Bowl with zoomorphic motifs

Paracas artists of Peru’s South Coast produced a variety of ceramics, many of which were incised with intricate abstracted designs of animals and humans. The motifs were often rendered using parallel lines—a geometric style that may have been derived from basketry, an art form that predated ceramics by thousands of years.

The interior walls of the bowl feature alternating human and feline heads separated by images of falcons. The feline heads are identified by their pointed ears, triangular eyes, button nose, and broad mouth with teeth, whereas the human faces have ears on the side of the head, rectangular eyes with the pupil at the top of the eye, an oval nose, smiling mouth with no teeth, and hands stretching upwards on the side of the head. Flanking each head is an abstract falcon, represented with a central round eye, beak to the right, wings stretched above the head, tail behind, and eye markings below. The simple exterior was decorated with a repeated lemniscate or infinity motif.

The central image on the inside bottom of the bowl is an intricate human face with a central mouth with feline-like incisors extending across the lips. Above and below the mouth are pairs of eyes with the pupils at the top of each eye, characteristic of Paracas representations of human faces. Two narrow perpendicular white lines may represent the nose. The groups of lines extending outward from the eye and the corners of the head to the side wall of the ceramic may represent limbs and the shorter lines from the triangular chin may be a curled tail. Numerous small, inscribed circles are in the spaces between the rays. These may represent seed pods of the Anadenanthera, a plant widely used in shamanistic rituals in ancient Peru (Domnauer, 2020). A similar ceramic in the collection (MMA 63.232.2) bears almost identical iconography.

Paracas-style ceramics are characterized by their vibrant colors. Combining mostly mineral pigments with a binding agent, artists created paints that were applied on the surface of the pottery post firing (Kriss et al., 2018). At a time when most ceramics in the Central Andes were of muted colors, the Paracas palette was a significant innovation. Post-fire paint is comparatively fragile, however, suggesting that vessels such as the present example were not intended for daily use.

References and Further Reading

Carmichael, Patrick H. “Nasca Origins and Paracas Progenitors.” Ñawpa Pacha, Journal of Andean Archaeology, vol. 36, no. 2 (2016): 53-94.

DeLeonardis, Lisa. “Encoded Process, Embodied Meaning in Paracas Post-Fired Painted Ceramics.” In Making Value, Making Meaning: Techné in the Pre-Columbian World, edited by Cathy Lynne Costin, Washington, D.C: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2016, pp. 129-166.

Domnauer, Colin. “The Legume Pod Motif as a Symbolic Representation of the Shamanic Hallucinogen, Vilca (Adadenantheria spp.), in Pre-Columbian Andean Cultures.” Ñawpa Pacha, Journal of Andean Archeology vol. 40 (2020), pp. 163-173.

García, Rubén. “Puerto Nuevo y los orígenes de la tradición estilístico-religiosa Paracas.” Boletín de Arqueología PUCP, no. 13 (2011): 187-207.

Ikehara-Tsukayama Hugo C., Dawn Kriss, and Joanne Pillsbury. “Containing the Divine: Ancient Peruvian Pots.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin Vol. 80, Number 4 (Spring 2023). “Containing the Divine: Ancient Peruvian Pots.” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin vol. 80, no 4 (Spring 2023).

Kriss, Dawn, et al. "A Material and Technical Study of Paracas Painted Ceramics." Antiquity vol. 92, no. 366 (2018): 1492-510.

Menzel, Dorothy, John H. Rowe, and Lawrence E. Dawson. The Paracas Pottery of Ica: A Study in Style and Time. The University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, vol. 50. Berkeley and Los Angeles: The University of California Press, 1964.

Unkel, Ingmar, Bernd Kromer, Markus Reindel, Lukas Wacker, and Günther Wagner. "A Chronology of the Pre-Columbian Paracas and Nasca Cultures in South Peru Based on AMS 14C Dating." Radiocarbon vol. 49, no. 2 (2007), pp. 551–64.