Margaret A. Jackson

For indigenous Americans, in the absence of phonetic script, visual representation worked in concert with oral communication to simultaneously record and transmit society's ideology and values. Several ancient American cultures developed elaborate, systematized pictorial codes, whose symbols had well understood meanings that communicated specific narratives and sets of ideas, suggesting the development of a system of notation. The present study, "Challenging the Paradigm: Visual Literacy and Notation in Moche Art of Peru," explores the visual arts produced by one such group, the Moche of northern Peru (c.100 - 800 AD). To understand the essence of the relationships, I investigate the intersection of iconography, oral tradition, technology and the use of pictorial notation in Moche art.