14. Bottle with caiman (front and back). Cupisnique; Tembladera, Peru, 1000–800 bce. Ceramic and post-昀椀re paint, H. 12 ⼀最 in. (32.4 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Purchase, Nelson A. Rockefeller Gift, 1967 (1978.412.203) a vertebral crest terminating in a feline head. The back perspective, the monkey’s legs become the snake’s body, of the vessel features another vertical, abstract pattern and the circular spots evoke the pattern of a predator, the that perhaps represents a spinal column with feathers or macanche. The monkey’s head is tilted because it has been scutes, the bony plates found on alligators, crocodiles, and ensnared amid the snake’s coils. By rotating the bottle, caimans (昀椀g. 14). the viewer observes two animals in opposite and comple- The malleability of clay allows for considerable explo- mentary perspectives, both formally and conceptually. ration of three-dimensional form, and ancient Peruvian The potter gave the monkey, a diurnal animal—and here potters experimented with shapes and surface decoration, the prey—a red, modeled body with black features, such often combining the two in order to subtly evoke multiple as its face. In contrast, the snake, a nocturnal predator, is creatures in a single vessel, subverting simple readings of rendered two-dimensionally in black slip with red body the sculptural form. A stirrup-spout bottle that outwardly markings. Predator and prey, opposing forces, are thus appears to represent a seated monkey, its legs in low relief inventively united. and its head cocked to one side, is revealed to be a more complicated composition when held and rotated (昀椀g. 15). South Coast The other side of the vessel reveals a lightly incised Artists explored color more thoroughly on Peru’s South stylized animal head, shown in pro昀椀le, with a snake-like Coast. On early vessels, such as those made by artists on 16 tongue that extends toward the monkey’s head. From this the Paracas Peninsula in the 昀椀rst millennium bce, paints