40. Stirrup-spout bottle with manioc form. Moche; North Coast, Peru, 600–800 ce. Ceramic and slip, H. 12 ⼀挀 in. (31.8 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Cummings, 1964 (64.228.57) art historian Lisa Trever has noted, Moche subjects often neously potato, manioc, and human—a restless, dangerous resist Linnaean classi昀椀cation because the depicted object root vegetable. 34 could be at once animal, vegetable, and mineral. One Other vessels, perhaps likewise inspired by the unusual example presents an unexpected combination of a capricious shapes of tubers, are amorphous, provoking fanged human head emerging from a potato body (昀椀g. 40). perceptual uncertainty. One such example—a swirling The tail and limbs are shaped like the roots of manioc, mash-up of recognizable features, including a grimacing another important vegetable in the ancient Andes, while mouth with fangs, nostrils, eyes, and legs, but also 昀椀ns the limbs are positioned to evoke the movement of an and a beak—is at once a complex composite of a wrinkled insect or a crustacean. By manipulating clay and pigments, human face, an owl, seals or 昀椀sh, and a crustacean water and 昀椀re, this artist created a being that is simulta- (昀椀g. 41). The composition blurs the boundaries between 41