Warrior Bottle 4th-7th century Moche Painted in a style called fineline,” so named for the detailed figures and scenes delicately painted in red slip (a suspension of clay and/or other colorants in water) on a white background, this bottle depicts four warriors, arrayed in pairs and standing on a red ground line that encircles the vessel. The flask-shaped bottle—a less-common vessel shape in Moche ceramics—includes a stirrup-spout, a characteristic feature of Moche bottles. So-called for their formal resemblance to stirrups, a device used to anchor a foot to the saddle of a horse (although entirely unrelated to that function), such spouts are usually located at the top of the vessel’s body. On this bottle, the stirrup-spout is eccentrically located to the side, thereby permitting the placement of a central, cylindrical, sealed element that resembles a bottle spout but does not serve as one (Donnan and McClelland, 1999). The warriors painted on the body of the vessel face their opponen