Nasca, the name of a river valley on the south coast, is also the name of a period (100 B.C.-600 A.D.). The culture is most associated with its modeled and coiled pottery, painted with polychrome clay slips. In 1901, Max Uhle discovered the source of Nasca pottery at Ocucaje in Ica Valley. The designs are varied, including humans, cats, foxes, birds, and sea creatures, as well as a wide range of mythological creatures. One common motif is the "oculate being," a solar deity with large eyes, mixing human and animal features. Following Uhle, UC scholars Alfred Kroeber and John Rowe and their students have used the collection to create a seriation—placing objects in a temporal sequence based on their assumed stylistic development. They found that over time, Nasca pots became taller, with designs becoming more abstract and complex, and with a growing divergence between height and width. Although Uhle did excavate in the Nasca Valley, most of these vessels were purchased without provenience from dealers.
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