Spout-and-bridge bottle with owl head

This simple but elegant bottle with a spout and handle evokes an owl by only the slightest reference: the pair of large eyes with radiating lines. No wings are indicated, the beak is minimal, and a pair of lips suggest a human mouth. Created by an artist (or artists) of the Virú culture on Peru’s North Coast some 2,000 years ago, the vessel displays characteristic features of the Virú ceramic tradition such as the tapered, conical spout, simple strap handle, annular base, and resist painting.

To make a resist pattern, the vessel would be burnished and fired, and then the composition would be outlined with a watery paint that acted as a resist. The ceramic was fired again at a low temperature, causing the smoke to fill the uncovered surfaces. Finally, the resist was removed, revealing the orange color of the ceramic.

The Virú culture, also known as Gallinazo, thrived in the region of the Virú Valley. The Virú developed irrigation systems that allowed them to cultivate crops in the otherwise arid valleys of the coast. One of several successors to the earlier Cupisnique culture, the Virú were coeval with the early Moche culture. Scholars now believe that the Virú and Moche polities coexisted in certain locations early in their history, although the Moche inhabited a larger area than the Virú and subsequently dominated the northern coast of Peru.

Highly similar bottles have been excavated in recent years at Huanchaco, a seaside settlement in the Moche Valley, just north of the Virú Valley (see, for example, Campaña León and Prieto Burmester 2022:216, fig. 430).

References and Further Reading

Víctor Campaña León, Víctor, and Gabriel Prieto Burmester. Excavando Pampa La Cruz: Proyecto de Rescate Arqueológico Las Lomas de Huanchaco. Lima: Ediciones Rafael Valdez, 2022

Espinosa, Alicia, Isabelle Druc, et al. "The Chaîne Opératoire as an Approach to Distinguish Between the Ceramic Production of the Virú and the Moche Polities on the North Coast of Peru."　Latin American Antiquity　35, no. 3 (2024), 672-693.

Millaire, Jean-François, and Magali Morlion, eds.　Gallinazo: An Early Cultural Tradition on the Peruvian North Coast. Vol. 66. Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, 2009.

Millaire, Jean-François, and Edward Eastaugh. "Geophysical Survey on the Coast of Peru: The Early Prehispanic City of Gallinazo Group in the Virú Valley."　Latin American Antiquity　25, no. 3 (2014), 239-255.