, a skill that linked them to warfare and ritual sacrifice. The Moche, who flourished in this reg