About the Archive

This collection includes more than 5800 photographs of ceramic vessels and other objects from museums, private collections, and archaeological sites on the north coast of Peru made from the 1960s to 2000s. A trailblazing archaeologist, Carol J. Mackey has made her photographic archive open for the benefit of students and scholars worldwide.

Click below to view objects from one of these cultures or use the search box above to search through all cultures represented in the database.

Navigating the Carol J. Mackey Archive:

To find a specific image or object in the archive, use the search bar on the home page to query the database by keyword. To browse by culture, material, box, or box theme, select the desired options from the column on the righthand side of the page. You can select multiple criteria from each list to further narrow your search.

Once you have found your desired image, you can click on the object name to view other images of the same piece, or the theme name to view other images that were grouped together in Dr. Mackey’s original slides. Selecting the thumbnail of the image will open a larger view, and once opened, you can navigate through the selected images by using the arrows under the image or the arrow keys on your computer’s keyboard.

Each image was captured from Dr. Mackey’s slide collection, and many times presents one of multiple views of a single object. In cases where multiple views are available, these images have been grouped according to the information provided in Dr. Mackey’s slide notations (primarily focused on their origin in specific collections or texts), and in the absence of this information, are titled by theme or simply as their titles (Mackey, 001, 001). Box themes were additionally taken from the groupings of the slides, and original notations have been transcribed from the slides in the following column.

While many entries have been completed, there is still room for additions and adjustments. Researchers are invited to leave comments below any entries of interest, including updates on the work’s location, cultural affinity, or relevant research. The comments also allow for further discussion between archive contributors. Register for an account here.

To see recent research completed with the help of this archive, please see the dissertation of Amanda Voss Gannaway, a major contributor to the creation of the digital archive: https://doi.org/10.7916/D8F76BKH

About Carol J. Mackey

Carol J. Mackey is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at California State University, Northridge. She earned a PhD in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. From 1969 to 1975 she was codirector, with Michael Moseley, of the Chan Chan–Moche Valley Project in Peru. Carol continued excavations at the Chimú and Inca administrative centers of Manchan, co-directed with A.M. Ulana Klymyshyn, in the Casma Valley, and El Algarrobal de Moro and Farfán, the latter co-directed with César Jauregui, both in the Jequetepeque Valley. In addition to many articles on north-coastal Peruvian art, archaeology, and ethnography, she is the author of Twenty-Four Architectural Plans of Chan Chan, Peru (with Michael Edward Moseley; 1974), Ancient Burial Patterns of the Moche Valley, Peru (with Christopher B. Donnan; 1978), and—most recently— Life, Death and Burial Practices during the Inca Occupation of Farfán on Peru’s North Coast (with Andrew J. Nelson, 2020). Carol has been a generous mentor to generations of Peruvian and US archaeologists and art historians who she has trained in the field.

Acknowledgments

Dr. Mackey would like to expresses her gratitude to the many people who made this archive a reality by their contributions:

--Nancy Porter, a research assistant in the archive for many years. She was instrumental in organizing the collection and initiating the thematic approach to the photos,

--To the numerous volunteers who helped with the archive over the years while the archive was at California State University, Northridge,

--To Amanda Gannaway who first received the archive at Columbia University, for her dedication to its initiation,

--To the Media Center for Art History at Columbia University for their involvement and contribution in giving the archive its present form,

--To Katherine McCarthy for her research and interest in the archive,

--And special thanks to Lisa Trever for her commitment and generous support in seeing the archive published online.

--Spanish translation by Gabriela Cervantes Quequezana