Week 9: The Pre-Columbian Sculptures of Peru

I was really excited when I read about this week's blogging topic because I knew right away what I would share with you: my absolute research project dream of studying Peruvian pre-columbian sculptures. I actually considered conducting a research project on Peruvian pre-columbian sculptures for a very long time, until other passions led me to pursue a different studies and career path away from anthropology. This passion of me for Peruvian pre-columbian artifacts was born when I visited Peru in 2010. It was my first trip in South America and I was blown away by the scenery (we crossed the country by train through both a rainforest and a desert) and by how culturally rich the country was.



(Here are some pictures from my actual trip to Peru. On the right, you can see the Urubamba River, which we were following with the train. Oh, and the pictures REALLY do not do justice to the beauty of the scenery!)

We started our train journey from Lima, the country's capital. We spent a few days before embarking on the train and tried to make the most of what the city had to offer. We read in many travel guides that the Museo Larco was a museum worth the visit (there is a large number of museums and archeological sites to visit in Peru due to the country's and continent's history.) I was already fascinated with museums and anthropology, but this visit to the Larco Museum sold the deal. We had the chance to visit both their permanent collection and their repository (they have a HUGE amount of artifacts and not enough place to exhibit them).



(Here are some pictures from our visit that I took. Sorry for the quality! The idea is to show you how much artifacts are hiding in their repository. The repository is filled with these big shelves full of artifacts!)

Among all the artifacts displayed, I quickly became fascinated with what I thought were some sorts of recipients shaped like faces (see pictures below), as I had never seen anything like that. I learned later in the visit that they were stirrup vessels or whistle vessels and were actual containers made of ceramic.






(The picture of the left is one I took during my visit; the two on the the right are from the Museo Larco's website.)





Near the end of the visit, we were lead to the Galeria of Arte Erotico (Gallery of Erotic Art). I was stunned to see artifacts depicting very raw sexuality and sexual acts. I was both shocked and curious, as sexuality is not something that we are very open about in North America. I was again drawn to these stirrup and whistle vessels, which depicted in detail anything from male and female genitalia, to sexual intercourse and women giving birth. There were many interpretations for the representations of sexuality on these containers, but I kept wondering: what does that tell us about sexuality in these pre-columbian peruvian societies? Why the need to depict such raw, detailed sexual acts on objects such as containers? I realized that we knew a lot about these ancient societies, from their agricultural production and their funerary practices, but so little about the place of sexuality.

If it had not been that I stumbled about Rousseau's Reveries of a Solitary Walker a couple of months after this trip and decided to pursue a Master's degree in French Literature, there is a great chance that I would have ended up back at the Museo Larco, this time for research purposes. I am still fascinated about these stirrup and whistle vessels today, as the reproductions I bought at the Museum Larco back in 2010, which proudly stand in my library, prove it!





I hope I could get you a little bit excited about them, too! I did not post any pictures of the sexually explicit artifacts because I did not want to offend anyone, but if any of you is interested in seeing them of any other artifact from the Museo Larco, please visit the museum's website at http://www.museolarco.org/. You can browse their online catalogue in the "Collection" section.