Art historian to share details of the lives of ancient Moche society
Lisa Trever
“Image Making and Experience in Ancient Peru: Perspectives on Moche Painted Walls”
is the title of a lecture by University of California at Berkeley scholar Lisa Trever
scheduled at 5:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 8, in Ladd Hall, room 307.
Trever will examine the Moche temple murals of the ancient New World for their spatial
and geopolitical character. Over a millennium ago on the Pacific coast of Peru, artists
from an ancient society now known as the Moche painted stories and mythologies on
the smoothed earthen walls of their temple complexes. Unfortunately, the oral narratives
of this tradition are now all but lost. Studies of Moche art do not benefit from the
decipherment of hieroglyphic texts, as do studies of classic Maya and other Mesoamerica
art. Even the earliest Spanish descriptions in South America are of only limited use
for interpretation. Without much recourse to texts, art historians studying Moche
murals must turn their full attention to the painted images themselves, to their physical
materials, and to the spatial and geopolitical contexts in which they are situated.
In this illustrated lecture, Trever will discuss her ongoing, interdisciplinary research on Moche temple murals that offer possibilities for recuperating—in pictorial form—ancient narratives otherwise lost. Furthermore, archaeological and forensic evidence reveals traces of how the ancient people who saw these images responded to them in their own time. Her lecture will include mural paintings recently discovered by Trever’s own field research at the site of Pañamarca, as well as mural paintings from other Moche sites dramatically set along Peru’s arid coast and lush valleys.
Lisa Trever is an art historian and archaeologist who studies the art, architecture, and visual culture of ancient and colonial South America. She is assistant professor of history of art at the University of California, Berkeley, and holds degrees in art history and archaeology from Harvard University, the University of Maryland, and Yale University. Her current research project is an interdisciplinary study of wall painting, architecture, ritual practice and experience at Pañamarca, a mid- to late-Moche center (ca. 600–850 CE) on the north-central coast of Peru. Her other research and publications focus on the historiography and reception of Pre-Columbian art and culture from the 16th century to the 21st. She is preparing two book manuscripts: Image Making and Experience in Ancient Peru: Perspectives on Moche Painted Walls and The Archaeology of Mural Painting at Pañamarca, Peru, the latter with co-authors Jorge Gamboa, Ricardo Toribio, and Ricardo Morales.
The talk is free and open to all. Sponsors are the Department of Art History, with additional support from Project Vis, the Center for Latin American Studies, and the departments of Anthropology, History and Classics.
