Image Encounters

"In this book, Lisa Trever develops an interdisciplinary methodology ("archaeo-art history") to interpret artworks located in deep history, long before the use of written scripts. In order to "read" these murals, scholars must be sensitive to the material evidence and visual perception in deciphering these images. This is the first truly comprehensive study of Moche murals of northern Peru, which represent one of the great, still largely unknown artistic traditions of the ancient Americas, as well as the first art historical analysis of newly discovered murals at the site of Pañamarca that make a striking aesthetic break from earlier Moche sites. Trever also endeavors to place Moche mural art within the broader South American contexts of deeply ancient (ca. 5000 BCE) Pacific coastal traditions of bodily image-making and figural "graffiti.""--