The Moche people were magnificent artisans in ceramics, in gold work, and in their sophisticated and strange (to us) way of life. Fortunately, there are several recent books which have been published about the Moche, all with great photography.
1. Royal Tombs of Sipán
This gorgeous book, written by archaeologists Walter Alva and Christopher B. Donnan and published in 1993 by the Fowler Museum at the University of California at Los Angeles, provides an immense amount of data about the three royal tombs at Sipán. Many many color photographs are included, with fold out images of reconstructions so you can follow along as each artifact is detailed in the text. Heavy weight paper and large format photography make this a coffee table book to entrance visitors, and a readable text to fascinate you.
2. Moche Art and Archaeology in Ancient Peru
Moche Art and Archaeology in Ancient Peru is a volume of symposium articles written by several Moche scholars and edited by Joanne Pillsbury. Published in 2001 as a Study in the History of Art for the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Arts in Washington, DC, Moche Art and Archaeology contains articles on Huaca de la Luna, Sipan, and Cerro Mayal, as well as more general topics as iconography, elites, metalwork, urban and rural differences, and craft production. The large format includes many color photographs and black and white images, supporting an altogether outstanding and informative collection of articles.3. Moche Fineline Painting: Its Evolution and Its Artists
Moche Fineline Painting is a detailed examination of the ceramic industry in Moche culture that involved detailed images painted onto plain and low relief pots. Written by Christopher B. Donnan and Donna McClelland, and published in 1999 by the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History in Los Angeles, the book is primarily concerned with tracing the changes of Moche pottery over the 700 years of its existence. The book also includes chapters on the technology of how the pots were built, and oodles and oodles of fineline drawings reproduced by the remarkable Donna McClelland. A fascinating chapter on identifying artists is included.4. Moche Portraits from Ancient Peru
Moche Portraits was written by Christopher B. Donnan and published in 2004 by the University of Texas Press in Austin. The book is focused on portrait vessels, a uniquely Moche ceramic vessel type in which a skillfully life like portrait was made in clay. Like most of the other Moche books, this too is in a large format, and includes a generous number of photographs and line drawings of portrait vessel rollouts, reconstructions of pot details and other information.5. Sex, Death and Sacrifice in Moche Religion and Visual Culture
Sex, Death, and Sacrifice is a book written by archaeologist Steve Bourget, and was published in 2006 by the University of Texas Press in Austin. While not primarily a picture book, Sex, Death and Sacrifice contains many black and white photographs and about 20 color plates. Bourget approaches Moche iconography together, combining portraiture, fineline drawing and anthropomorphized images of animals and humans, to make a coherent argument about what sex meant to the Moche civilization. The Moche are probably best known for their erotic sculpture in pottery, and what Bourget does is put the pottery into context.