Square Bowl with Pampas Cats

500–400 BC

Square Bowl with Pampas Cats, 500–400 BC. Central Andes, South Coast, Paracas people. Ceramic, post-fire paint; overall: 9 x 18 x 17.5 cm (3 9/16 x 7 1/16 x 6 7/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, J.H. Wade Trust Fund 2021.130 The Paracas often decorated their ceramics with geometricized representations of the native Pampas cat, a small, reclusive, wild feline that lives on the margins of agricultural fields, where it preys on the rodents and other pests that are a farmer’s bane. Thus, the ancients seem to have linked it to nature’s fertility and, by extension, human prosperity and continuity. The animal shown on this bowl is the Pampas cat, a small, wild feline.