An Exploration and Comparative Analysis of Moche Ceramic Vessels in the Milwaukee Public Museum Collections Kirsten Marie Mottl University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
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University of Wisconsin Milwaukee UWM Digital Commons Theses and Dissertations May 2015 Re-examined and Re-defined: an Exploration and Comparative Analysis of Moche Ceramic Vessels in the Milwaukee Public Museum Collections Kirsten Marie Mottl University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.uwm.edu/etd Part of the Archaeological Anthropology Commons, and the Library and Information Science Commons Recommended Citation Mottl, Kirsten Marie, "Re-examined and Re-defined: an Exploration and Comparative Analysis of Moche Ceramic Vessels in the Milwaukee Public Museum Collections" (2015). Theses and Dissertations. 822. https://dc.uwm.edu/etd/822 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by UWM Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UWM Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. RE-EXAMINED AND RE-DEFINED: AN EXPLORATION AND COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF MOCHE CERAMIC VESSELS IN THE MILWAUKEE PUBLIC MUSEUM COLLECTIONS by Kirsten M. Mottl A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Anthropology at The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee May 2015 ABSTRACT RE-EXAMINED AND RE-DEFINED: AN EXPLORATION AND COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF MOCHE CERAMIC VESSELS IN THE MILWAUKEE PUBLIC MUSEUM COLLECTIONS by Kirsten M. Mottl The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2015 Under the Supervision of Professor Jean Hudson For this thesis, I studied Moche ceramic vessel collections from three museums, the Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM), the Field Museum in Chicago, and the Logan Museum of Anthropology at Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin. All three collections originated around the turn of the twentieth century, with the earliest accession in 1893 and the most recent in 2007. These Moche ceramic vessel collections clearly illustrate the evolving museum documentation systems used in natural history and anthropology museums and the challenges of trying to standardize object names, descriptions, and attributes in the museum record. My research for this thesis included personally examining vessels in the three museums, documenting each piece (when feasible) and taking photographs of the Moche ceramic vessels to link visual descriptions of the pieces to the categories to which they were assigned at the time of accession. Archival information, such as donor files and exhibition files, provided a more comprehensive understanding of the categorization techniques used at the time of accession. Collections in storage and on exhibit were reviewed. The exhibits used for this study are located at the MPM, where the exhibit containing Moche ceramics was completed in 1974, and the Field Museum, where the relevant exhibit opened in 2006, and the Logan Museum’s visual storage, which was constructed in 1995. The study of these exhibits offers an understanding of the display and interpretive choices made by museum personnel, which may reflect the museum’s provenience and provenance records as well as ii perspectives about the objects at the time the exhibit was developed. Evolving documentation and organization techniques directly correspond to the challenges museums confront as they have grown into cultural institutions that reflect their local, national, and international communities. iii ©Copyright by Kirsten M. Mottl, 2015 All Rights Reserved iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1: Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1 Museum’s Evolving Documentation Systems .......................................................................... 1 Goals of Thesis .............................................................................................................................. 3 Methods .......................................................................................................................................... 3 Thesis Organization ...................................................................................................................... 7 Limitations ...................................................................................................................................... 8 Chapter 2: History of Museums and Their Evolving Documentation Systems ....................... 10 A History of Museums......................................................................................................... 10 Museum Collections and Their Uses ................................................................................. 19 Education ................................................................................................................. 26 Exhibits ..................................................................................................................... 28 Research ................................................................................................................... 31 Documentation Systems ...................................................................................................... 34 Implications of Evolving Documentation Systems for the Study of Moche Ceramic Vessels ...................................................................................................................... 36 Chapter 3: The Moche (Mochica) Culture ...................................................................................... 38 Previous Discussions of Moche Ceramics ........................................................................ 48 Preceding and Succeeding Culture’s Ceramics ................................................................. 54 Moche Ceramic Vessel Documentation at Museums ..................................................... 62 Chapter 4: History of Collecting Moche Material ......................................................................... 64 How and Why Museums Obtain Their Collections ........................................................ 64 Donation and purchase .......................................................................................... 65 Excavation ................................................................................................................ 71 v Exchange .................................................................................................................. 73 Rights of Possession ............................................................................................................. 74 Past and present Peruvian cultural property laws .............................................. 74 Discovery and Removal of Specimens .............................................................................. 77 Looting ..................................................................................................................... 78 Current and past excavations ................................................................................ 80 Chapter 5: Categorization of Moche Material in Museums ......................................................... 85 Ceramic Use in Chronological Sequencing ....................................................................... 85 Peruvian Ceramic Vessel Typologies ................................................................................. 88 Fakes and Forgeries ............................................................................................................ 112 Early Categorization of Moche Material ......................................................................... 116 Chapter 6: Results ............................................................................................................................ 118 Moche Ceramic Categorization within Different Areas of Study ............................... 118 How different groups of people may categorize Moche ceramic vessels ..... 118 Cataloging Systems ............................................................................................................. 120 Milwaukee Public Museum Material ................................................................................ 125 Milwaukee Public Museum collection inventory of its Moche ceramic vessels ........................................................................................................ 126 Summary of MPM collection inventory ............................................................ 127 Other Moche Ceramic Vessel Collections ...................................................................... 133 Museum Collections Visited ............................................................................................. 134 Field Museum, Chicago, IL ................................................................................. 134 Selection of the Field Museum’s Moche ceramic vessels .................. 136 Logan Museum of Anthropology at Beloit College, Beloit, WI .................... 138 Selection of the Logan Museum’s Moche ceramic vessels ................ 140 vi Online Collections .............................................................................................................. 143 Museo Larco, Lima, Peru ..................................................................................... 143 Selection of the Museo Larco’s Moche ceramic vessels .................... 144 The British Museum, London, England ............................................................ 146 Selection of the British Museum’s Moche ceramic vessels ............... 147 The