Late Horizon

N/S Highlands and Coast

Late Intermediate

North Coast

Middle Horizon

North Highlands

South Highlands

Middle Horizon

Early Intermediate

North Coast

South Coast

Early Intermediate

Early Horizon

North Highlands

Early Horizon

South Coast

Late (Cotton) Pre-Ceramic

(3000-1800 BC)

Late (Cotton) Pre-Ceramic

3000-1800 BC

Coast

Early Pre-Ceramic

8000-3000 BC

Chile

Collectivity

Reciprocity

Transformation

Essence over Appearance

• group takes precedence over individual
  • artists not named
  • rarely an emphasis on the individual
  • architecture is group enterprise

• Duality
• Complementarity
• Pairing of Opposites
• Exchange

• Cyclical Thinking
• Life-Death Continuum
• Constantly Shifting Relationships

• Conveying a symbolic reality
• the inner core valued over outward appearance
• essence can be conveyed without being seen

• 5000-3000 BC (later part of early pre-ceramic)
• Main Features:
  • painted with manganese
  • short wig
  • gray inner inorganic fill
  • closed mouth and eyes
• bundles of sticks on bones
• used other skins as well?

• 3000-2000 BC (later style, late pre-ceramic)
• Main Features:
  • painted with red ochre
  • long wig
  • open mouth and eyes
• big long sticks (5)- through torso, arms, legs/torso
• seams in a few places to use skin over

• Considered the "grandfather" of Peruvian archaeology
• German scholar/archaeologist
• first to elicit time-depth and stratigraphic change from the archaeological record

• Discovered the site of Cerro Sechin in 1937
• Considered to be the "father" of modern archaeology in Peru

• Characteristics:
  • limited color usage (4 colors)
  • nested imagery
  • space filled
  • figure/ground relationship minimized
  • design elements rotated 90, 180 degrees
  • design is very structured, highly constricted
  • difficult to "read"
  • no garments worn

• Characteristics
  • explosion of color (19 different colors)
  • one type of figure represented
  • more open spaces
  • strong figure/ground relationship
  • imagery more legible
  • design is free, compositions innovative
  • figures have volume
  • garments and attributes apparent

• pit grave or boot tomb
• shroud wrap (lowest status)
• cane tube

• chamber tomb
• cane coffin
• wooden plank coffin

• marked by domination of a single artistic style or polity over a vast area during the same time period
• characterized by homogenous material culture, or objects that reveal similarities of style, iconography, etc.
• despite spread out geographically
• Ex. Chavin - seen as Horizon style because artistic manifestations of Chavin in highlands extend to coast
  • Karwa textiles
  • Chavin as type site
  • chongoyape where hammered gold pieces found

• marked by cultural diversity (many artistic styles) over a vast area during same time period
• Ex: Moche, Nasca, Recuay all developing and existing during the same centuries

Early Pre-Ceramic

(8000-3100 BC)

• before ceramic and textile production
• ancestor worship
• preserving the dead
• Ex: Chinchorro (black and red styles)

Late Pre-Ceramic

(3100-1800 BC)

• ancestor veneration continues with important introduction of twined textiles
• monumental public architecture, product of organized group labor
• introduction of...
  • plant domestication
  • cotton
  • gourds
  • beans, squash
• Appearance of textiles!
• development of complex imagery to communicate:
  • staff god
  • birds
  • snakes
• Ex: Huaca Prieta, Caral

Initial/Formative to Late Horizon Periods

1800 BC and on

• introduction of pottery, ceramics
• irrigation agriculture
  • labor invested in creating canals
  • re-routing water
• weaving becomes more sophisticated w. the introduction of heddle loom
• metallurgy begins (Mina Perdida 1450-1150 BC)
  • Mina Perdida is the largest of six civic-ceremonial centers erected in the lower Lurín Valley during the Initial Period (~2000 to 900 cal yr B.C.)
• centers become more sedentary and larger in size
• monumental architecture continues

Initial (Formative) Period Cultures

1800-800 BC

Chavin

Paracas

Moche

Nasca

Recuay

Wari

Tiwanaku

• late pre-ceramic period in northern Peru
• located at mouth of Chicama River
• characteristics:
  • subterranean pit dwellings
  • beginning of Peruvian textile tradition
  • first pre-loom fabric technique, interlacing
  • 33 skeletons in flexed position in mats
  • famous image of Condor Huaca Prieta with snake coiled in stomach
  • stylized two-headed snake shapes
  • alternating plain weave and interlocking of warps in order to produce structural decoration of textiles

• Importance of textiles
  • textile precedes ceramic by thousands of years
  • the Andes has the longest continuous textile tradition in the world, spanning from late pre-ceramic to today
• Extreme climates and environmental conditions to contend with
  • the sea and the mountains provide important resources, are conceived as deities, and represented in art
• Art is often abstract
• Preservation on dry coast is excellent
  • bodies, textiles, murals, feather work survive
• Materials of status include:
  • spondylus shell
  • textile
  • metallurgy (alloys)
  • ceramic is ceremonial
  • different from Mesoamerica:
    • no jade
    • monumental carved stone less frequent (used differently too)
    • art not explicitly in service of ruler
• No:
  • evidence of writing
  • calendars
  • markets
  • ballgame

• Sacrifice
  • human
  • trophy heads
• Fertility
  • water
  • mountains
• Shamanism
  • tied to transformation
  • dialogue with supernatural
• Monumental Architecture
  • built by "community"
  • ritually entombed
  • burial mounds for many, not just one
• Ancestor Worship
  • veneration of deceased
  • importance of preserving body, either as its own entity or incorporating within architecture
  • ancestors represent ties to:
    • land and agricultural fields
    • resources like springs, clay, or copper sources
• Rulership is not as evident
  • there is more emphasis on supernatural figures

• Excavated the site of Huaca Prieta in 1927

• indigenous Peruvian who became disillusioned with the treatment of the native peoples of the Andes by the Spanish after conquest
• Nueva Coronica y Buen Gobierno (The First New Chronicle and Good Government)
  • illustrated chronicle critiqued Spanish colonial rule
  • written 1600-1615
  • frequently uses Quechua words and phrases
  • writing, fine line drawings, full page drawings

• revolutionary research on Moche arts and mortuary associations
  • demonstrates iconography was a means of symbolic idealogical communication based upon a limited number of themes/few symbols (after ~300 AD)
  • characters (animals, humans, supernaturals) interacted in repetitive manners
  • themes:
    • burial (concerns with death and deceased
    • one-on-one armed combat
    • kuraka nobility?
• excavated several graves of women bedecked as the priestess of the presentation theme

• Lanzon god with clawed digits and snake-like hair
• female as indicated by Karwa depictions
• motif of supernatural synthesis
  • supernatural holds two elaborate grand staffs in each hand, uniting the dual spheres of Andean society and the cosmos
• first seen at Chavin

• type of mollusk, also known as thorny/spiny oysters
• highly valued by many cultures
• served as offerings to the Pachamama
  • Pachamama - Incan fertility goddess, mother earth/world, presides over planting and harvesting
• kind of currency
• Moche people worshiped animals and the sea and often depicted these in their art

• revered object/monument (i.e. natural locations like immense rocks)
• associated with veneration and ritual
• Andean cultures believed every object has a physical presence and two camaquen (spirits), one to create it & another to animate it; they would invoke both spirits for the object to function

mnemonic device made of spun thread, with main cord and subsidiary cords

used in accounting and to record information

(Quechua) vessel for carrying liquids

had pointed bottom and was carried on the back with a band around the head

• part of "reciprocity" in Andean worldview
• one part is countered by and connected to another
  • socially, the vertically-organized trade between altitude zones and in the state's obligations to provide for its members and vice versa
  • Andean art puts emphasis on opposites interlocked, on pairs, doubling, and mirror-images
  • Inca architecture sculpts earth in oppositions of light and shadow
  • Chancay textiles dovetail identical birds, and double-headed creatures abound

(Quechua) means "a meeting of two worlds", also chawpin

word describes a location at the point of confluence of two rivers

a natural nexus point, denoting balance and harmony

(ex: Chavin de Huantar)

• the tightly wrapped layers of cloth in which the ancient people of Paracas buried their dead
  • the tight wrappings and dry sands of the region prevented bodies from decaying
  • the cloths used for this are sometimes called mantles

• vessels w. a stirrup handle forming part of the spout, which emanates from the top of the stirrup
  • the jars, often elaborately figurative, would be cast from a mold
  • the stirrup spout was built by hand and welded to the vessel with slip

a medical intervention in which a hole is drilled or scraped into the human skull and materials removed

the practice of drilling a hole in the skull as a physical, mental, or spiritual treatment (Paracas)

the science and technology of metals

their extraction from ores, purification and alloying, heat treatment, and working

Huaca Prieta Textiles

(style and techniques)

Textiles as garments, wraps, bags

• twined textiles of cotton
  • construction technique
    • spaced wefts and exposed warps most common
    • looping, knotting, simple weaving
  • style
    • lattice-like structure imparts geometric undertones
    • emphasize symmetry and interlocking elements
    • two classes:
      • abstract - stripes, diamonds, squares, chevrons
      • representational - people, birds, serpents, crabs, fish
    • repetitive or interlocking motifs and composite beings
• twined baskets and looped satchels of reeds and sedges as containers

Initial Period

North Coast

Benson Article

Why Sacrifice? Ritual Sacrifice in Ancient Peru

-afflicting change thru ritual

-to sacrifice is to make sacred

-blood = water

-end paragraph explains how things have life (can sacrifice inanimate objects)

-huacas

-article is typography of sacrifice