“THE MESSAGE IN THE BOTTLE: MEMORY AND KNOWLEDGE IN MOCHICA ART” (A PANEL BRINGING TOGETHER METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO MOCHICA ICONOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS, ARCHAEOLOGICALLY CONTEXTUALIZED)
The message in the bottle: memory and knowledge in Mochica art
Mochica art is, above all, a narrative art whose messages traveled through the centuries contained in ceremonial and funerary objects, reaching us like messages in a bottle that we still seek to understand. Over more than a hundred years of iconographic studies, this understanding has been approached from multiple theoretical and methodological perspectives. However, only in recent decades has there been a volume of archaeological information sufficient to establish the contemporary archaeological record as a solid, parallel source, beyond the ethnohistorical and ethnographic sources traditionally privileged. This roundtable proposes to bring together colleagues who have conducted Mochica iconographic research—on particular figures, scenes or themes—from different theoretical starting points, but who share a common denominator: archaeological contextualization as an indispensable basis for the interpretation of images. We are particularly interested in putting these methodological advances into dialogue with a view toward an increasingly accurate understanding attuned to local ontologies and cosmovisions, recognizing that Mochica art does not represent a static world but expresses a changing and relational way of being in the world. The aim is to identify convergences, tensions and complementarities among these approaches, thereby enriching the methodological tools available for the study of Mochica art and of Andean iconographic traditions in general.
