Masking as Dicentization in Moche Ritual Practice

• In Event: Materiality, Meaning, Agency & Value - II

Abstract

I interpret the significance of ceramic masks recovered in feasting middens at the Moche
ceremonial center of Huaca Colorada, Peru (AD 650-900) to demonstrate that materiality conditions but does not determine meaning in any prescribed way. I argue that Moche masquerade affirms the central role ritual plays in the materialization of the alternate worlds variably described by scholars as past cosmologies, ontologies, or relational epistemologies.
Drawing from Keane’s theories of semiotic ideology and Ball’s notion of dicentization (how ritual converts sign relations of likeness into sign relations of creative connectivity), I contend that the masks of Huaca Colorada, peculiar in their materiality and context of deposition, shed light on Moche cosmology and engagements with the world (“ontology”). The masks were worn by ritual specialists who reenacted stories of creation in rites that promoted life and agricultural fertility. The discovery of mask fragments in middens containing a high quantity of face-neck jars used to decant corn beer further indicates that the masks were displayed during feasting
events staged on ceremonial platforms. The masked figures and their indexical ambassadors,
materialized in numerous portable jars sporting prominent faces, acted as conduits of life-giving fluids circulated among celebrants gathered at the site. In the end, the paper sets out to prove that materiality is meaningless without representation, whether “made present” in language, texts, bodies, things, spectacles, or masks.

Author

• Edward Swenson, University of Toronto