Funerary mask

Embossed gold disks were worn on the chests and the wide bands were tied around the wrists of the ruling elite of ancient Panamá. Gold symbolized supernatural power and high social rank, and the embossed motifs represent mythic beings and transformation into a shamanic practitioner's spiritual and supernatural animal companion. For example, the disk near the bottom of the case wall depicts a human transposed into his shamanic form, indicated by his cayman feet and hands and the supernatural saurian creatures emanating from his waist and arching over his head. The wide wrist bands or cuffs are embossed with cayman-like mythical beings similar to those found on the pectoral disks. When worn by chiefs and other leaders, these adornments communicated the supernatural and shamanic basis of their power. The largest oval-shaped disk is embossed with the representation of a human face with beared teeth. This may have been a funerary mask rather than a pectoral, tied into the cloth-wrapped body of the deceased.