Chancay Decorated Amphora with Two Figures

Two tiny figures keep watch from the shoulder of a very large jar.

This decorated amphora with two figures is Chancay, from Peru, dated 1200 to 1500 CE, and made of terra cotta. The Chancay people of the central coast of Peru, in the centuries before the Inca arrived, made large jars like this to store and serve liquids such as chicha, a maize beer, and many were later placed in burials. Painted panels of stepped zigzags and diamonds cover the upper body, with a checkered lattice at the center. Ring handles sit at the sides. The lower third is left bare and stained in places. Twenty-one inches high.

It has outlasted the people who painted it, by several centuries.