Perhaps the most famous artifact of the Moche civilization is the stirrup-spouted bottle. Stirrup-spouted bottles were probably used as drinking vessels and those made by Moche potters are arguably the best made and most finely decorated of all ceramic art from the pre-Columbian Andes. These amazing ceramic sculptures portray a wide range of subjects that include mammals, fish, plants, religious and secular scenes, demons and gods, and even detailed portraits of individuals. The deer sculpted on this vessel is adorned with ear ornaments, suggesting that deer held more significance to the Moche than as a simple source of food, and was probably part of a broader symbolic system.

I decided to showcase this bottle because of the fine quality of its execution. It is part of the Museum’s pre-Columbian Andes collection. Many of the ceramic pieces in the collection are stunning, and this one is a real stand-out.
– Ed Fleming, Curator of Archaeology