The award from the festival is called " Trophy Spondylus ", which consists of a stylized statue of a Spondylus, a marine mollusk widely used in the pre-Columbian art of Peru.
42.
Hosler speculates that the South American mariners may have been searching for a much prized bright-orange seashell, the spondylus, that was used to make beads and ornaments and for rain-making rituals.
43.
The outer band of one depicts reed boats, each with two occupants holding paddles; the second band portrays human heads separated by serpentine curves; the third shows spondylus shells, highly valued for jewelry making.
44.
A common object for offerings, as well as one used by artisans, was the shell of the " Spondylus " shellfish, which live only in the warm coastal waters off present-day Ecuador.
45.
They claim Oreichalcos means the obsidian stone that used to be a cash-equivalent at that time and was replaced by the spondylus shell around 5500 BC, which would suit the red, white, black motif.
46.
Structure 6B contained a dedicatory cache with a large number of offerings, including 28 jade artifacts, a few ceramic vessels, spondylus shells, mirror fragments made from specular hematite and a variety of white shell disks.
47.
A maritime exchange system stretched from the west coast of Mexico to southernmost Peru, trading mostly in Spondylus, which represented rain and fertility and was considered the principal food of the gods by the people of the Inca empire.
48.
In the neck area were tubular gold beads and little gold birds, together with necklaces of coloured stone beads, carved emeralds and red Spondylus shells, and enough tiny stone beads to form a string about 50 m long.
49.
There are some remnants of food stuffs and spondylus shell, even a small fragment near some skeletal remains of red pigment, but nothing as substantial as the elaborate graves of pre-Columbian cultures that so enthrall the archaeological world.
50.
Pedro Pizarro said that the ruler of Chincha controlled 100, 000 rafts and the Spondylus and Strombus seashells was in Ecuador, to the north, thus strengthening the view that the Chincha had an extensive reach to their trading activities.
