Pre-Columbian, Bolivia, Tiwanaku, ca. 700–1000 CE. A flaring ceramic beaker of classic kero form, its tapered walls rising from a narrow base to a wide drinking rim. The lower body is left a burnished gray-brown, while the upper register carries a polychrome band in red, orange, cream and black, framed by thin white lines. Within it, diagonal panels divide semiabstract half-faces: stepped fret elements, ringed eyes, and hatched muzzles that read as split profiles of feline or anthropomorphic beings. Slip-painted before firing, the design turns the vessel into a continuous frieze best read by rotating it in the hand. Keros served as drinking cups for chicha, the maize beer poured at feasts and reciprocal exchanges that bound Andean communities to their elites. Size: 4.75" Diam x 3" H (12.1 cm Diam x 7.6 cm H).

The kero is the signature vessel of Tiwanaku, the highland polity centered near the southern shore of Lake Titicaca whose influence radiated across the Bolivian altiplano and into southern Peru and northern Chile between roughly 500 and 1000 CE. Its bevelled, flaring profile was standardized to a remarkable degree, a uniformity that scholars read as evidence of state-sponsored production for ritual drinking. Chicha consumption was the mechanism of Tiwanaku statecraft: labor, allegiance, and agricultural surplus were negotiated over shared cups, and the vessel itself carried the authority of the host.

The fractured, geometricized faces on this band belong to a visual language shared with Tiwanaku stone sculpture and textiles, in which profile heads, stepped frets, and ringed eyes are compressed into rectilinear modules. The same grammar governs the Gateway of the Sun reliefs at the site itself, and its portability across media, cloth, stone, and clay, was central to how the style traveled.

Provenance: Ex. Collection of Leo and Beatrice Drimmer, acquired in the 1960’s. To family by descent.

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Item #73198

Intact, excellent condition.