Chavín
‘The term Chavín has always been over-extended. Since
1919 it has come to mean less and les in an ever-widening circle.’ Kubler’s
statement hints at the problem of naming an area of archaeological study. One
can name it after the most prominent source of artefacts, in this case Chavín
de Huántar,
but this tends to create misunderstandings about the nature and extent of the
site’s importance.
Some scholars have claimed Chavín art in Ecuador, Bolivia, at
Tiahuanco, Argentina, at Barreales, and northern Chile, at Pichalo. More
generally it has been used as an umbrella term for the bulk of Peruvian culture
between 1400 and 300BC. Rafael Larco Hoyle believes that Chavín
culture began with the Cupisnique people on the northern coast between Jequetepeque
river and Chicama river and was carried by them to Chavín de Huántar and other highland sites.
Julio Tello thought it was brought to the coast by a migration from the Andes.
Alan Lapiner proposes that it started in the tropical forests to the east, then
developed in the highlands, because the animals which form the Chavín
iconography are largely jungle animals. The latter is the only theory which is
based on specifically Chavín characteristics – the conventionalised representations
of animal deities.
Geographically Peru is a land of complete contrasts. To the
west is the Pacific desert coast, which has virtually no rain, though several
rivers run through it to the coast. To the east is the spine of Peru, part of
the Andean mountain range – altitude in this case is more important than
latitude. The range forms the source of all the major rivers running to the
coast and are often forested. But further up ice and snow persist throughout
the year. The Indians of the Andean highlands have unusually large lungs
adapted to the low oxygen content of the air which may be half of that at sea
level. To the east of the Anders are the tropical humid lowlands of the upper
Amazon jungle. In the lower half of northern Peru the Santa river flows north
between parallel mountain chains and then flows into the Pacific at right
angles to its upper course. In the east, and parallel to the Santa, is the Marañón river,
a tributary of the Amazon. Between Santa and the Marañón, on a
small tributary of the upper Marañón (the Mosna) stands Chavín
de Huántar.
Although much of central Peru in uncultivable, the snowclad
mountains being too high for agriculture or habitation, much of the ancient
civilisation, apart from the river mouths on the coast, was in the highlands.
The intermontane valleys being relatively fertile and wooded with occasional grassy
fields. Agriculture was rapidly becoming the main source of food supply. Consequently
fishing, hunting and wild-food foraging were of less importance, except in the
coastal sites where the sea yielded ample quantities of marine food, fish,
shellfish and marine mammals. About 900-800BC an improved variety of maize had
been introduced as the staple food, but beans and gourds continued to be used.
Warty squashes, avocados, and manioc or yucca were also cultivated extensively.
The theory is that post-harvest leisure time and more efficient and stable
means of livelihood enabled the people to develop technology, art, and the
higher aspects of culture. This is probably true, but indolence is not
necessarily a recipe for development, and nomadic, hunting peoples are well
able to produce ‘culture’. However, settled people are more likely to produce
lasting, monumental, religious centres entailing the work of several
generations.
As well as domestication of plants, animals seem to have
been domesticated at this time. Llamas had been brought down from higher
altitudes, but not in great numbers, both for meat and for carrying loads such
as other crops across mountainous terrain. Domesticated dogs, unknown earlier
in Peru, may have been used for herding the llamas. As for technology, drainage
and irrigation must have been in a fairly primitive stage since most of the
population lived on the edges of the fertile areas at the mouths of rivers.
Since not much of the land away from the deltas and course of the rivers could
be cultivated without efficient irrigation the population must have been
relatively small.
The houses were small, one room, rectangular structures with
thatched gable roofs, not generally group in regular street plans. They stood
on raised stone-faced platforms, but the walls were generally of mud, made into
conical adobe bricks. These were laid with the flat end to the outer surface,
the interstices filled with mud and a smooth mud plaster given to the wall
faces. Occasionally, where suitable stone was available, the houses were built
of stone. In other words it was not a general population’s lack of building
knowledge that made the use of sun-dried mud widespread, but merely the
exploitation of the most readily available and easily workable material.
The dead were buried in deep graves in the coastal desert. Cupisnique,
however, which is one of the richest grave sites, is relatively shallow – 2 ½ to
6 foot (80 centimetres to 2 metres). The people were buried with previously
unworn clothes, food, drink, pottery vessels, baskets, mats and other utilitarian
objects, as well as jewellery, ornaments and, occasionally, feline theistic
symbols. They were fully equipped for safe passage to, and life in, an
afterlife. The bodies were interred horizontally, not in bundles, and were not
oriented to any particular cardinal or ordinal compass direction. The bones were
covered with a red pigment, probably cinnabar, so the bodies could not have
been placed in their final, secondary, grave until after the flesh had decayed.
The alternative to the theory of an initial, less ceremonious grave, is that
the bones were painted when the graves were reopened to receive fresh bodies.
The first theory seems more likely despite the problems of hygiene.
Ordinary clothing, at least for the males, was a loincloth
and cap, but in the graves a large variety of bone ear ornaments and finger
rings, bracelets or wristlets, crowns, stone bead necklaces, feather
headdresses and capes have been found. The body, in life, may also have been
decorated with paint. Skull deformation, as with other Pre-Columbian societies,
was quite common. Tapestry and embroidery were made, as well as plain weaves, a
lace-like gauze, and gingham, all embellished with fringes and tassels. The
vast majority of the textiles are of cotton. As well as bone, shell and wood
ornaments, some of the beads, pendants, rings, combs and so on were made of
semi-precious stones. Turquoise, quartz and lapiz lazuli were used, which must
have required prolonged work without the use of metal tools. Mirrors were also
made, by polishing pyrite and jet. Other utilitarian objects, other than
pottery and twined bags or mats of totora reed, tended to be made of stone,
bone or wood. Stone was used for hammers, club-heads, projectile points,
mortars, pestles, bowls and boxes. Bone and wood, used either separately or in
conjunction, was used for spear-throwers. An object of chonta palm wood, found
at Ancón,
has been claimed to be a bow. If so, it is one of the earliest, but it cannot
have been much more than an experiment as spears and spear-throwers were the most
common weapon. Clubs and boxes of wood were found, and various awls, spatulas,
needles, daggers and spoons.
Some of the earliest American metallurgy belongs to the “Chavín
horizon”. Some are pure gold, others mixed, probably unintentionally, with
silver and copper. However genuine bimetallic objects have been discovered, one
pin has a gold head and a silver shaft. Hammering, embossing, annealing,
welding, soldering, strap joining, incising, champlevé and cut-out designs were
known, but casting, as such, and the lost wax method had not been developed.
The gold was usually painted with coloured pigments. A large range of objects were
made, usually decorative, including pendants, tweezers, staff-heads, crowns,
ear and nose ornaments, cuffs, pins, gorgets, spoons, beads and many plaques.
The designs are usually conventionalised elements of humans and animals, or are
totally abstract.
Pottery and its decoration varied with the area and period
of manufacture. But many designs were incised, stamped or modelled. Rocker
stamping was made by rocking a shell backwards and forwards in the wet clay to
produce a series of indentations. This was usually used in conjunction with
areas of incised lines to produce contrast. Many of the potsherds from Chavín
de Huántar
demonstrate this technique. Towards the end of the horizon, from 400BC, ceramic
pigments became popular. A type of pottery, found both at Chavín
and Cupisnique, was decorated with a silvery-black graphite paint applied to
cover zones which were frequently bounded by narrow incisions made when the
paste was dry. Also, at this time, on the south coast of Peru beyond Chavín influence,
the incised details were coloured after firing with powdered mineral pigments
mixed with resins to form a lacquer-like coating.
Quality pottery, from this horizon anyway, is not centred
around Chavín
de Huántar.
It seems to come primarily from the coast rather than the highlands. The Chavín
pots are simple shapes, mainly open bowls with thickened rims. Similar
potsherds have been found in the lowest levels of the shell-heaps at Ancón and
Supe. Utilitarian pottery may have been fairly similar throughout Peru; the
reason that the coastal finds, especially at Cupisnique, are superior, is
because they were mortuary furniture, designed to be attractive rather than
useful. However they are still thick, with heavy walls, and baked at a low
temperature producing a red, black or brown colour. Only later in the period do
a few vessels of lighter colour appear. The most typical shape, unknown at Chavín,
is a stirrup-spouted jar where the form of the spout and the handle are
combined in a “stirrup” shape. The body of the pot may be incised with a
seemingly abstracted combinations of feline, aviary, serpent and human motifs.
Combinations of incised, scored and relief projections may be used. Many of the
more figurative pots represent fruit and food forms as well as human or anthropomorphic
animal forms. These animals include feline types, a bird of prey type, a
serpent, parrots, dogs, coatimundi, llama and deer. The first three of these
tend to be more conventionalised and sometimes combined with each other or with
anthropomorphic figures. As the representation of these creatures is more
abstracted, it is logically to conclude that they are more conceptually
abstract and that their role in mortuary furniture is not merely aesthetic.
This is corroborated by designs found in temples, particularly at Chavín
de Huántar.
These forms are closer to the incised pottery designs than the more
three-dimensional forms of many of the pots. There seems to be a closer
religious link than aesthetic link.
There is nothing in Chavín art to parallel the rather
naturalistic treatment of some of the human and more domestic animal forms at
Cupisnique. The feline representation was quite influential in Peruvian pottery,
most directly in Paracas, indicating a widespread feline cult, of which Chavín,
despite the difference in style, is the major example at this time and in this
area.
Of the major sites, other than Chavín de Huántar, that are supposed to be
thoroughly “Chavín”, there emerges a similar tension between similarities
and differences. Cerro Sechín, in the lower Casma valley, is
notable for a row of upright slabs, varying in height between 5 ½ and 14 ½ feet
(1.6 to 4.4 metres). They consist of a number of incised figures and heads,
probably representing warriors and captured sacrifices. The poses, compared to
the static Chavín symbolism, are more dynamic and naturalistic, and have
been compared to the “dancing figures” at Monte Alban, Mexico. This anomaly is
usually explained by making Cerro Sechín a sub-culture of Chavín.
A different culture would seem a more satisfactory description. Tello has tried
to describe the eyes of the warriors as Chavín feline because they are
rectangular. This would probably be insufficient in itself even if Chavín
feline eyes were rectangular. Of the buildings at Cerro Sechín,
the conical adobes laid point to point, with circular bases forming a pattern
of roundels on the wall faces, are characteristic of the Chavín
style along the coastal valleys. But it could be argued that building
techniques are less sensitive to variation than aesthetic styles, since conical
adobes were quite widespread, both preceding and outlasting Chavín.
They are still sometimes used today. Moxeke lies about two miles south-east of
Sechín.
The only vaguely Chavín imagery is in one of the niches containing carved and
painted clay figures. It shows four serpents, painted red and blue, dangling
from the arms of a human torso.
Punkurí is in the Nepeña valley. Near the bottom of the upper flight of
stairs, ascending the terraced platform, is a painted jaguar modelled of clay
over a stone core. Kubler argues that this is not Chavín
because it is in the round. But over the page from his illustration of Punkurí there is
an almost identical jaguar in a reconstruction of Cerro Blanco, which he
accepts as Chavín. Although typical Chavín is a two dimensional style,
these jaguar heads, unlike the pottery styles, are quite similar to the tenoned
heads at Chavín de Huántar. One of the walls behind the
stair at Punkurí is incised in a Chavín style. At Cerro Blanco the
mud-covered walls were painted with dismembered Chavín elements.
At Kuntur Wasi, near Cajamarca, Chavín-type stone sculptures have
been found along with three-dimensional statues of felinised human
beings unlike any found at Chavín. In the Mocha Valley Chavín-style
clay friezes have recently been found at Huaca de los Reyes by Luis Watanabe
and Michael Mosley. At Chongoyape in the Lambayeque Valley three large gold
crowns were found, one of which resembles the Raimondi stela. In general,
though, it seems that these sites are allied to Chavín de Huántar more by the presence of a
similar religious culture than their visual aesthetics. If one were to define
Chavín
only as an art style, then, somewhat pedantically, one would have to admit only
Chavín
de Huántar
as being thoroughly “Chavín”.
The land available for agriculture in the small valley
surrounding Chavín de Huántar is limited and could never have
supported a large population; but recently the Peruvian archaeologist Marino
Gonzales Moreno has reported ancient occupation debris from the area of the
modern village of Chavín. So the temple had a supporting settlement but it is
unlikely that the villagers were the sole users or builders. A large labour
force must have been used in its construction and the temple was likely to be
the focus of their religious observance.
One Spanish chronicler, Antonio Vázquez de Espinosa, described it as:
‘a large building of huge stone blocks, very well wrought; it was a guaca, one
of the most famous of the heathen sanctuaries, like Rome or Jerusalem with us;
the Indians used to come and make their offerings and sacrifices, for the Devil
pronounce many oracles from here, and so they repaired here from all over the
kingdom.’
It would be surprising if Chavín was such a major centre at
the time of the Spanish conquest, but credence can easily be given to the idea
that people came from a wide area of Peru to meet, to trade, and to make
offerings and to hear priests. The complex contains many rooms and they were
almost certainly ceremonial not residential. The sunken courts, platforms,
terraces, plazas and buildings seem to be oriented, principally, on an
east-west axis though there are no other signs of sun worship or astrological
observation. The complex covers 800 square feet (250 square metres) in all, of
which the largest building, called the Castillo by the Spanish, covers 245 by
235 feet (75 by 72 metres). They probably considered it square and it conforms
to the cardinal axes.
Inside the Castillo are many galleries and chambers set at
different levels connected by stairways. They are pierced by numerous vertical
and horizontal ventilating shafts leading to holes at the top of the walls. The
ground plan presents an unorganised maze of walls, galleries, rooms, stairs and
ramps, but they all belong to the basic plan of three superimposed platforms,
15 metres high in total. The walls are extremely thick and took up more cubic
space than the rooms and galleries, which are about 6 to 16 feet. There are no
external windows or doorways except for the main entrance to the first floor,
reached by a stairway of rectangular blocks. The outer walls slope inwards
towards the top and are set slightly back in narrow terraces. The roof was
covered with earth, which may have provided a foundation for small, rectangular
buildings on top. But, even if this were so, the Castillo was not built as
platforms to support a temple – the Castillo was the temple.
Niches inside the Castillo, rectangular but of various sizes,
could be used for offerings, as could the galleries. In the so-called Gallery
of the Offerings several hundred pots containing guinea pig, llama and fish
bones as well as marine shells were found. The latter would have to be brought
at least 144 kilometres over a route crossing two mountain ranges. Possibly,
too, people would be prepared to travel those sort of distances to trade at
Chavín.
Since, as Lapiner points out, Chavín iconography owes a debt to jungle
animals, Chavín may have served as a trading centre between the
highlands and the coast to the west and the fringes of the jungle to the east.
However there seems little evidence of secular wealth, or secular political
power, at Chavín.
No-one is sure if the complex was built in several stages,
and if so, what the stages were. It has been said that the three floors of the
Castillo were built at three different times. The oldest part may not be the
Castillo square but in two adjacent groups of superimposed galleries laid out
in the form of a rough cross. In the centre of the lower gallery is the Lanzon
facing a small open square. The design of this secondary sunken plaza may echo
a design on the head of the Lanzon – it is round, with avenues off it on the
cardinal axes. This may be speculation, but not unreasonable speculation, that
the different style of the Lanzon, and the presence of a second plaza, may
indicate an older ceremonial complex than the Castillo and square plaza. The
dating of the complex, then, is uncertain; too many prejudiced assumptions can
be made on the basis of sophistication, for example the thick heavy walls and
narrow passages devoid of light were probably built at the same time as the
efficient ventilation and, elsewhere on site, irrigation.
Along the outer walls was a row of large, projecting, carved
heads, inserted by tenons, which encircled the building below a decorated
cornice. The heads are all individual human/feline combinations, veering from
the most human to the most feline. The cornice displays profile feline and
serpent bodies at the south-west and the spread-wing dorsal view of condors at
the north-east. The felines have round eyes with the pupil at the top; rectangular
mouths with rounded corners and crossed fangs; brow, whiskers and hair in the
form of snakes; fur markings as figure of eights with eyes; tails and legs
conceived as stylised tongues protruding from extra mouths; bird of prey feet
with talons plus a frontal head near the end of the tail. The snakes in the
cornice have the same eyes and mouths, including teeth and crossed fangs, and
are marked with the circle and dot common to feline pelage. The condors, or
bird of prey type, vary, but typical features include profile feline mouths, as
well as their beak, and frontal feline teeth at the top of the tail and legs.
In one of the galleries already mentioned stands a carved
white granite monolith, 4.53 metres high, known as The Great Image or Lanzon. Lanzón
is Spanish for a short, thick dagger with the tapering body conceived as the
blade and the slender upper half as the handle. In actuality it represents an anthropomorphic
feline with its left arm along its side as part of the body and the right arm raised.
Claws are set at the end of the fingers and toes. The thick lips are turned up
at the corners, with a single fang in each side of the mouth. Snakes represent
eyebrows and hair and a large ornament hangs from each ear. Both the waist and
the upper part of the shaft are ornamented with the faces of felines, all of
which have the pupils of the eyes looking upwards in relation to their head.
Although these profile heads only have upper fangs, they are given the
appearance of having crossed fangs by placing the heads in alternate directions
and joined at the mouth.
The Tello Obelisk is the most complicated and ambiguous
conjunction of feline and other elements at Chavín de Huántar. The overall framework
possibly represents a cayman. If, as has been suggested, it represents a
feline, the placing of the front paws forward, and back paws backward, may
indicate a leaping pose, as it does in one particular gold jaguar plaque. But
they could also be interpreted as representing the posture of cayman feet. The
strongest evidence, however, for identification as a cayman is the overall
shape, particularly of the head, with its row of fangs. If the tail is thought
of as a fish tail, that would strengthen the idea of an aquatic deity, but it
might equally represent a bird’s tail. There are many other avian, human,
serpent and feline designs within the composition – the most notable, possibly,
being the so-called spinal column, which has feline cross-fangs.
Facing the plaza is a portal, the south half of which is
built of white granite while the north one is made of black limestone. Rowe has
therefore termed this the Black and White Portal. On each of the two columns
which flank the doorway on this portal is a figure in low relief, with the
body, legs and arms of a human, and the head, wings and claws of a bird of
prey. The bird elements on the south column have been identified as those of an
eagle, while the north is thought to be a hawk. The head, out of keeping with
the rest of the body, is shown in profile and tilted upwards. It consists of a
slightly feline face with three fangs, and a beak at the front, and serpents on
top. Frontal and profile feline heads decorate the whole body, joined by
serpents on the wings. Stylised projections at an angle between the legs and
the body would, on a conventional representation of a bird of prey, be the legs
and where the human legs are placed would be the tail. The meaning has changed,
the format remains. The figures on the portal appear to be armed and may well
guard the entrance to the temple.
On a gold plaque in the Rafael Larco Herrera Museum in Lima,
a figure in the same pose as the Raimondi stela is guarded on the left and
right by figures similar to the portal columns, combining bird and human
elements. However the Raimondi stela has a large, elaborate headdress, or hair,
which separates it from all the other so-called “staff gods”. The figure has a
human body in frontal posture and is holding two staffs composed of cayman,
feline, serpent and abstract elements. There are claws of both hands and feet.
Two serpents hang from either side of the belt. The head is feline, with round
eyes with pupils at the top; the brows are not in the form of snakes, though
snakes form the hair at the side of the head. The mouth is down-turned, formed
as it is by joining two upside down, profile, feline heads with cross-fangs.
The headdress fills the better part of the 1.9 metres of rectangular granite
slab. It is formed of snakes and abstract elements with occasional teeth and
fangs.
Chavín art, then, is usually incised on a flat surface or else
the surface is treated as though it were flat. Within the confines of an overall,
circumscribed, animal or animal deity shape, many stylised elements of various
animals can be combined to define the qualities of the deity. The effect is of
static symbols within a symbol, where the mystery of the symbol is reflected by
visual ambiguity. Willey determined that Chavín was ‘a matter of line, of
composition, of emphasis. It is the curvilinear forms, the massive heads, the
intricately disposed small heads, the locked and curved fangs, the claw feet,
the prominent nostrils, and the eccentric eyes.’ If we accept Willey’s
definition of Chavín as an aesthetic phenomenon, and look for art identical
or similar to Chavín de Huántar, we may wonder why Chavín is
so important. Certainly there are felines, serpents and birds of prey but
surprisingly few unmistakably and directly Chavín-derived works. Similar
imagery, but considerable aesthetic and cultural divergence, tends to indicate
relative cultural, economic and political independence bound by a common
cosmology. Chavín de Huántar was probably an important trading
centre, and it may even have had some military power, but it was not the
capital of a pre-Incaic empire. Chavín, in its wider definitions, was not a
closely controlled, homogenous, culture but a singular artistic expression of a
successfully spread religious cult. Cults have priests, and priests have power;
but it’s artistic influence on the surrounding region may be analogous to the nuance
between command and advice.
Bibliography
Pre-Columbian Art of South America – Alan Lapiner
The Cult of the Feline – (relevant chapter by) Michael Kan
The Ancient Civilisations of Peru – J. Alden Mason
Art and Architecture of Ancient America – George Kubler
Ancient Peruvian Ceramics – Alan R. Sawyer
Peru Before Pizarro – George Bankes
Anthropology and Art – ed. C. Otton (chapter by Gordon
Willey)
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