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Pottery, depicting a fisherman with a lobster trap

This piece of pottery is a burial object, so it comes from a religious context. It shows a fisherman with a very large lobster trap on which a lobster-like animal is sitting. Since lobsters come from warm waters, they are not normally found on the Peruvian coast. The Humboldt Current, which flows from south to north off the Peruvian coast, is a cold-water current and one of the world's most fish-rich waters. It is the most important food source for the development of Peruvian coastal cultures. This is how the first city in America, Caral, came into being as a trading centre between the coast and the highlands. Dried fish and fishmeal were exchanged for cotton from the hinterland of the coast. Camelid fibres from the highlands were traded between coast and highlands long before the Incas. Only during the El Niño phenomenon, which occurs every few years on the Pacific coast of Peru, does warm water, which is normally only found on the Ecuadorian and Colombian Pacific coasts, flow south, displacing the cold water of the Humboldt Current. With it, warm water fish, lobsters and the spondylus mollusc appear on the Peruvian coast. During the El Niño phenomenon it also rains in one of the driest deserts in the world. In the ceramics of the Chimú culture there are many indications of this climatic anomaly, such as lobsters and large warm water fish.

Data Provider
Linden-Museum Stuttgart Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde
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Cataloguing data

Cultural attribution
Chimú-Inka-Kultur
Object type
Gefäß
Dimensions
Länge: 31.5 cm, Breite: 19 cm
Material/Technique
Sound
in model moulded, Scored decor
Current location
Linden-Museum Stuttgart
Inventory number
M 30180

Provenance and sources

when
1472 - 1532 AD.

where
Peru

when
1965
Provenance
This object does not have a confirmed provenance.

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