3D Modeling of Chimu-Inca Pottery

Introduction

The preservation of the past is a nuanced and complicated science and phenomenon. An examination of the past is of necessity informed by modern day sensibilities. As Gero and Root argue, “interpretations of the past play an active function, a political function, in legitimating the present context, naturalizing the past so that it appears to lead logically to present social practices and values” (Gero and Root 1990:19). These social practices and values tend to be of Western influence, which skews and distorts meaning of indigenous cultures. Archaeology can only rely on tangible remnants, which are removed from the original social context. The “embeddedness of persons and objects in a social world is disjoined by a Western ideology that maintains a natural discontinuity between social and material spheres” (Gero and Root 1990:35). The presence of Western imperialism in the context of archeology, let alone in everyday society, is important to acknowledge.

Unlike adaptations of film and television, or even paintings and drawing, a 3D model of an artifact is a much more accurate and less risky approach to illustrating the past with a modern-day light. Ultimately, a 3D model based on images and personal eye-witness, is essentially an attempt at duplicating culture from a physical entity into a digital creation. One may think of this as copying the original into a digital platform. However, when adding context to a singular physical object, one runs the risk of assertations and assumptions of what the object’s intended use was, and how the people of the past interacted with it in an organic and natural environment.

Using texts, archeological data, and eye-witness accounts can only create a varying degree of accuracy; therefore, inferences must be made, judgments and decisions exist from which to choose and cherry-pick, and observers must understand that archeologists, anthropologists, and artists’ illustrations of a physical artifact will include a degree of uncertainty and guesswork. During researching and modeling for my final project, I attempted to create an accurate representation of an object of material culture from the Inca people.

Goals/ Objectives

My initial final project idea was significantly different than the final project. I was first drawn to the idea of working with the current human rigs in the class’s possession to create a more diverse selection and representation of the Inca people. I was going to change the morphology into more realistic depictions of an average person from the region of Pachacamac during a certain time frame. After researching the steps necessary to alter an already-rigged model, I realized that the project would be too difficult and time-consuming.

Thus, I decided that I wanted to take a different approach. I then went to the Penn Museum’s online collections and searched “Pachacamac” and looked through many, many pages of artifacts and ceramics from the site (Penn Museum 2019). I was drawn to the ceramics with specific animal and facial iconography (Figure 1). I was fascinated with the function, aesthetic, symbolism and intricacies of these ceramics. I selected a few artifacts and saw that the online collection has multiple images from different perspectives with specific information about the dimensions, materials, dating, and provenience for most objects.

To add accuracy, and for my general curiosity, I wanted to know the background behind the artifacts that I was modeling—what was their purpose, how were they made, and where were they found. Recreating the physical entity of an object does not give the maker a sense of historical preservation; standalone objects do not conserve culture. I did research to understand Inca ceramics and their relation to Inca culture. By reading about the creation and style of the ceramics, I learned a lot about the culture that produced them; leading me to better visualize and understand the Inca people.

Background Research

My final project focuses on objects from the ceremonial site of Pachacamac on the coast of Peru. The site was used over a period of a thousand years until the Spanish Conquest in the mid-sixteenth century. Situated in the northern part of the valley of Lurín which is south of the valley of Lima, along the right bank of the river and 600 yards near the ocean. Pachacamac was the capital of the Ychsma chiefdom and “sanctuary of the eponymous Creator God” and attracted pilgrims from many regions who came to “consult the oracular idol and seek cures for severe disease” (Eeckhout 2013). Pachacamac has been associated with four distinct cultures associated during different periods: The Lima culture existed during the Early Intermediate Period from around 20BC to 650AD, the Wari was active in the Middle Horizon from AD 650-1000, the Ychsma during the Late Intermediate from AD 1000-1470, and lastly the Inca Empire that existed in the Late Horizon from around AD 1470-1533 (Eeckhout 2013:140). The ritual site of Pachacamac preserved its prominence as a ritual and religious settlement for over a thousand years, and uniquely continued the adaptation and evolution of different cultures instead of seeing a collapse after different cultural periods (Eeckhout 2013:151).

Pachacamac was an important site that produced a myriad of intact artifacts due to the dry environment of the region. One of the foremost archeologists in the Andes region is German scholar, Max Uhle. He established a simple pan-Peruvian cultural chronology based on his excavations of Pachacamac, which has been slightly expanded upon as more discoveries were made (Uhle 1991). The objects that I decided to model were both found by Uhle’s expedition.

I started my research by reviewing the information for two objects listed on the Penn Museum’s online collection: a cup (Object 31795) and a whistling bottle (Object 31825). The cup (quero, qero, or kero) has molded human facial iconography, with eyes, ears, nose, lips, and a headdress. The cup is ceramic and almost black in color (Figure 2). The glossy, smooth, and black surface was a typical pottery style called Chimú-Inca common at the site of Pachacamac and along the north coast of Peru (Menzel 1977: 28). To create the black color of the cup and the whistling bottle, the kiln atmosphere was purposely reduced in oxygen (a reduced atmosphere) but carefully sealed out oxygen, so that would make the surface and paste of the pottery more terracotta or red-orange after firing, as Christopher Donnan explains:

When the ceramics reached peak temperature, more fuel was added and the entire batch of pots was quickly buried with sand or fine soil. The newly added fuel around the pots produced an intense smoke that was trapped by the soil burying the kiln. This smoke, in direct contact with the hot pottery, drove carbon deep into or even clear through the vessel walls, sometimes giving the objects a metallic appearance (1992: 20).

The above process only produces a black color, the polished and reflectiveness is made from abrading the vessel’s surface and most likely smoothed using a cloth or piece of leather (Donnan 1965:124). Potters and artists modeling of and incision of designs on the vessel form before the firing process by using a variety of tools, while the clay was still soft (Donnan 1965:126). The cup came from the site of Centinela, which is another site that Uhle excavated while doing research at the site of Pachacamac. Uhle recovered many specimens in its burial-ground, which corresponds with Cemetery VI of Pachacamac. These specimens are the last to be made in the local coast style, as well as being of Cuzco type, and therefore classed as being exclusively to the last era of the valley, that of the Incas (Uhle 1991:71).

The face iconography was fascinating in the way the incised lines of the facial features were relatively unique to other ceramics in the online collection. After research on Andean pottery, I found that facial iconography and anthropomorphic figures are a common theme in the Chimú-Inca style, even though their meaning and what they represent are not always known.

Dr. Erickson showed me the collection of pottery from the site of Pachacamac in the Penn Museum. With his suggestion, I chose one of the whistling bottles, Object 31825, for my project (Figure 3). The whistling bottle that I chose to study and model was recovered by Max Uhle in what he called “Northwest of the Town,” a residential section between the inner and outer walls of Pachacamac. The whistling bottle is common in the late cultures of the north coast of Peru, which is a remarkable area for ceramic production before the European invasion (Garrett and Stat 1977:449).

Some recognizable Andean ceramic styles include Cupisnique, Tembladera, Moche, Huari-Norteno, Lambayeque, Chimú, and Chimú-Inka (Donnan 1997:30). Because the object chosen is in the Chimú-Inka style, I did research on the culture that created it. the North Coast was populated by the Chimú prior to the Inca conquest; the Chimú were the Inca’s greatest enemy until defeated (Hayashida 1998:325). Chimú-Inca style ceramics focused on mass-production, and less so on craftsmanship;, My whistling bottle appears finerthan what was typically made in the Chimú-Inca style. Popular productions of Chimú-style pottery were mold made, with press-molded decoration with popular design motifs of stylized birds and representations of cormorants (Menzel 1977:27-28). Chimú and Chimú-Inca styles also places an emphasis on three-dimensional sculpture and show almost no supernatural creatures of activities (Donnan 1992).

Whistling bottles were created in large numbers and are a double-chambered vessel that have a distinct ”blind spout” which is often an anthropomorphic figure or animal. They have an internal mechanism that produces a soft whistling sound when partially filled with liquid and tilted back and forth (Figure 4). Changing the liquid level in the vessel correlates with changes in the emanating sound. The whistling sound was made by displacing liquid by using air (Menzel 1977; Garret and Stat 1977). These whistling bottles were produced in the northern and central coasts of Peru for about two thousand years, continuing until the Spanish conquered the Inca in 1532 (Garrett and Stat 1977:449). Whistling bottles are a fascinating display of visual and auditory art, despite a lack of knowledge about their specific use in Inca society.

Process

Unsure of my 3D modeling abilities in Autodesk Maya, I decided to first attempt to model the simple cup to get a baseline for how long and how difficult the process would be. The Maya program is excellent for modeling architectural shapes, rigging, shading, and lighting, but difficult to use for the complex organic shapes characteristic of many Chimú-Inca ceramics.

My first steps were to load and scale reference images from the Penn Museum Collections Database into Maya. I used the Bezier Curve Tool to trace the outline form of the cup, and then rotated it around the y-axis to produce the basic cup shape (Figure 5). Unfortunately, the standard selection menu was altered whenever I tried to select the object’s vertices or edges. A classmate suggested that I use Modify and convert NURBS to Polygons with a step-count of around 500. I could now work with the rotated object as a basic cube or other shape. I then added more edge loops until I had enough faces to extrude to create the general shape of the ears, lips, and nose of the anthropomorphic face, but did not include the detailing of the back of the cup at this point (Figure 6). Recreating the organic feel of the face on the cup was not easy. A TA suggested that I use the program ZBrush, which is a digital sculpting tool with specializations in texturing and painting and is compatible with Maya software. I exported my base shape from Maya as an OBJ file and imported it to ZBrush, so I could begin working with a shape. After experimenting with the different brushes, I found that the Clay-Buildup and Standard were the best brushes to create the effect that I wanted. Modeling the finer details and producing an accurate organic form was easier using this program than in Maya (Figure 7).

Now that I understood each program, I decided that the best way to model the double-chambered whistling vessel was to start by making one chamber and then duplicating it because the bottles are connected by both an upper bridge handle and a lower pottery tube. Similar to making the cup, I imported reference images, ones from the Penn Museum. I again used a Bezier curve and a rotation function to make the individual shape, and then duplicated the object. By selecting both meshes, I could combine the two objects into “one” so that even though they were not connected by any geometry, Maya would let me interact with both of their vertices and edges at the same time. Next, I had to create more edge loops so that I could extract the same number of faces from both chambers and extrude their faces, so they faced toward each other from the respective chambers (Figure 8). Then I used the Target Weld Tool to combine the vertices of the extruded faces to unite the pots together to match reference images. (Figure 9).

I did this process for both the connection towards the lower body of the two separate vessels and the connection between the necks. An important distinguishing feature of the whistling pots is the zoomorphic figure. Situated on the top spout of one vessel is “the modeled figure of a monkey, greedily eating corn from a large cob held in its hands” (Menzel 1977:28). The zoomorphic figure has a complex organic shape (Figure 10). Based on my experience with the cup, I modeled the monkey figurine using ZBrush. The entire process of modelling the shape from only a sphere as a starting point was more involved and frustrating than anticipated.

Ultimately, I came close to a realistic model of the actual object (Figure 11). While attempting to export the shape into Maya; the file was too large for my computer. A TA demonstrated how I could use low-poly rendering to reduce the file size. All details of the figure are modeled and saved in a normal map, which I can then apply on a lower resolution OBJ file that is exported from ZBrush back into Maya, which was much easier and more efficient.

Finally, I worked with the TAs to adjust material settings to recreate the ceramic texture and reflectiveness and applied this to my modeled objects, because both are polished blackwares. The last step was to add area lights and create a background for the Arnold render (Figure 12). I attempted to model another object from the Penn Museum’s digital collection, but due to lack of time, this was not completed.

Results

Overall, my research and completed 3D models of pottery vessels from Pachacamac was successful, despite the time constraints and my lack of experience with the 3D programs. My final renders (Figures 13-15) would have been improved with more time to smooth out the shape of the monkey figure increasing the accuracy.

Given that Autodesk Maya and ZBrush were new programs to me and my lack of previous digital modeling experience, the process of navigating the menus and learning what certain tools were used for was difficult. Despite the steep learning curve, ZBrush was easier than Maya because of its tools for modeling organic shapes. Maya is excellent for modeling architectural and geometric shapes, while ZBrush is better at creating more artistic, abstract complex figures. This project and course in general have given me greater knowledge of Andean culture and a better appreciation for Andean pottery, traditions, and artistry by researching objects and creating models from scratch.

Conclusion

Primarily past cultures and societies are understood through what is left behind. In archeology, the archaeological material culture record of pottery, architecture, spaces, prior artistic renderings and those created by descendant communities, firsthand eyewitness accounts of the past, historical documentation, and other approaches give clues to the past. Interpreted through a Western viewpoint, the understanding of how past cultures created, used, assigned meaning to, valued, and interpreted their relation to material culture is implicitly biased. The concept of “understanding” a culture often has imperialistic and nationalistic undertones; a culture does not exist for an outside force or entity’s curiosity. A culture has its own traditions, language, diet, dances, tales, history, art, social hierarchies, and a plethora of other facets that all culminate to a separate and distinct entity, which cannot be fully comprehended by outsiders.

This being said, useful information can be gained from archeological, historical, and ethnographic research. Nevertheless, any attempt at using aspects of a culture that is not one’s own, such as modeling Inca ceramics, must be taken thoughtfully and with sensitivity to the living indigenous people. However, the concept of making a distant society, geographically and chronologically more accessible to the public is an important and ambition venture. Learning through 3D visuals and simulation creates a different experience than solely seeing flat images and reading text. In the context of education and visualization, 3D modeling is an excellent way to create a more comprehensive visual aid to learn about artifacts and interpretations.

References Cited