Ancient Ecuadorian stone mortars: Style and cultural continuity in pre-Columbian art

This dissertation presents a formal and stylistic analysis of Ecuadorian stone mortars made during the Formative Period (3500-300 BCE). The goals of this project are: (1) to group the mortars into categories based on side panel motifs; (2) utilize connoisseurship to identify the individual artists and/or workshops responsible for the production of various mortars; (3) show how the Ecuadorian mortars were models for subsequent variations produced by later groups in Peru.;The basis for this project is the feline mortar in the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia. Forty-nine (49) mortars are included in this study and belong to private collections and public institutions in multiple countries. This dissertation suggests the following: (1) these mortars are the first three-dimensional stone carvings in South America to represent zoomorphic imagery; (2) the selection of animals not indigenous to the Guayas Basin was driven by the animal's iconographic significance; (3) the form and iconography of the mortars was equally if not more important than their utilitarian function; and (4) these mortars initiated a 3,000-year sculptural tradition in the Andes, lasting from the Formative Period through to the Inka Empire.