Skip to content
Pitt Rivers Museum
AboutHire the MuseumNewsletterUniversity of Oxford

1884.67.9

Portrait head bottle with broken stirrup spout.

On display

1884.67.9

Digital asset copyright: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford

Terms and Conditions

If you wish to order a high-resolution image and/or licence its use for print or web publication, exhibition, film, promotional product or any other use, whether in the academic or commercial sector of any print run, then please visit photographic services.

Collection type
Object
Description
Portrait head bottle with broken stirrup spout.
Long description
Fine pottery head with aquiline face, red and white.
Cultural groups
Moche
Date / Period
Archaeological period: Moche Date made: circa 100 - 800
Date collected
By 1874
Acquisition information
Donated: 1884
Materials and processes
Material Pottery, Material Pigment, Process Painted
Dimensions
Height: max 196 mm
Object numbers
Accession number: 1884.67.9 PR Cat other PR nos: 2679
Research and responses

Tumbes is the border province on the seaboard between Peru and Ecuador, the main town is also called Tumbes. [AP Leverhulme project on founding collection 1995-1998] Since the Tumbes region includes both Peru and Ecuador, and since the primary documentation lists the object as from Ecuador (as with three other founding collection archaeological objects) I have changed the 'country' field from Peru to Ecuador. [Dan Hicks 20/09/2012]

Object information provided in June 2023 by Macarena Pérez Selman, VMMA student at the University of Oxford, as part of her research into the potential of a sensory approach to understanding the Moche world. Her observations were corroborated by Dr Hugo Ikehara, Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial/Collection Specialist for the art of the ancient Americas (2020-2022) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Associated publications
This object was featured in the Museum’s ‘web gallery’ (‘Selected Objects from the Lower Gallery’) produced during the DCF-funded ‘What’s Upstairs?’ project, 2004–2006, with the following caption: ‘This pottery head probably comes from the Mochica culture of pre-Columbian South America. Mochica pottery was often modelled into the shape of animal or human figures. Mochica jars in the form of human heads, like this example from the border of Peru and Ecuador, show a high degree of realism. Indeed, some may have been portraits of particular people.

Search terms: Figure, Death, Religion, Pottery, Grave Good