Cleveland Museum of Art
Severed Head Effigy Vessel
- Date
- c. 100–350 CE
- Medium
- earthenware with colored slips
- Culture
- Peru, South Coast, Nasca
- Department
- Art of the Americas
- Institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
The Nasca people were organized politically into small, competing chiefdoms, and warfare was common. This vessel represents a freshly severed human head (probably that of a captured and sacrificed prisoner) with staring eyes, gaping mouth, and blood-red underside. Modeling of the mouth cavity, tongue, and teeth lends the image a startling realism. Human sacrifice by decapitation was a central element of Nasca religion, essential to agricultural fertility. Severed heads were emptied and dried, then pierced through the forehead and suspended from a thick cord. Such preserved heads have been recovered from offering deposits and from tombs, where they were buried with their captors.
The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.
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