The Moche, or Mochica, created an extraordinary civilization on the north coast of Peru for most of the first millennium AD. Although they had no written language with which to record their history and beliefs, the Moche built enormous ceremonial edifices and embellished them with mural paintings depicting supernatural figures and rituals. Highly skilled Moche artisans crafted remarkable ceramic vessels, which they painted with figures and scenes or modeled like sculpture, and mastered metallurgy in gold, silver, and copper to make impressive symbolic ornaments. They also wove textiles that were complex in execution and design. A senior scholar renowned for her discoveries about the Moche, Elizabeth P. Benson published the first English-language monograph on the subject in 1972. Now in this volume, she draws on decades of knowledge, as well as the findings of other researchers, to offer a grand overview of all that is currently known about the Moche. Touching on all significant aspects of Moche culture, she covers such topics as their worldview and ritual life, ceremonial architecture and murals, art and craft, supernatural beings, government and warfare, and burial and the afterlife. She demonstrates that the Moche expressed, with symbolic language in metal and clay, what cultures in other parts of the world presented in writing. Indeed, Benson asserts that the accomplishments of the Moche are comparable to those of their Mesoamerica contemporaries, the Maya, which makes them one of the most advanced civilizations of pre-Columbian America.

The Worlds of the Moche on the North Coast of Peru (The William and Bettye Nowlin Series in Art, History, and Culture of the Western Hemisphere)

History

Benson, Elizabeth P.

Americas

University of Texas Press

The Mochica: A culture of Peru (Art and civilization of Indian America)

THAMES HUDSON LTD

The Maya world

Crowell

The Maya World

Archaeological and scientific findings underlie a detailed reconstruction of Mayan civilization and culture

Ty Crowell Co.

Thomas Y. Crowell Company

For the first time since Maudslay's magnificent studies of the turn of the century, we have a publication in which new Maya materials are adequately published. Good photographs and easy-to-consult large-scale foldout drawings...This is a detailed and successful attempt to utilize all of the available information, calendrical, mythological, and historical, to reach as full an interpretation as is possible.

Three Maya Relief Panels at Dumbarton Oaks (Studies in Pre-Columbian Art & Archaelogy ; No 2)

Coe, Michael D.

Arts & Photography

Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection

Proceedings of a cutting-edge conference at Dumbarton Oaks on death and the afterlife in pre-Columbian America.

Death and the Afterlife in Pre-Columbian America

Cloth over boards with a sewn binding; 1.75 pounds; b&amp;w illustrations throughout; 207 pp. Table of Contents: Some Observations on the Prehistoric Goldwork of Columbia, Mochica Works of Art in Metal, The Copper Man: A Prehistoric Miner and His Tools from Northern Chile; Pre-Columbian Metallurgy of Northwest Argentina, A Site of Metallurgical Activity in Northwest Argentina.

Pre-Columbian Metallurgy of South America

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