Beginning with the title—Moche Art and Visual Culture in Ancient Peru—Margaret A. Jackson frames her first book as a comprehensive new approach to Moche visual arts. She proposes to address the corpus of Moche visual culture from an innovative theoretical perspective that “challenges conventional opinions” and “tests operative paradigms” about incipient writing systems in the Americas (10–11). Jackson argues that the perceived visual complexity of Moche iconography may be understood as “neither strictly linguistically informed nor purely pictorial” (149), but rather as an intermediate category, which she describes variously as “semasiographic,” “systematized notation,” and “hybrid presentational syntax.” The organization, comparisons, and language used throughout the volume remain consistent, forwarding an analysis of Moche visual signs.

In line with her overarching thesis, Jackson divides the volume into two halves based loosely on the theoretical model proposed by Stephen Houston for analyzing an ancient system of graphic notation (Stephen Houston, “The Archaeology of Communication Technologies,” Annual Review of Anthropology 33 (2004): 223–50). The first part of the text, which includes chapters 1–3, is thus entitled “Situation,” and addresses Moche archaeology and the cultural context of Moche ceramic production and visual arts. In the second half of the volume, the “Extraction,” Jackson ventures an analysis of Moche notational systems or “hybrid presentational syntax,” a term adapted from Susanne Langer for positioning these systems between linear discursive and presentational forms of communication. In chapters 4–7, Jackson explores various semiotic models and local indigenous languages for applicability to both Moche ceramic molds and fineline painted vessels. The two parts of the text thus provide the organization to introduce the material culture before delving into “the range of complex relationships characterizing Moche iconography” (154).

Based on the research overview and theoretical approach taken, Moche Art and Visual Culture in Ancient Peru is most directly suited for an academic audience, with a focus on ancient American scholars. The chapters presume a readership generally familiar with Moche archaeology and iconography, with certain data and interpretive statements open to refinement or debate since publication. The expressed methodological approach may be best appreciated by scholars familiar with current investigations on writing and record-keeping in the ancient Americas, as Jackson references work by Mary Elizabeth Smith, Elizabeth Boone, Simon Martin, Stephen Houston, and Gary Urton. The author’s methodology, however, may also appeal to a broader scholarly audience through its engagement with semiology in visual studies.

As Jackson notes, scholars of the ancient Americas have sought actively to broaden perception of ancient writing systems. Research in Maya epigraphy, Andean khipu, and Mexican codices have advanced via detailed examination of the visual media—defining a corpus and its social context. In Stories in Red and Black, for example, Boone explicates the “widespread visual language” of late Mexican codices, identifying “pictorial conventions and their general laws of reading” (Elizabeth Boone, Stories in Red and Black: Pictorial Histories of the Aztecs and Mixtecs, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000, 11, 10). As Jackson argues for Moche iconography, however, “the internal structures governing the placement of elements within pictorial space . . . are not reliably sequential in their construction.” She further states that Moche “pictorial order was not strictly tied to language or linguistic patterning, even though this did occasionally occur” (131; emphasis added). For the reader, such qualified statements with selective demonstrations complexify the overall intent, complicating a firm grasp of the fundamental arguments and linguistic comparisons ventured in the volume. A cautious approach to assertions persists through the explorations of logographs, rebus, and syntax as well as through comparisons with local, historical languages.

For comparisons between Mesoamerican studies of notational systems and Moche iconography, Jackson references work by Smith on ideographic to logographic signs in Mixtec codices (Mary Elizabeth Smith, Picture Writing from Ancient Southern Mexico: Mixtec Place Signs and Maps, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973). Jackson compares Mixtec “geographic substantives” with the stepped pyramid motif in Moche arts, positing the latter equivalence as a visual locator (125). The stepped pyramid and step motif are relatively common in Moche material culture, as throughout ancient Andean visual arts. Jackson concentrates on instances of Moche headdresses and war clubs applied to stepped building scenes as visual modifiers potentially similar to Mixtec signs. Formally speaking, such comparisons with the Mixtec images are intriguing. Nevertheless, Jackson does not venture far beyond cited iconographic examples to advance her speculations on the comparative Moche locational specificity or logographic function.

For such a demonstration of Moche sign function, the proposed comprehensive approach to the iconography may present a principal challenge. By arguing, on the one hand, for “a relatively constrained iconographic vocabulary over a period of centuries” (112), Jackson is able to explore broadly Moche arts. Yet such coverage cannot extricate the problem posed by context and change within Moche visual culture. Recognizing differences between stylistic phases of the fineline corpus, for example, Jackson qualifies her proposal at one point by stating that Moche iconography incorporates “a number of highly conventionalized, glyph-like motifs juxtaposed into pictorial space, especially in later phases” (124; emphasis added). Diachronic assessment of the visual modifiers, themes, and selected fineline scenes would perhaps permit further refinement of the study and a more extended examination of perceived differences among sign values.

In the book’s conclusion, Jackson acknowledges the temporal problem in current Moche iconographic studies. She also recognizes the need for greater correlation between Moche visual media, including monumental versus portable arts. For the former, Jackson includes color plates and a discussion of Moche mural art in the introduction. Her analytical focus, however, relies on the latter, specifically on two distinct ceramic artifact sets: ceramic molds and the fineline painted scenes. Both categories present critical questions for the role of figuration in Moche visual arts, with substantive examples available for more category-specific analysis.

Through the selected ceramic categories, Jackson ultimately frames her analysis within late Phase IV–V of the Moche cultural sequence and focuses principally on the southern Moche valleys. In the opening chapters, Jackson thus grounds her upcoming discussion by addressing the correspondences between the sites of Huacas de Moche and Huaca Cao Viejo in the Moche and Chicama Valleys. The connections between such valleys are visually and materially evident. Comparisons between these two Moche valleys are thus worth ongoing exploration as production centers of mold-made ceramic objects and the fineline painting tradition.

Regarding the mold-made objects, Jackson focuses on the incisions applied to the molds while in production. According to her field research, such incised molds constitute around one-fifth of the samples from Huacas de Moche and Cerro Mayal (Chicama Valley), with the figural incisions forming a smaller subset. From this group, Jackson concentrates on molds with rattles or ritual vessels incised on the surface, images that contrast slightly or to a large extent with the interior molds. The juxtaposition of these exterior images and interior molds is certainly curious, with a more comprehensive iconographic study of these motifs left open for future research. For Jackson, these examples serve foremost to highlight a shared, indirect sign function across Moche centers, suggestive of an established notational system.

Jackson logically builds her argument from the more restrictive sample of incised molds to the more diverse fineline imagery. For the latter, she draws on established scholarship of visual shorthand, thematic, and narrative approaches to Moche art (see Elizabeth Benson, “Iconography Meets Archaeology,” in The Art and Archaeology of the Moche: An Ancient Andean Society of the Peruvian North Coast, eds., Steve Bourget and Kimberly L. Jones, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008, 1–22; Christopher B. Donnan,“The Thematic Approach to Moche Iconography,” Journal of Latin American Lore 1, no. 2 (1975): 147–62; and Jeffrey Quilter, “The Moche Revolt of the Objects,” Latin American Antiquity 1, no. 1 (1990): 42–65). Jackson addresses the shorthand and thematic approaches for “vertical telescoping” of compressed meaning (138). For the narrative approach, she examines the complex Revolt of the Objects scene, focusing on the analysis by Martin in order to engage his contrast between semasiography and iconography (Simon Martin, “On Pre-Columbian Narrative,” in A Pre-Columbian World, eds., Jeffrey Quilter and Mary Miller, Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, 2006), and thus to support the former as fundamental to a Moche “hybrid presentation syntax.”

Beyond examining these well-established approaches through the lens of semiology and semasiography, the most critical and distinctive element of Jackson’s study is the exploration of Moche visual comparisons with colonial Muchic language. As a language variant in north coast Peru, Muchic has been recorded around the Moche and Chicama Valleys since the seventeenth century. Jackson summarizes the surviving historical records of Muchic and provides a phonetic table in appendix B, though with unclear applicability. The pursuit of cultural heritage and a more emic approach is honorable and intriguing in certain cited cases; however, the temporal disjunction, limited records, and uncertain cultural and linguistic influences between ancient Moche and colonial-modern sources pose considerable challenges to direct correlations.

Recognizing these limitations, Jackson broaches the language comparison both broadly and selectively. Nonetheless, the association between Muchic language and Moche visual arts appears fundamental to her assessment of the incised molds and fineline scenes. The principal connection rests on the equivalence between visible object (noun) and suggested action (verb)—for example, between the mold-made rattle and its illustrated performance, as these concepts would be spoken in Muchic. That a representational form may index or symbolize larger narratives, actions, personae, or events seems intrinsic to visual arts. What remains of interest then is how this analysis of Moche iconography, via repeated mold production or dynamic fineline scenes, might advance the understanding of Moche ritual actions, mythic narratives, or site histories.

In Moche Art and Visual Culture in Ancient Peru, Jackson engages recent research and debates toward assessing the semiotic value of Moche visual arts. The archaeological and visual data presented throughout the volume reflect Jackson’s field experience and engagement with Moche iconography and its scholarship. Ultimately, the linguistic model and semiotic approaches applied to Moche material culture present the most dynamic aspect of her contribution. As research and documentation of Moche culture advances, similar approaches will undoubtedly continue to be explored for best engaging with the rich complexity of Moche visual arts and ancient Andean studies.