How were Moche ceramics made?
Moche IV pottery was more refined than earlier types, as technology of pottery making advanced. This piece, like most Moche IV pottery, was probably made from a mold, fired in a kiln, and then painted.
What were Moche ceramics used for?
These were spectacular pyramid-like structures made from adobe bricks. The Moche used them for rituals, palaces, administrative purposes and royal burials. Architectural Vessel, 4th-6th century, ceramic, Moche, Peru.
What did the Moche make?
The Moche produced sophisticated craft goods, including mold-made pottery that is among the finest naturalistic sculpture in pre-Columbian Peru. These vessels—fine-quality water jars with characteristic stirrup spouts—bear portrait heads of individuals, animals, plants, buildings, and fantastic or demonic beings.
How were Moche portrait vessels made?
These later portrait heads were created with the use of molds, with multiple vessels made from a single mold or matrix. The vessels were then painted with cream and red slip in distinctive ways, delineating headdresses, headbands, and ear ornaments.
What were stirrup spout vessels used for?
Stirrup spout vessels have provided archaeologists with much insight into Moche society by conveying important aspects of their culture such as social hierarchy, themes of sexuality, and even depictions of ceremonies such as human torture and sacrifices.
Why is Moche important?
The Moche were contemporary with the Nazca civilization (200 BCE – 600 CE) further down the coast but, thanks to their conquest of surrounding territories, they were able to accumulate the wealth and power necessary to establish themselves as one of the most unique and important early-Andean cultures.
Why did the Nazca make pottery?
The Nazca believed in powerful nature spirits who were thought to control most aspects of life. The Nazca visualized these nature spirits in the form of mythical beings, creatures having a combination of human and animal/bird/fish characteristics, and painted them onto their pottery.
How was Mayan pottery made?
The coil method most likely involved the formation of clay into long coiled pieces that were wound into a vessel. The coils were then smoothed together to create walls. Like the Ancient Greeks, the Maya created clay slips from a mixture of clays and minerals. The clay slips were then used to decorate the pottery.
What does Neck mean in pottery?
Neck. Part of jar or restricted vessel between body and rim, marked by constriction and change in orientation of vessel walls. The process of forming the neck is called “necking”. Overglaze. A decorative finish applied over a fired glaze surface and made permanent by firing.
Which culture produced vessels with stirrup spouts?
A stirrup spout vessel (so called because of its resemblance to a stirrup) is a type of ceramic vessel common among several Pre-Columbian cultures of South America beginning in the early 2nd millennium BCE. These cultures included the Chavin and the Moche.
What are the characteristics of Moche ceramics?
Moche skilled ceramists produced a great variety of exquisitely decorated vessels. The decoration is sometimes painted on the smooth surface of vessels ( 67.167.4 ); other times it is tridimensional, forming the vessel shape itself ( 82.1.30 ).
What are Moche portrait vessels?
Moche portrait vessels are ceramic vessels featuring highly individualized and naturalistic representations of human faces that are unique to the Moche culture of Peru. These portrait vessels are among the few realistic portrayals of humans found in the Precolumbian Americas. The Moche culture thrived from 100—800 CE on the north coast of Peru.
Did the Moche make pottery for funerary purposes?
Recent excavations in residential areas, notably in the Moche and Santa Valleys in projects carried out by Universidad Nacional de Trujillo and Université de Montréal, revealed that finely decorated pottery is not only present but abundant in Moche domestic compounds. Many decorated vessels were not produced exclusively for a funerary purpose.
What kind of art did the Southern Moche make?
The Southern Moche tended to be expert ceramicists—producing a large amount of fine, thin-walled vessels painted in slip. Moche artists used only three colors—cream, red-brown or red-orange, and black to decorate their ceramics. Many Moche ceramics were made using molds, and so we have many duplicate pieces.