The Inca empire stretched from Chile and Argentina in the south, across Bolivia and Peru to Ecuador and southern Colombia in the north. It represents the largest prehistoric empire found in the southern hemisphere. Its expansion to its full size was remarkably fast, and the characteristics of this state and its operations remain an important topic of research.

Pottery represents one of the most common artefact types uncovered on archaeological sites. While Inca ceramics form the dominant find on Inca sites in the Cuzco region and imperial state installations across the empire, this pottery also remains an important aspect of any site assemblage where the Inca state had a defined local interest. This tome by Tamara Bray presents a beautifully written, elegantly presented and researched analysis of the imperial Inca ceramic corpus. Its nine chapters cover precursors to the style, the vessels shapes and types present, their role in food and drink related activities, their production, the decorative design themes present, the meaning and interpretation of the motifs used, their distribution around the empire and their role in the managing of the Inca state.

Of note is the revealing examination of the ceramics as animated entities understood to have fulfilled roles in ancestor focused expressions in vessel forms and decorative schemes. Some of this discussion elaborates earlier ideas first formulated by Catherine Allen in her 2015 paper titled ‘The sadness of jars: separation and rectification in Andean understanding of death’, published in Living with the Dead in the Andes, edited by Izumi Shimada and James Fitzsimmons (2015).

This volume offers a template for the manner in which pre- and proto-historic ceramic traditions should be analysed. The approach taken gathers information from a comprehensive range of sources including the more obscure ones and succeeds in revealing much about the Inca ceramic complex that until this publication remained at best opaque.

Considering the subject matter, it could have easily ended up a dull report reserved for the truly dedicated specialist in the subject. Instead, it has resulted in a text that is a pleasure to read.

There are a few minor critical points to be made, which do not detract from the general excellence of the volume. Given that the imperial Inca ceramic assemblages as discussed here consists primarily of serving, storage, transport and Chicha (maize beer) preparation vessels, references to cooking are perhaps of relatively limited relevance. Indeed, it could be argued that most of the cooking and processing of food in the provinces will have continued to have been achieved using the local utilitarian ceramic repertoire.

Bray confirms that the localised production of the Inca state ceramics was managed by designated potters from regional ethnic groups who formed the foundation for the imperial Inca production network. However, this underplays the fact that the evident higher degree of control of the firing process, the higher firing temperatures achieved, the greater refining of the clays used and the increased standardisation in execution when compared with the earlier and contemporary local styles produced by these same potters is suggestive of a measure of empire-wide instruction and teaching to these regional potting communities.

Some minor Inca vessel categories, though cited marginally, such as the ‘paccha’, a form of libation vessel present in many of the larger museum collections of Inca material, would have benefitted from a full discussion.

Useful is the analysis of a range of other alternative uses for the ceramic vessels, such as in the production of ceramics, dyes, lighting and heating-related functions, as well as the examination of indigenous notions of what constituted defined vessel categories, as manifested by vessel size differences and decorative themes.

The crossover in designs found on the ceramics to designs found in other mediums, such as metal and textile production, add a valuable dimension to the analysis of the ceramic corpus and forms an interesting aspect of the material considered here.

Bray achieves a masterful interweaving of archaeological, ethnohistoric and ethnographic data sets. I highly recommend this book, which is essential reading for any student of Inca material culture, and of interest to all researchers involved in ancient ceramic traditions.