Messengers of the wind: an analysis of the panpipe players depicted on Moche and Nasca ritual ceramics

• Grant number: 09/03686-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: August 01, 2009
• End date: April 30, 2011
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Archeology
• Principal Investigator: Maria Isabel D'Agostino Fleming
• Grantee: Daniela La Chioma Silvestre
• Host Institution: Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia (MAE). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This paper aims to systematize and analyse the artifacts, pertaining to a variety of museum's collections, which iconography or morphology can be ascribed to depictions of characters holding or playing panpipes on Moche and Nasca ritual pottery. We start from the premise that these representations appear in a set of ceramic artifacts produced according to a rigid standardization, controlled by elites holding the political and religious power. Thus, the way these musicians are displayed on pottery can reveal much about their social role, the imaginary place they hold in the minds of the Moche and Nasca peoples, their relation to the worldview and with their local power structures, as well as the symbolism of this sound instrument to these societies in the Pre-Columbian Andes. (AU)