Severed Head Effigy Vessel

c. 100–350 CE

Peru, South Coast, Nasca

Medium

earthenware with colored slips

Measurements

Overall: 22 x 20.5 x 24.5 cm (8 11/16 x 8 1/16 x 9 5/8 in.)

Credit Line

James Albert and Mary Gardiner Ford Memorial Fund 1997.2

You can copy, modify, and distribute this work, all without asking permission. Learn more about CMA's Open Access Initiative.

Location

Not on view

Description

The Nasca people were organized politically into small, competing chiefdoms, and warfare was common. This vessel represents a freshly severed human head (probably that of a captured and sacrificed prisoner) with staring eyes, gaping mouth, and blood-red underside. Modeling of the mouth cavity, tongue, and teeth lends the image a startling realism. Human sacrifice by decapitation was a central element of Nasca religion, essential to agricultural fertility. Severed heads were emptied and dried, then pierced through the forehead and suspended from a thick cord. Such preserved heads have been recovered from offering deposits and from tombs, where they were buried with their captors.