Event: PIZZA TALK: Decoding Andean Formative Iconography: Didactic Images, Esoteric Knowledge, and the Emergence of Complexity on the North Coast of Peru

Dr. Cathy Lynne Costin, Professor, Department of Anthropology, CSU Northridge

Revisiting North Coast Formative Period Ceramic Iconography:  the Case for Foundational Ritual Power

In my current research, I am building an argument that a larger proportion of North Coast Formative ceramic iconography reflects the consumption of therapeutic and psychoactive substances than is generally acknowledged in recent scholarship and that both the content and mode of these images inform us about the processes through which emerging elites began to consolidate their power.  First, I propose that far more of the three dimensional forms reference psychoactive substances than current interpretations enumerate and that many images allude to mental and bodily experiences associated with altered states of consciousness.  Then, I suggest that two dimensional motifs rendered in faint, postfire incisions discernable only to those in close proximity to the vessels record tightly-controlled esoteric knowledge concerning the preparation and ingestion of psychoactive substances and/or the interpretation of visionary experiences.  All told, I demonstrate how ritual specialists controlled and deployed sacred imagery and ritual knowledge during the time in which social complexity first developed in the Andean region.