Chancay Mummy Mask with Human Hair Wig Acquired by Walters Art Museum

The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore has acquired a 1,000-year-old Chancay mummy mask featuring a wig made of human hair, a rare element in pre-Columbian funerary artifacts. The mask, painted brick red with cinnabar, includes a headband evoking turban-like head coverings worn by the Chancay people. The museum used polarized light microscopy in 2017 to confirm the wig's material. The Chancay culture, which flourished in modern-day Peru from 1000 to 1532 CE, wrapped their dead in textile mummy bundles with wooden 'false heads' to serve as focal points for veneration. This particular mask also shows a patterned impression indicating it was later wrapped in additional textiles. The Chancay buried their dead with textile dolls, wooden carvings, and ceramic figures called Cuchimilcos, believed to represent protective spirits.