Double-spout bottle

Paracas artists of Peru’s South Coast produced a variety of ceramics, many of which were incised with intricate designs of animals and humans. This tradition was followed by the Nasca, which became the dominant style in the region in the first six centuries of the Common Era. In many ways, Nasca was the continuation of the earlier Paracas style, but Nasca artists distinguished their work through the use of colorful slips—watery mixtures of clay and pigments—applied before firing, thereby permanently fixing the color to the ceramic surface.

This bottle shows elements once prominent in Paracas art, such as a horizontal figure in what is often described as a flying pose, a tail rendered as a head, and a chin projection. The double vertical spout with a bridge, the evocation of a gourd vessel with a lid, and the use of orange and red slips are characteristic of the Topará style, an artistic innovation in the last centuries of the Paracas tradition. The figure with a tridimensional head and low-relief body mixes elements of different species. The red body with a row of black triangles resembles a reptile with elongated scales. However, these scales are wrongly positioned on the underside of the body, considering the upward positioning of the limbs. The tridimensional human head wears a frontal headdress and a skin-like garment with ears on top. The frontal limbs are shaped like arms, with the left holding an object resembling a knife. A fish-like animal is partially visible beneath one of the back limbs.

Some of the characteristics of this figure continue in the following centuries. The most popular theme in Nasca pottery is the flying or floating character with prominent headdresses and holding knives or heads, with bodies sometimes incorporating elements of other animals.

Hugo C. Ikehara-Tsukayama, Senior Research Associate, Arts of the Ancient Americas, 2023

References

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

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

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

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

Proulx, Donald A. “Paracas and Nasca: Regional Cultures on the South Coast of Peru” in The Handbook of South American Archaeology, edited by H. Silverman and W. H. Isbell, pp. 563-585. New York: Springer.