Bottle, Trophy-Head

This bottle with a bridged double-spout depicts a human head with sculpted and incised mouth, nose, and eyeholes in relief. The back of the bottle is covered in orange slip while the bottle’s face is covered in white slip and decorated with orange stripes with incised borders. The head, with its closed eyes and expressionless face is consistent with the depiction of trophy heads in the ceramic arts of early South Coast Peru.

The ritualistic taking of real human heads is a recurring symbol of spirit and power in iconography of the Paracas and related Topará culture. Evidence of trophy head-taking is found in almost every pre-Incan culture in the central Andes, and is associated with deities and human sacrifice. Mythical figures in Paracas and Nasca textiles are depicted with trophy heads either held with the hands or attached to the waist, as seen in a Paracas mantle border fragment in The Met’s collection 1994.35.120. Bottles such as this one were included along with richly woven textiles, sculptures, headdresses, gold ornaments, and numerous other objects at Wari Kayan Necropolis, located on an arid peninsula on Peru’s south coast – an ideal climate to preserve the elaborate funerary bundles in which the Topará buried their dead.

Topará was long considered a separate ceramic style. Recent excavation of settlements and differentiation in burial traditions, however, have led archaeologist to identify Topará as a distinct and influential society that co-existed with both Paracas Necropolis (700 B.C.– A.D. 1) and early Nasca (A.D. 1–100) cultures. Inhabiting south coast of Peru between 200 B.C – A.D. 100, the potters of the Topará culture excelled at thin-walled ceramic vessels, some measuring as little as 1.5 millimeters thick. These vessels were slab or coil-built, and hand-formed on turning plates. After these vessels were formed and incised, they were treated with slip pigments and then fired. Early efforts with slip pigments like this bottle resulted in a more limited color palette, which is characteristic of Topará. The use of slip marks a technological shift from the bright, post-fired polychrome ceramics of the earlier Chavín and Paracas Cavernas cultures toward the elaborate polychrome slip ceramics of the Nasca culture, considered to be a high-point in Central Andean ceramics.

Anne Carlisle, M.A. Candidate, Bard Graduate Center, 2017

References and Further Reading

DeLeonardis, Lisa. “Interpreting the Paracas Body and its value in Ancient Peru.” In The Construction of Value in the Ancient World, edited by John K. Papadopoulos and Gary Urton, pp. 197-217. Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California, Los Angeles, 2012.

Lasaponara, Rosa. Nicola Masini, and Giuseppe Orefici. The Ancient Nasca World: New Insights from Science and Archaeology. Springer International Publishing, 2016.

Peters, Anne. Funerary Regalia and Institutions of Leadership in Paracas and Topara. Chungara, Revista de Antropolgia Chilena, 32, no 2 (2000), 245-252.

Peters, Anne. “Paracas Necropolis: communities of textiles production, exchange networks, and social boundaries in the Central Andes 150 BC to AD 250” in Textiles, Technical Practice and Power in the Andes, edited by Denise Arnold and Penny Dransart, pp. 109-139. London: Archetype, 2012.

Proulx, Donald A. “Ritual Uses of Trophy Heads in Ancient Nasca Society” in Ritual Sacrifice in Ancient Peru, edited by Elizabeth Benson and Anita Cook, 119-136. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001.

Proulx, Donald A. A Sourcebook of Nasca Ceramic Iconography: Reading a Culture Through its Art. Iowa City: University Of Iowa Press, 2006.

Proulx, Donald A. “Paracas and Nasca: Regional Cultures on the South Coast of Peru” in Handbook of South American Archaeology , edited by Helaine Silverman and William Isbell, 563-584. Springer Press, 2008.

Silverman, Helaine. “The Paracas Problem: Archaeological Perspectives” in Paracas Art and Architecture: Object and Context in South Coastal Peru, edited by Anne Paul, pp. 348-415. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991.

Stone, Rebecca. Art of the Andes: From Chavín to Inca. New York: Thames & Hudson World of Art Series, 2012.