Description: Challenging common approaches to archaeology and sexuality studies, this book explores, in part by physically interacting with the artifacts, how Moche ceramics reveal ancient Indigenous ways of thinking about and experiencing sex.
Brief description: Mary Weismantel is a professor of anthropology at Northwestern University and an adjunct curator at the Field Museum of Natural History. She is the author of Cholas and Pishtacos: Tales of Race and Sex in the Andes and Food, Gender and Poverty in the Ecuadorian Andes.
Review Quotes: [Playing with Things] is written in smart, accessible prose that clearly conveys [Weismantel's] nuanced and innovative readings of what is arguably some of the most complex material evidence from the pre-Columbian world...The title Playing with Things perfectly encapsulates the author's novel and at times nearly whimsical approach to the objects--the freshness of interpreting the bottles by picking them up, smelling them, or listening to them never distracts from Weismantel's deep understanding of the bottles and especially their iconography...Playing with Things should be read by anyone working on the Indigenous cultures of the New World, past or present, and by scholars within Indigenous Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Latin American Studies. It will upend, in the most enjoyable way, many long-held notions about what can be learned from unprovenienced art and hopefully inspire a much deeper appreciation for the potential of meticulous scholarly study to recover culturally meaningful information about the intricate worlds of Indigenous sexualities.-- "American Anthropologist" (11/16/2022 12:00:00 AM)