#membranophone

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Drum, ca. 1st century
Unknown, Nasca (Peru)

-Materials: Ceramic
-Length: 45.1 cm • Diameter: 25.4 cm
-Other Notes: “Ceramic drums with central, bulging sounding chambers were made in southern Peru at the turn of the first millennium. Among the most elaborately finished are those of Nasca style. A favored form was one in which a fat-bodied figure was worked into the shape of the instrument. The figure is depicted atop the wide mouth of the drum, over which a skin would have been stretched. The image is symbolically complex; a snake emerges from under the figure’s chin and a killer whale outlines each eye. The killer whales are in profile and show the ‘two-tone’ color differentiation normally given them in Nasca depictions. A headband is wound around the head and tied to form a hornlike projection on the forehead. In back, the figure’s hair is shown as serpents with long tongues.”