Jar with flying figure (the Oculate Being)

Paracas-style ceramics are characterized by their vibrant and lustrous 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. After 500 BCE, ceramic assemblages also became more diverse. A new type of necked jar, for example, became widely popular in the region. This jar is one of the new forms in which the vessel has a lateral spout, perhaps to facilitate pouring.

Some Paracas pottery designs were derived from earlier traditions in the north, such as Cupisnique and Chavín, while others were specific to the Ica region, including a figure known by scholars as the Oculate Being, so named for its large, circular eyes. This supernatural creature has an animal-like body, with a tail and an appendage emerging from the chin. The being is depicted on both sides of the vessel, accompanied by a third image, a monkey. The Oculate Being was, very likely, the antecedent of or inspiration for the flying figures found in the later Nasca style (Carmichael 2016; see also MMA 1996.174).

Hugo C. Ikehara-Tsukayama, Senior Research Associate, Arts of the Ancient Americas, 2024

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.

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.