Free The Moche Warrior by Lyn Hamilton Page B

Museum of Art and took in the art of the Americas section there as well. By the time I’d seen what there was to see there, I was convinced I was on the right track.
    I went to the museum bookstore, purchased a couple of books on the subject, and headed for the café for a coffee, a muffin, and a quick read. I had what I wanted.
    Moche.
    The Moche, I learned, were a people who ruled over the north coast of Peru during the first 500 years of the Common Era, long before the Inca had ever been heard from. The empire stretched from the Piura Valley in the north to the Huarmey Valley in the south, from a capital city which is now called Cerro Blanco. The Moche culture is known in archaeological circles for its engineering feats, primarily the building of fabulous adobe pyramids and lengthy canals which brought water from the mountains to the coastal desert where their empire was located; its political mastery of a large area as one of the first definable states in that part of the world; and artistically for masterpieces of craftsmanship in pottery and metals.
    There was now absolutely no question in my mind about it. I had seen with my own eyes pottery that matched the stolen pot in style and execution, and ear flares of gold and turquoise that were, to my untrained eye, identical in style to the little ear flare I had in my handbag. And if I needed further corroboration, I had it. The books I had purchased showed photographs of a magnificent necklace of gold and silver beads, each bead in the shape of a perfect peanut.
    As carefully as I could, I took the little ear flare out of my bag to take a better look at it. The little gold man with his gold scepter stared back at me mutely. I turned the piece over and over again in my hand. “So what do you have to say for yourself?”‘ I softly asked the little man.
    In my business, you learn to spot fakes. You have to. The point is that you can take as many courses about antiques as you like, and I have taken several, but when it comes right down to it, you just have to develop a sixth sense about objects. I’ve learned to look at furniture, for example, to look at the metal hardware, the way the boards are planed, the kinds of nails and other fastenings that are used. But a really good craftsman can fool even a museum curator, and in the end you rely on your gut on some of the things you see. Sometimes, even after you’ve checked out everything you can think of, objects still just don’t feel right, and, taught by an expert, my friend Sam Feldman, I’ve learned to go with this feeling.
    Before he opened his own gallery, Sam was a museum conservator. He told me that in his early days at the institution, a mere neophyte, he’d gotten the feeling a particular artifact, the centerpiece in an exhibit, was a fake. He tried to tell the curator of the exhibit and was roundly chastised. On his last day of employment at the museum, now a noted expert in his field, he went back to the curator and told him again. Once again Sam was told he was wrong, but he found on his next casual visit to the museum that the offending piece had been removed from the exhibit. “You see!” he told his students. “I was right. They will never admit it, but I was right. That’s why you go with your gut.”
    This time the process was reversed. This object was supposed to be a fake. Maybe it wasn’t.
    The piece looked in pretty good condition for something that was at least 1500 years old. Generally I would have said it looked way too good. The gold was nice and shiny, and overall the piece was in very good repair. But there were places where the gold, probably hammered on, was worn away, and the turquoise inlay was not of a uniform color. Carefully I edged a fingernail into one of the cracks between the inlays. There was dirt, but I wasn’t sure that proved anything. A good forger would know enough to rub a little dirt into the piece.
    The question was, where had my little friend been for 1500 years? If