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Steve Bourget's "Sex, Death, and Sacrifice in Moche Religion and Visual Culture" Sex, Death, and Sacrifice in Moche Religion and Visual Culture is the best book about a specific ancient civilization that I have ever read. It deserves to rank among the very best work that attempts to decode systems of exotic inscrutable symbols in order to enable one to see into a very different cultural landscape.It is firmly in the spirit of one of my heroes, Eugenio Yacovleff, a Peruvian Archaeologist of Russian background. His twentieth century works on early Nazca ceramic imagery sought to identify the subjects depicted on vases by understanding the features of animals which ancient potters thought significant and meaningful to their own contemporaries. His careful comparisons stood in contrast to the many biased, intuitive approaches to explaining the ancient graphic imagery proffered by other commentators of the day, including his own bosses at the National Museum in Lima.Steve Bourget carefully, delicately, dissects the sculptures and complicated, evocative fine line images implemented on Moche phase IV and V ceramics into cool modular parts, or meaningful filets, just as one might prepare the flesh of a large fish. He shows how the modules fit together with architectural excavations in the northern Peruvian desert including modern analyses of proteins found on artifacts, the forensics of body decay, and other materials that result from over one hundred years of scientific digs, research projects, and looted grave goods of unknown provenance scattered in collections all over planet Earth, including the consulting room of Sigmund Freud.The ideologies supporting Moche cultural concepts of reproduction, death, dominance, submission, gender, and piety are actualized by warriors and priestesses whose lives and bodies are dedicated to self sacrifice for their society, or at least for its rulers, and for the thirsty supernatural beings, also impersonated by a social elite, who accept the gifts of blood and who occupy elaborate tombs forever guarded by their mutilated retainers.Bourget metaphorically stands on the shoulders of Christopher Donnan, himself a giant in the study of the Moche civilizations, and brings the richness of the several "Themes" Donnan first treated to new heights while pointing the way to several others. His technique is powerful and compelling. Bourget's presentations rely on numerous photographs of the ceramics, instead of drawings and rubbings, which are conveniently arranged in such a way that text and pictures share locality in the book. He introduces the images as "data" or units of meaning which he carefully refrains from analyzing or explaining until all are laid bare on the table.Readers should have the "Royal Tombs of Sipan" Royal Tombs of Sipan = Tumbas Reales De Sipan by Alva and Donnan handy for reference. I also recommend reading Bourget's chilling, macabre paper "Rituals of Sacrifice" as well as other papers in Joanne Pillsbury's book "Moche Art and Archaeology in Ancient Peru" Moche Art and Archaeology in Ancient Peru (Studies in the History of Art Series) to get some modern background in findings and interpretations of recent excavations and exhumations at the 'Moon Temple' and other Moche sites. These other books are not necessary to enjoy "Sex, Death, and Sacrifice in Moche Religion" which stands, or towers, on its own and has a good Moche bibliography.One of Bourget's breakthroughs is to articulate the images of cryptic, apparently deeply serious religious ceremonies led by the Moche Rulers and Priests with "erotic" images on ceramics that were previously unpublished, ignored, and hidden from view while preserved in a special section of the Rafael Larco Herrera Museum in Lima, Peru. These images were largely suppressed because modern cultures classify them as frivolous, irrelevant, fluff since their subjects are apparently "naughty", "perverted", "pornographic," and "sexy." The author shows that they are as serious, illuminating, and coldly factual as the other more familiar scenes of ritual battle and religious blood sacrifice for approaching a concept of what it was to be inside a Moche culture as a witness to and as a participant in its operations, fears, and celebrations. Ironically, transforming this vital sexy stuff by elevating its factual valence as a tool for understanding a religion will probably keep it off the shelves of most public libraries and out of many classrooms. I hope I am wrong about this.This is a fabulous book that has advanced anthropology, archaeology, and art history toward being more scientific disciplines while it brings aspects of the Moche culture closer to us in dazzling photographic images. I can't wait for more!Joseph Holt Woodside
