Book Review: Playing with Things: Engaging with the Moche Sex Pots by Mary WeismantelI first ca

Book Review: Playing with Things: Engaging with the Moche Sex Pots by Mary WeismantelI first came across Weismantel’s work when researching our podcast on Moche sex pots in 2018. For those of you who don’t know, the Moche were a people living on the north coast of Peru in the first millennium CE, probably most famous for their ceramics which depict a wide range of sex acts between humans, skeletons, and animals. We talked about them on our podcast particularly for what these pots can tell us about their understandings of gender.When I was looking into this topic way back in 2018, I found Weismantel’s article “Moche Sex Pots: Reproduction and Temporality in Ancient South America” an interesting discussion of why the Moche may have chosen to depict the types of sex they did, and so I was excited when UT Press got in touch to let us know she’d written a whole book on the pots – so below is a review of how I found it.If I had to sum up Wiesmantel’s writing in one word, I’d say it was refreshing. As soon as I started reading her introduction, I loved her frankness about some of the disappointing realities of modern scholarship; she dives in with a critique of both archaeology’s unwillingness to engage with the “racy” material of the sex pots, and sexuality studies’ tendency to “trot [non-Western examples of sexuality] out of the closet for rhetorical purposes” without really engaging with them. As someone who often researchers in these spaces and wades through poorly-thought out, Western-centric analyses of Indigenous gender and sexuality, it was such a relief to know Weismantel was aware of these issues from the get-go. And while the bar may be low, I was also excited to read a book that explored Indigenous sexuality and gender where the author had a clear understanding of, and correctly used, terms like intersex, sex, and gender, rather than throwing them around in confused and inconsistent ways, as I’ve so often found in this area of study.Refreshing also describes Weismantel’s style overall. This is an academic work – thoroughly researched, footnoted, and at times quite theoretical – but Weismantel’s style remains accessible, easy to understand, and rarely mired down in jargon. I often sit with a pile of non-fiction books on my bedside table that go unread because by the end of the day I don’t have the mental energy to engage with them – but I got through Weismantel’s work over several cosy evenings with a struggle.Onto the content of the book itself – it’s broken down into a literature review, followed by  several chapters about what Moche sex pots do – play jokes, make babies, give power, and hold water. From a queer history perspective, I found the chapter ‘Pots make babies’ particularly interesting. Weismantel explores the question that often comes up when talking about Moche sex pots – why do they show so many examples of anal sex between various figures, but so rarely show vaginal sex? In answer this, she makes a deliberate effort to eschew her own cultural understandings and expectations about sex and human relationships. Instead, she begins by looking at the pots themselves to see what activities or features the pot’s creators have chosen to focus on, and investigate why these may have been important in Moche culture. From a queer standpoint, this makes for a refreshing (there it is again!) look at sex and sexuality that – as Weismantel herself notes – doesn’t frame penetrative vaginal sex as the “norm” or centre the moment of conception, instead creating a wider view of life as formed and affected by a variety of human and non-human relationships. And before I wrap up, I have to mention the photographs. In 2018, I had such a struggle to find clear photographs of the pots – which made trying to analyse them as pieces of visual culture very difficult. But here, the photos are clear, numerous, and taken from multiple angles! This book is honestly a game-changer in that regard.As Weismantel does, I’ll end this review with a mention of the work of Peruvian artist Kukuli Velarde, whose artwork Plunder Me, Baby puts her own face onto pots reminiscent of those made by the Moche, labelled with the kind a racist and misogynist slurs she herself has faced due to her Indigenous ancestry. As Velarde explains of her works, “They all have my face for I had to become each of them to reclaim ownership…” I appreciated this ending to Weismantel’s book, a reminder of something that she acknowledges throughout the book, and that I think the fields of ethnography, archaeology, and anthropology often need to be reminded of - that Indigenous people continue to engage with objects such as the sex pots as their own cultural history, and to be affected by the way in which scholars choose to talk about them. -- source link

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