Cleveland Museum of Art

Square Bowl with Pampas Cats

Date

500–400 BCE

Medium

Ceramic, post-fire paint

Culture

Central Andes, South Coast, Paracas

Department

Art of the Americas

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

The Paracas often decorated their ceramics with geometricized representations of the native Pampas cat, a small, reclusive, wild feline that lives on the margins of agricultural fields, where it preys on the rodents and other pests that are a farmer’s bane. Thus, the ancients seem to have linked it to nature’s fertility and, by extension, human prosperity and continuity. The animal shown on this bowl is the Pampas cat, a small, wild feline.

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