Since ca. 200 CE, artists in South America have crafted wooden drinking vessels, known as keros, for ritual use. Efforts to precisely date keros are complicated by their commonly unknown provenience, provenance, and continued use within living traditions, including by the Inca and Andean communities today. They are inherited, preserved, repaired, and altered, making it difficult to assign fixed origins to such changing objects.1

While significant research has been conducted on keros currently in museums and private collections, a kero housed in the Columbia University Art Properties collection (Fig. 1) has remained overlooked in scholarly discourse since its donation in 1968. This paper closely examines the kero in Art Properties, integrating existing scholarship with XRF pigment analysis conducted at Columbia University in the spring of 2025, as well as formal, iconographic, and clothing analysis, to support a proposed period of production for the vessel.
 

The kero in Art Properties is a polychromed wooden vessel measuring 21.9 cm in height, with a circular base that gradually flares to a 20.3 cm diameter at the rim. Its lacquered surface shows wear, including chipped paint and a large vertical crack with evidence of post-production repair. Its decoration is divided into three horizontal registers. The uppermost and largest section features a figural narrative (Fig. 2). The middle, narrowest band displays geometric motifs (see Fig. 1 and Figs. 3, 4, 5, 6). The lower band, slightly larger than the middle, depicts flora and fauna.
 

The top narrative register follows a familiar visual formula: a procession of nine figures, each marked by face paint, headdresses, and distinctive weapons. Eight of these figures move toward the right, led by one figure facing the group, followed by a flag bearer and two musicians, with a possible tenth figure above them (see Fig. 2).2 The scene includes Amazonian animals, flowers, and accessories that help identify the participants and suggest the nature of the procession. The figures’ dress, face paint, generalized macaw headdresses, weapons, and accessories all identify them as the Chunchu or Anti from the Inca’s Antisuyu in the Amazonian lowlands.3 The orientation and order of the figures help to identify the processional kero theme as the Dance of the Chunchu, which is still danced today.4 
 

Ethnohistorical accounts provide valuable insight into the use of keros by the Inca. The term “kero” likely originates from Quechua, the language family spoken by the Inca, many pre-Inca cultures, and still spoken today. Diego González Holguín’s 1608 Quechua dictionary defines “qqeero” as “vaso de madera,” meaning “wooden cup.”5 Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, the first Indigenous chronicler writing in Spanish, as well as Diego de Ocaña and Pedro Pizarro, provide visual and written accounts of Inca kero use, documenting their local and elite ceremonial uses rooted in reciprocal ritual practices of sharing chicha, a fermented corn beverage, with the living and dead.6 Keros were typically made in pairs to support their social role in toasting practices, which could take place between individuals, entities, or even groups. Refusing a toast, or a kero itself, was considered an insult.7 In addition to the documentation carried out by these chroniclers, the accounts of present communities have provided scholars with a clearer understanding of the Inca and post-Inca uses of keros.8  
 

Of the multiple colors present on keros of this type, the compositional analysis of white pigments can indicate a kero’s chronological placement. In 2018, Ellen Howe, Emily Kaplan, Richard Newman, and other scholars conducted a study using the non-invasive method of X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy to identify the chemical composition of white pigments on sixteen keros in museum and private collections made after 1532.9 Based on these findings, they determined that lead was incorporated into white pigments after the Inca’s encounter with the Spanish (ca. 1532-1570 CE), replacing the previous titanium and silicon dioxide base for white pigment.10  
 

In light of this study, the kero in Art Properties underwent pigment analysis using XRF to determine the presence of lead in the white pigments as a way of chemically determining its date of production as pre- or post-Invasion.11 The samples were from different areas of white pigment on the kero, resulting in five readings, each of which contained lead (Figs. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11).12 Small amounts of silicon dioxide were measured, and smaller traces of titanium were found.13 According to the study by Howe et al., the low silicon dioxide and relatively high presence of lead that were measured in the white pigments on the Columbia kero therefore indicate it was made during a later colonial period. 
 

Furthermore, the kero has lacquered inlay polychromed wood, an artistic practice that existed during the Inca Empire, but became popular with kero production after 1532.14 The shape of the kero, an inverted bell slightly cinched in the middle, was common both before and after the Inca’s encounter with the Spanish.15 The sectioning of the kero between three distinct tiers (the figural top, the geometric middle, and the flora and fauna bottom) is a distinctly post-Invasion structure, reinforcing the production date of this kero as post-1532, agreeing with the presence of lead in the white pigment.16 

Analysis of the emergence of attire, particularly the musicians’ hats, breeches, and coats, further refines the kero’s post-colonial date. The low-top, felted, upturned-brimmed hats that the two musicians wear (see Fig. 5) place this kero no earlier than 1630, and possibly to the late 1700s.17 As such, the style of the hat alone narrows the date of production to a possible 170-year period, while John Howland Rowe’s analysis offers an end date, 1800. The pants worn by the musicians, which include both the older puffed breeches (see Fig. 6), and the newer tightly buttoned knee-length culottes (see Fig. 5), indicate fashion in the Americas from the end of the seventeenth century until the end of the eighteenth century, moving the earlier end of the range of production to 1700 and narrowing the range to 100 years between 1700 and 1800.18

The formal characteristics of the musicians’ coats (see Fig. 5) indicate that they are not cutaway coats, the primary type of outerwear Rowe uses as a chronological marker. Instead, they resemble hooded or tiered cloaks worn over jackets, such as the Castilian cloak, recognized and depicted in the Codex Martínez Compañón from 1760 to 1790.19 However, Rowe’s cutaway coat argument remains useful. Given the coat’s rise in popularity in France in the late 1760s and the time required for its diffusion to the Americas, Rowe argues this style would rapidly displace earlier styles represented on keros by 1780.20 Therefore, the absence of this coat type suggests that the kero was produced before 1780.21 While a production date for the Art Properties kero between 1760 and 1780 is possible, a date between 1700 and 1780 is probable, placing it firmly in the eighteenth century, differing from its previously associated date in the seventeenth century.  

The present research identifies the thematic procession on the Art Properties kero as the Dance of the Chunchu. Integrating historical context with iconographic and pigment analyses clarifies the vessel’s period of production and enhances understanding of its cultural significance. These combined findings position this kero within the broader scholarly corpus, allowing it to join established examples depicting the Dance of the Chunchu and proposing a refined period of production.
 

This article is part of a larger research project that was developed in the spring of 2025 at Columbia University, made possible through the support of faculty, students, and others. I am grateful to Dr. Roberto Ferrari, Eric Reisenger, and Lillian Vargas at Art Properties for providing continued access to the kero. I would also like to thank Professors Frédérique Baumgartner, Lisa Trever, and Dr. Ferrari for their guidance, critique, and support through the revision process. Thank you to Professors Trever and Zoe Crossland for granting me access to the Columbia Center for Archaeology’s pXRF, to Dr. Clara Chang for XRF training and ongoing support, and to PhD student Adrian Castillo for his assistance with the initial measurements. I am also grateful to multidisciplinary artist Sophia Zapata for rendering the kero’s rollout image and to Tim Trombley of the Media Center for Art History for help with formatting and uploading this research.

• 1

  Catherine J. Allen, “The Incas Have Gone Inside: Pattern and Persistence in Andean Iconography,” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 42 (2002), 182.

• 2

  Thomas Bitting Foster Cummins, Toasts with the Inca: Andean Abstraction and Colonial Images on Quero Vessels (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 195. Jorge A. Flores Ochoa, Elizabeth Kuon Arce, and Roberto Samanez Argumedo, Qeros: arte inka en vasos ceremoniales (Lima, Perú: Banco de Crédito del Perú, 1998).

• 3

  The Inca Empire was referred to as the Tawantinsuyu, meaning the “place of four regions” in Quechua. The empire was broken up into four cardinal territories: the Northern Chinchaysuyu, Eastern Antisuyu, Southern Collasuyu, and Western Cuntisuyu. 

• 4

  Allen, “The Incas Have Gone Inside,” 199.

• 5

  Diego González Holguín, Gramática y arte nueva de la lengua general de todo el Peru llamada lengua Qquichua, o lengua del Inca, (Juan de la Plaza: Lima, 1607), Digital facsimile, Internet Archive, 326 [712/728]. https://archive.org/details/gramticayartenue00gonz. Accessed February 2025.

• 6

  Chroniclers like Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, Diego de Ocaña, Blas Valera, and Pedro Pizarro document kero use. Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, El primer nueva corónica i buen gobierno (Lima, ca. 1615), Digital facsimile, (Det Kongelige Bibliotek: Copenhagen, 2001), 246 [248], 287 [289]. https://poma.kb.dk/permalink/2006/poma/info/en/frontpage.htm. Accessed February 2025. Diego de Ocaña, Relación del viaje de Fray Diego de Ocaña por el Nuevo Mundo (Lima, ca. 1605), Digital facsimile, (Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Oviedo: Spain) 332-333. https://digibuo.uniovi.es/dspace/handle/10651/27859. Accessed February 2025. Cummins, Toasts with the Inca, references kero documentation by Pedro Pizarro, 103-104. 

• 7

  Allen, “The Incas Have Gone Inside,” 184.

• 8

  Allen, “The Incas Have Gone Inside,” 180-203.

• 9

  Ellen Howe, Emily Kaplan, Richard Newman, James H. Frantz, Ellen Pearlstein, Judith Levinson, and Odile Madden, “The Occurrence of a Titanium Dioxide/Silica White Pigment on Wooden Andean Qeros: A Cultural and Chronological Marker,” Heritage Science 6:41 (2018), 1-12.

• 10

  Howe et al., “The Occurrence of a Titanium Dioxide/Silica White Pigment on Wooden Andean Qeros,” 1. 

• 11

  The chemical composition of white pigments on this kero was analyzed with a Bruker Tracer 5 using the GeoExploration calibration. 

• 12

  The XRF measurements likely experienced degrees of contamination that should be considered. The XRF mylar window could not be completely flush against the rounded sides of the kero. Various sample points were smaller than the mylar window; therefore, the readings likely picked up on the composition of neighboring materials. In some cases, chips in the lacquer exposed the wood underneath, altering the measurements. Dirt or other residues may remain on the surface of the kero depending on its history of use, provenience, and previous storage.

• 13

  Only significant XRF measurements were included. Titanium levels measuring between 0.0164–0.0511 wt% were too low to be recorded. The major components were lead, silica, and sulfur. Although the x-axis is labeled “elements,” the compound SiO₂ appears because the XRF instrument converts Si to its common compound form even though XRF cannot detect light elements like oxygen. Sulfur was the only other notable measurement. Its presence may reflect surface contamination or sulfate accumulation from various factors.

• 14

  This change is noted in John Howland Rowe, “The Chronology of Inca Wooden Cups,” in Essays in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961) 332; Howe et al., “The Occurrence of a Titanium Dioxide/Silica White;” Allen, “The Incas Have Gone Inside,” 182.

• 15

  Verena Liebscher, La iconografía de los queros (Lima: Herrera Editores, 1986), 20-21.

• 16

  Liebscher, La iconografía de los queros, 20. 

• 17

  Rowe, “The Chronology of Inca Wooden Cups,” 332.

• 18

  Rowe, “The Chronology of Inca Wooden Cups,” 332- 335, 338. 

• 19

  Baltasar Jaime Martínez Compañón, Codex Martínez Compañón (Trujillo, Perú, 1782–1785) 33, 57, 62, 145, 154, 167. The Codex Martínez Compañón likely reflects the clothing styles Baltasar Jaime Martínez Compañón observed in Lima and the Archdiocese of Trujillo between 1767 and 1790, as well as those he knew earlier in Spain, situating the depicted attire within this timeframe and nearly a decade earlier to account for the cloak’s use in Spain as Rowe has done in his study.

• 20

  Rowe, "The Chronology of Inca Wooden Cups," 332.

• 21

  The use of attire as a chronological marker is inherently limited. For this reason, it is necessary to pair this approach with complementary methods, such as analysis of form, iconography, and pigments.