39. Bottle with fox head. Moche; North Coast, Peru, 500–800 ce. Ceramic and slip, H. 12 ⼀挀 in. (31.8 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gift of Nathan Cummings, 1963 (63.226.6) Whom do the portrait vessels represent? It is tempt- as disembodied heads are often depicted in the hands of 33 ing to see them as depictions of heroic leaders or victori- triumphant warriors and fearsome supernatural 昀椀gures. 32 ous warriors, possibly communal ancestors. The idea of Yet a bottle in the shape of a fox head with a warrior’s a head as a vessel may be less celebratory than punitive, headdress complicates this reading, reminding us that however, as colonial accounts of Inca warfare describe the these vessels often defy precise interpretation (昀椀g. 39). tradition of converting the skulls of enemies into drinking Moche potters were keen observers of the natural vessels. Furthermore, the similarity of the stirrup-spout world, and many of their vessels, particularly those from form to a rope through a skull—the traditional method earlier periods, reveal careful attention to the details of by which heads taken in battle were transported—casts human and animal physiognomy. But it would be a mis- 40 a shadow over any explanation of the imagery as heroic, take to see these as straightforward genre depictions. As