Ornament from Sitio Conte: Small Plaque, c. 400-500. Panama, Conte style, 5th - 10th century. Hammered gold; overall: 10.5 x 11.3 cm (4 1/8 x 4 7/16 in.). 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 this large chest plaque and a rod-shaped ear ornament. The creature on the chest plaque, found close to the chiefs body, has reptile claws and perhaps the head crest of an iguana. Its meaning is unknown but perhaps, as in later periods, reptilian imagery and the warm gleam of gold linked rulers with the suns creative force.