Bizarre and Fascinating South American ‘Sex Pots’
Dec 28th, 2007 by admin
Ceramics produced by the South American Moche (AD. 150- 800) on the North Coast of Peru during the first millennium A.D are among the finest of the ancient Americas. They are striking for their naturalistic style and consummate craftsmanship and depict a wide variety of sex acts. The pots were produced for elite consumers who often placed them in tombs. These representations solidified the power of ancestors, elders, and elites. Sex is realistically shown; one room in the Rafael Herrera Museum in Lima is entirely devoted to (mainly Moche) erotic pots depicting most sexual practices, some rather imaginative
Their wide-ranging subject matter encompasses much more than sex: On Moche pots, people, animals, and gods go hunting and to war; make music; visit their rulers; bury the dead; and cure the sick.
Collectors have long prized this art; it is estimated that 80 000 to 100,000 Moche vessels have made their way to museums and private collections worldwide, almost all of them from looters’ pits. Like other Moche ceramics, the sex-themed vessels are both functional clay pots, with hollow chambers for holding liquid and stirrup-shaped spouts for pouring, and works of three-dimensional sculpture. As sculpture, they typically depict lively little figures engaged in a startling variety of acts involving the hands, nipples, genitals, anus, mouth and tongue. These artifacts offer a daunting interpretive challenge.
They come to us without context, stripped of archaeological data, and absent any written records. Their meaning is quite enigmatic; but this very opacity, and their utter disconnection from more familiar historical traditions, offers the possibility that their study might move our thinking about sexuality beyond contemporary categories of thought. Alfred Kinsey introduced the sex pots to the West in 1954, writing that the Moche artifacts were “the most frank and detailed document of sexual customs ever left by an ancient people.’’ Hilariously, quite a few archaeologists at the time argued that the pots were symbolic warnings about what not to do!
