With its wide-open eyes and grimacing mouth, this head jar appears to represent a living person. By contrast, severed heads—also known as "trophy heads"—were depicted with either the eyes or the mouth closed with cactus thorns.

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This large round jar exhibits remarkable symmetry of form, considering it was built by hand; the potter’s wheel was not in use at this time in the Andes. The jar was made by a coastal Nazca artist approximately 1500 years ago and depicts a man wearing a hat and a striped poncho.

Several burials have been discovered in which the head of the skeleton is missing and is replaced with what is most commonly referred to as a 'head jar'. The head jar is a ceramic vessel with a human head painted on it, along with trees and plants sprouting from the head which is known as the Sprouting Head motif. [13]

The double headed snake is a common image throughout ancient traditional beliefs spanning from the Pacific Coast to the Andes of South America. This object successfully unites two sacred animals important to traditional Nasca beliefs. Here, the profile of a jaguar appears around the neck of the container to complement the serpent imagery. To the Nasca people, the snake and the jaguar, both ...

The Nasca (also spelled Nazca) civilization flourished from 100–800 C.E. in the Nasca Desert of Peru’s south coast, located about 200 miles south of Paracas. The Nasca lived in dispersed settlements along the Nasca River, and the site of Cahuachi served as their main ritual and pilgrimage center.

May 16, 2022 · These ceramics are the most colorful pre-Columbian pottery ever produced in Peru. They are painstakingly handcrafted and painted with complex, sometimes dizzying, geometric and natural designs. Rich reds, yellows, oranges, and browns depict scenes of life, death, birth, and war.

According to Donald Proulx, an expert on Nasca pottery and professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the style of the jar suggests a tentative date of A.D. 325 to 450.

Although finely decorated Nazca vessels were made in specialized workshops, recent discoveries in small habitation sites show that the use of painted plates and open bowls was not limited to people living in monumental sites. These vessels were widely distributed among the population and used in households of any socioeconomic status.

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