Moche murals are among the most spectacular monumental works known from the ancient Americas, yet until now they have been woefully understudied. Based on a thorough and thoughtful examination of the corpus, including newly revealed mural paintings and reliefs, Trever’s study integrates a variety of approaches to reveal new understandings of this aspect of ancient Andean art and culture. Bridging art history and archaeology, this volume is essential reading for both disciplines, as well as allied fields of architectural history and the history of religion.
~Joanne Pillsbury, Andrall E. Pearson Curator of Ancient American Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, editor of Past Presented: Archaeological Illustration and the Ancient Americas
Image Encounters is a joy to read. It heralds a new era in our understanding of ancient South America in several ways: through the innovative use of multimodal methods; through a novel contextual analysis that situates the Moche broadly and deeply in time and space; and through a firm and authoritative rejection of reading the Indigenous past through a colonial lens. This book promises to be a discipline-changing work for not only South Americanists but also scholars of Mesoamerica and Native North America.
~Mary Weismantel, Northwestern University, author of Playing with Things: Engaglng the Moche Sex Pots
Image Encounters gives birth to what the author calls archaeo art history, a well-balanced perspective in which she approaches the best practices of two fields of study. Using a splendid and straightforward narrative, the book explores the foundations and trajectories of mural art in ancient Andean monumental architecture. Writing with the soul of an artist and the heart of an archaeologist, Trever chronicles the transition to the mural paintings that covered Pañamarca and other contemporaneous monuments.
~Gabriel Prieto, University of Florida, coeditor of Maritime Communities of the Ancient Andes
Image Encounters is a magisterial account of mural art on the coast of Peru. Trever makes a compelling case that a capacious understanding of mural art—encompassing painting, modeled clay, petroglyphs, and graffiti—best allows us to understand a millennia-long coastal tradition in many ways distinct from the more familiar highland Andean tradition that has often shaped our understanding of coastal art.
~Claudia Brittenham, University of Chicago, author of The Murals of Cacaxtla: The Power of Painting in Ancient Central Mexico
