ariety of objects represented in painted and sculpted ceramics (as well as in metal work and a few murals) this art was believed to provide a broader picture of the culture than can be formed from the remnants of many ancient civilizations. The art also depicted characters and events that obviously had religious/ritual significance and the iconography of Moche art has been studied since the systematic study of Moche culture began at the turn of the century. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, however, the evolution of increasingly sophisticated approaches to Moche iconography has changed the general view of Moche pottery as the source of a broad portrait of a culture. Although a great deal can be learned about Moche society from its pottery various methods of studying its iconography (including ethnographic approaches, the study of post-Columbian historical data, the thematic approach developed by Donnan, and Quilter's narrative approach) have shown that extant Moche art, far from depicting society as a whole, is limited in scope to the presentation of only a relatively small number of rituals and, perhaps, myths and that the great majority of Moche sculpted and/or painted pottery is -- in one way or another -- nonsecular in nature. The result of this work has been a marked decrease in the breadth of information about Moche society that can be gleaned from the artifacts but a significant increase in the depth of penetration in some areas. Following a brief discussion of earlier conceptions of the informative capacity of Moche art, the history and limitations on the study of Moche iconography will be outlined. A discussion of the various approaches to iconography, especially those of Donnan and Quilter, will then be followed by speculation on the depth of coverage that these methods will eventually produce.
The Moche lived on the north coast of present-day Peru and their culture can be distinguished from about the fir...