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South America – 300 CE – 900 CE
Geography and History
Overview of South American cultures in the first millenium
Religion and Philosophy
Literature
Ancient Andean art in context: An origin story (“The legend of Naymlap”)
Architecture
Semi-Subterranean Court, Tiwanaku
Performing Arts
Visual Arts
Beginning around 200 BCE, the influence of Chavín cultural styles and religious symbols began to wane. This came at a time of increased regional warfare among many groups, evidenced by the increasing use of defensive features like walls around settlements. The broader Chavín-influenced region then fragmented into a number of regional cultures that grew to full-fledged civilizations like the Moche, Nazca, and Tiwanaku.
The Moche civilization emerged in northern Peru and made major settlements with large pyramid-style architecture at Sipán, Moche, and Cerro Blanco. Its people were agriculturalists with a keen knowledge of irrigation technology, which they used to grow squash, beans, maize, and peppers. They were also a highly militaristic society; their art depicts warriors in hand-to-hand combat, scenes of torture, and other forms of physical violence. The Moche formed a politically organized state with a sophisticated administration system. Their cities and burial practices reflect a hierarchical organization, with powerful divine kings and families of nobles ruling from atop large pyramids. Below these two tiers was a class of many bureaucrats who helped manage the state. Near the bottom of the social order were the large numbers of workers, agricultural and otherwise, who lived in the many agricultural villages controlled by the elite.
Far to the south of the Moche, along the dry coast of southern Peru, were the Nazca, whose culture also emerged around 200 BCE. While the terrain there is parched, with rainfall virtually unknown in some areas, the rivers that carry water from the mountains provided the Nazca with sufficient water for irrigation. Unlike the Moche in their large cities, the Nazca people lived mostly in small villages. However, they maintained important ceremonial sites like Cahuachi, where villagers made pilgrimages and witnessed elaborate fertility and other rituals.
Politically, the Nazca may have adopted a type of confederation made up of a number of important families. Apart from many human-altered hills, called huacas, they also left behind hundreds of geoglyphs, large artistic representations imprinted in the dry desert ground. These are sometimes referred to as the Nazca Lines, and they can be either geometric patterns or images of animals like birds, fish, lizards, and cats. Some are as large as twelve hundred feet long and were created by clearing stones away from the desert floor to reveal the different-colored ground beneath.
The Nazca Lines in Peru have baffled scholars for many years. Watch this video about the Nazca Lines to learn more about how some are trying to understand these giant geoglyphs today.
Whereas the Nazca lived in the arid coastal desert, the Tiwanaku civilization thrived high in the mountains near Lake Titicaca. Like the Moche and Nazca societies, this culture emerged in the wake of the collapse of Chavín culture around 200 BCE. Beginning around 100 CE, it entered a period of sustained building at its key city of Tiwanaku. There, residents built two large stone structures topped by additional buildings and carved stone artwork. A signature feature of the structures at Tiwanaku is the many “trophy heads” that poke out from among the stone blocks. Noting the different facial features on each head, some scholars have concluded that they represent important ancestors of the Tiwanaku elite or possibly the gods of various conquered groups.
At its height, the city supported perhaps as many as forty thousand people and oversaw at least four smaller cities in the surrounding area. It may even have been the center of a type of imperial system, with colonies on both the Pacific coast and the eastern side of the Andes. To support Tiwanaku and the other related cities, the people irrigated massive fields with a network of canals to grow potatoes. They also raised domesticated llamas and used them as pack animals for long-distance trade.
Tiwanaku survived until about 1000 CE and may have declined as the water level in Lake Titicaca rose to flood its farmland. The other civilizations of this period—the Moche and the Nazca—had disappeared long before, between 500 and 600 CE, for reasons that likely included environmental transformations. Other Andean civilizations emerged in their wake, including the Wari of the highlands of southeastern Peru and the Chimor of coastal Peru. These later groups built upon the earlier cultures’ innovations in agriculture, art, manufacturing, and trade. While Wari declined around 800 CE, Chimor survived into the fifteenth century. It was only in the 1400s that Chimor was conquered by a new and expanding imperial system, the Inca.
Adapted from World History, Vol. 1 to 1500, ed. by A. Kordas, et.al., OpenStax, 2023
The north coast of Peru was not inactive after the fall of the Moche around 800 C.E. The Lambayeque and Chimú cultures that succeeded them built impressive monuments and cities. In fact, the Chimú civilization dominated nearly the entirety of the north coast of Peru for over 400 years until they were conquered by the Inka empire in 1470. Exciting cultural and artistic developments were also occurring in the highlands at around the same time that the Moche, Lambayeque, and Chimú cultures dominated the north coast.
The Tiwanaku civilization (200–1100 C.E.) was centered in the Lake Titicaca region of present-day southern Peru and western Bolivia, although its cultural influence spread into Bolivia and parts of Chile and Argentina. Tiwanaku’s main city center boasted a population of 25,000–40,000 at its peak, consisting of elites, farmers, llama herders, fishermen, and artisans. Its ceremonial center featured a tiered pyramid called the Akapana, and a temple complex (the Kalasasaya).
The people of Tiwanaku were skilled engineers and masons, producing impressive stone buildings and monuments. Perhaps one of the most iconic works of Tiwanaku public architecture is the Gateway of the Sun, a monolithic portal carved out of a single block of andesite. The monument was discovered in the city’s main courtyard and may have originally served as the portal to the Puma Punku, one of the city’s most important public shrines. The Gateway contains low relief carvings across the lintel set into a square grid. At the center of the lintel is Tiwanaku’s principal deity.
The figure is faced frontally, holding two implements terminating in bird heads, perhaps representing a spearthrower and spears. He wears an elaborate tunic decorated with human and animal faces. The eyes of the figure bear the characteristic Tiwanaku stylized teardrop—a winged feline that hangs down from the eye to the bottom of the face. Tendrils of hair emanate in rays from the head, terminating in feline heads and circles. Composite human-bird deities flank the central figure on both sides.
As many scholars have pointed out, the deity represented on the Gateway exhibits a number of similarities to the deity in the Raimondi Stele at Chavín de Huantar. Both stand frontally and carry a staff in each hand, grasping them in precisely the same manner. Their rayed headdresses/hairstyles extend outward in zoomorphic (animal-like) tendrils. The square, mask-like quality of their faces endows the deities with an ominous quality.
Archaeologists speculate that the doorway was originally brightly painted and inlaid with gold; thus, it is important to remember that the “pristine” and unadorned state of the ancient monuments we see today often bear little relationship to their original appearance.
Adopting elements of Chavín iconography may have been a strategy for the Tiwanaku people to assert ancestral ties to the great early highland civilization. In the absence of a written language, images played a vital role in the transmission of ideas and values across space and time. Although the Chavín civilization had long succumbed by the time Tiwanaku reached its fluorescence, Chavín iconography traveled across the Andes through textiles and other portable objects, becoming continually reinterpreted and reinvented by each culture that came into contact with it.
While monumental stone structures and sculpture are the hallmarks of Tiwanaku art, smaller works in textile and ceramic of refined quality were also produced. Like the Wari, Tiwanaku men of high rank wore intricately designed four-cornered hats, brightly colored and decorated with geometric designs. In the example above, the overall diamond shape of the design has been divided into four sections, which is often a reference to the four cardinal directions. The rich red and blues come from difficult and expensive dyes, further emphasizing the wealth and power of the man who wore it.
Tiwanaku ceramics, like the incense burner above, feature clean, somewhat blocky forms and surface decoration that echoes the aesthetic seen in stone sculpture, like the Gateway of the Sun above. A bold, black outline and flat areas of color characterize the painting. Here, an abstracted winged feline can be seen, with an eye divided down the middle between black and white, another typical element to Tiwanaku ceramic decoration. The painted feline head is rounder and more simplified than the sculpted one, which features more naturalistic, expressive eyes and an open mouth with prominent fangs.
See also:
URL: https://youtu.be/qCF2aUH8MW4
Read more about the Staff God at Chavín de Huántar
Margaret Young-Sánchez et al., Tiwanaku: Ancestors of the Inca (Denver: Denver Art Museum, 2004)
Jean-Pierre Protzen and Stella Nair, “On Reconstructing Tiwanaku Architecture,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 59, no. 3 (Sep., 2000), pp. 358–371
“Central and Southern Andes, 500–1000 A.D.” on the Met’s Museum Timeline
Source: Dr. Ananda Cohen-Aponte, “Tiwanaku, an introduction,” in Smarthistory, October 16, 2020, accessed July 18, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/tiwanaku-an-introduction/.
From approximately 200 to 1100 C.E., Tiwanaku, near Lake Titicaca in present-day western Bolivia, was the center of a civilization whose influence spread as far as southern coastal Peru and northern Chile.
At its height, the site was home to up to 40,000 people and was centered around a ceremonial center featuring several monumental stone structures, including the Semi-subterranean Court, which is the oldest of these structures, and used for over 1,000 years before the decline of the Tiwanaku civilization.
The experience of entering this court is a bit like entering an architectural time capsule. All its various features are visual representations of the ways the site’s inhabitants drew on older local cultures, adopted those from afar, and created their own variations to establish a unique culture. It is a fascinating window into the worldview and religion of the inhabitants through the centuries.
Like most large cities, Tiwanaku had a central “downtown” area where the largest and most important buildings and structures are located. It is most often referred to as the ceremonial core due to its placement at the center of the site and the identification of most of the buildings as sites for important religious and political ceremonies. These buildings were constructed over the course of the site’s history, and some which were not in current use were even partially taken apart so the stones could be used in newer ones.
By the time Tiwanaku began to decline as a state, the ceremonial core had numerous buildings, platforms, and courtyards, the largest and most important being the Semi-subterranean Court, the Kalasasaya and Putuni Complex (a combination of raised platforms and courtyards), the Akapana (a complicated mound structure believed to be a recreation of the Quimsachata mountains), and a later temple complex, the Pumapunku.
The Semi-subterranean Court is a square courtyard approximately ninety-one feet long and eighty-five feet wide, completely open to the sky. Its four stone walls were built approximately six feet down into the earth rather than upwards. Entered via a flight of steps worn down by centuries of use, the space gives the sense of standing at the boundary between the earth and the sky. This feeling is enhanced by fifty-seven large vertical stones extending out of the sunken space and serving as a bridge between the earth and the sky.
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The central stones on three of the walls (north, east, and west) provide more than a physical connection to the sky above. They mark viewing points for various astronomical events such as solstice and equinox sunrises and sunsets, the rising and setting of important stars, and even point the way to the Celestial South Pole, the pivot of the southern hemisphere. The movements of the sun, moon, and stars across the sky regulated the rhythm of life in all Andean societies—used to determine when to plant and harvest crops and conduct religious rituals. As this court has been identified by archaeologists as a gathering place for these rituals, these stones would have helped participants properly orient themselves for the appropriate celestial event.
The Semi-subterranean Court served as a way in which the people of Tiwanaku could express their connections to past cultures while creating their own unique architectural and sculptural styles. Completed between 300–400 C.E., it is estimated to be the earliest monumental stone building constructed in the central ceremonial area.
The innovation of the Semi-subterranean Court begins with its size. The sunken court style of building is found in many of the archaeological sites which pre-date the founding of Tiwanaku in the regions surrounding Lake Titicaca such as Pucara and Chiripa, but the Semi-subterranean Court is the largest found to date. Its increased size was likely a statement of growing political power by the emerging Tiwanaku polity.
The second, more striking change to the older sunken court style is the addition of the tenon heads (sculptures of heads which are set into a wall, anchored by a post called a tenon, but extend out from the surface) to all four walls in a pattern of repeating triangles between the large vertical stones.
The heads in the best condition display a wide range of variations on two basic compositions. The first and most common is a face with a wide band around the forehead, large deep-set eyes, a T-shaped rectangular nose, and an oval mouth with thick lips. The second, of which few uneroded examples remain, is a face without the forehead band, a more oval-shaped nose, and much smaller eyes. No two heads carved in either style are exactly alike: noses range from broad to narrow, the eyes can be circular or square, some mouths are wide open with clearly defined lips while others are tightly closed.
These are believed to represent the range of ethnicities or communities who were governed by the Tiwanaku polity and attended the ceremonies held in the court. It is still unknown if they were contributed by the groups they represent willingly or by force.
Archaeological excavations from the mid-twentieth century uncovered several freestanding sculptures, two of which have compositions that provide a striking visual representation of the cultural changes which occurred in Tiwanaku society through the centuries.
Stela 15 is a four-sided rectangular stone shaft with simple low relief carving on all four sides. The narrower sides contain vertical patterns of snake-like figures running up towards several small mammals with long tails. Although both wider sides were each carved with the image of a large humanoid figure, erosion has virtually erased the carving on one. The other shows a standing figure with a large face containing the T-shaped nose, deep-set circular eyes, and oval mouth seen in some of the tenon heads. A beard-like band encircles the lower face, indicating that it is a male figure. The arm on the viewer’s left is placed diagonally above the one on the right, both raised above a band showing two opposing feline figures.
This imagery is associated with the Yayamama religious tradition that was practiced across the Lake Titicaca region beginning in 800 B.C.E. and declining around 300 C.E. The placement of Stela 15 in the Semi-subterranean Court indicates that, like the other sunken courtyards in considerably older Lake Titicaca sites, this structure was initially used for Yayamama ceremonies. The imagery of better-preserved stelae at other Yayamama sites suggest that some of these ceremonies centered around celebrating the fertility forces of the female-male duality (represented by deified ancestors) as well as those found throughout nature, represented by various animals and a navel-like image thought to represent the center of the cosmos.
The wealth of realistic detail and iconography of the Bennett Monolith, built several centuries later, are the result of a dramatic change both in artistic styles and religious traditions. Here, the male figure (a towering twenty-four feet tall) is carved in the round and shown wearing elaborate clothing carved with extreme attention to detail. The figure’s torso and arms are covered with images of running bird-headed figures holding staffs and llamas sprouting sacred cacti. On the back there is also a rendition of the frontal-facing deity shown on the Sun Gate, identified by its large square face surrounded by rays ending in animal heads and circular shapes. Instead of holding two staffs, this version of the deity holds a flowering cactus plant in each hand.
In contrast to Stela 15, the figure depicted in the Bennett Monolith holds both arms against its sides with the hands facing forward rather than placed on top of each other. Like the deity of the Sun Gate, each hand holds an object, the left a cup similar in shape to a kero and the right a snuff tray used to ingest trance-inducing substances during ceremonies.
The Bennett Monolith, with its references to Chavín de Huantar iconography, suggests that Tiwanaku gradually moved away from the Yayamama religious practices to those imported afar. Its presence in the Semi-subterranean Court, where it was originally placed near older sculptures like Stela 15, perfectly demonstrates how the inhabitants maintained ties with the past traditions of the Lake Titicaca region while continuing to innovate and adopt new ideas.
Overall, the Semi-Subterranean Court marks the rise of Tiwanaku’s importance as a regional center. Its large size, innovative architectural sculpture, and changing free-standing monuments demonstrate the inhabitants’ desire to create a unique version of the older regional culture and those from abroad to express their power and influence.
Tiwanaku: Spiritual and Political Centre of the Tiwanaku Culture (UNESCO)
Source: Dr. Shelley Burian, “Semi-subterranean Court at the site of Tiwanaku,” in Smarthistory, August 17, 2020, accessed July 18, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/semi-subterranean-court-tiwanaku/.
The Nasca (also spelled Nazca) civilization flourished from 100–800 C.E. in the Nasca Desert of Peru’s south coast, located about 200 miles south of Paracas. The Nasca lived in dispersed settlements along the Nasca River, and the site of Cahuachi served as their main ritual and pilgrimage center. The flat desert terrain proved to be a favorable canvas for Nasca artists, which they utilized to create artworks of unprecedented grandeur, size, and sophistication.
The Nasca Lines are geoglyphs consisting of lines and representational images etched onto the desert floor. The lines cannot be viewed in their entirety from the ground, and are best seen either from the surrounding foothills or by plane. The Nasca Lines have garnered the attention of archaeologists, art historians, explorers, journalists, and artists, inspiring a slew of interpretations over the course of nearly a century.
While scholars remain divided on the precise meaning of the lines, all can agree that they were not made by aliens, as the popular show Ancient Aliens would like people to believe. One of the most convincing interpretations put forth by archaeologist Anthony Aveni and his colleagues argues that the Nasca lines traced important underground water sources. The vast majority of the Nasca lines are just that—straight lines, which run parallel, converge, and intersect with one another. In an excessively dry desert climate that receives less than one inch of rainfall per year, access to fresh water would have been a central concern for ancient Nasca peoples.
The Nasca landscape also contains a series of representational images of a monkey, whale, condor, spider, dog, heron, and others. One of the most iconic images is that of the Nasca Line Hummingbird, which features a stylized rendition of this miniscule bird, measuring over 300 feet long. The hummingbird is rendered in bird’s-eye view with outstretched wings, tail, and long characteristic beak that extends to another set of lines.
While the lines seem impossible to create without the use of modern technology, archaeologists discovered that the lines are indeed reproducible with a large labor force and a system of measurement that employs a set of strings or ropes of different lengths. One striking feature of all the figural Nasca lines is they are contour drawings—the lines never cross each other. If one traversed the lines of the hummingbird, for instance, he or she would return full circle to the starting point. This suggests that the animal figures could have each served as special pilgrimage routes. Indeed, the existence of pottery fragments and food remains along the lines indicate frequent human visitation.
Nasca ceramic art also exhibits a strong interest in bold design. The Figure with Human Heads consists of a person gendered as male, either standing or seated, with his arms at his sides. His nose is modeled in three dimensions, but the rest of his facial features are painted, and his body is rendered as the general form of the vessel. He wears a headcloth over his hair, held in place with a criss-crossed band, and a tunic that features a design consisting of black and white stepped motifs arranged into repeating squares. Beneath this pattern is a border decorated in a repeating rhythm of highly abstracted heads seen in profile. The closed eyes and loose hair indicate that they are ritual heads, associated with fertility in Nasca art. (While sometimes referred to as “trophy heads,” archaeologists have found increasing evidence that heads were curated by the Nasca as part of ancestor veneration, and that they were usually not associated with warfare). The use of the monochromatic scheme in the man’s tunic intensifies the design’s visual impact, and is similar to the pattern seen in a vessel depicting an achira (a root vegetable).
The Nasca were interested in issues of design and abstraction centuries before the rise of abstract art in the twentieth century. Nasca earthworks carved into the ground left an indelible mark on the coastal landscape, revealing a great deal about Nasca beliefs and aesthetic traditions. The Nasca introduced a stunning linearity to the arts of the pre-Columbian Andes, which carried through to other aspects of their artistic repertoire.
Rebecca R. Stone, Art of the Andes: From Chavín to Inca (London: Thames & Hudson 2012)
Super/Natural: Textiles of the Andes at the Art Institute of Chicago
Anthony Aveni, “Solving the Mystery of the Nasca Lines,” 53 no. 3 (May/June 2000)
Helaine Silverman, Cahuachi in the Ancient Nasca World (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993)
“Archaeologists Identify 143 New Nazca Lines,” Smithsonian Magazine
Source: Dr. Ananda Cohen-Aponte, “Nasca Art: Sacred Linearity and Bold Designs,” in Smarthistory, October 16, 2020, accessed July 18, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/nazca-nasca-art-sacred-linearity-bold-designs/.
The double spout and bridge vessel is one of the oldest ceramic forms known in Nasca art. This example is decorated with several hummingbirds flying around two flowers at the base of the spouts, a motif which is characteristic of the early phases of the Nasca cultural sequence. In some areas of Peru today, hummingbirds are considered to be the intermediaries or even manifestations of the mountain gods.
The innovative techniques and aesthetic qualities of Nasca polychrome ceramics make them unique in the Andean region. They were most commonly made by coiling. Slip was then applied, the vessel fired and burnished to a characteristic glossy finish. The slip was made from different mineral pigments such as manganese (black) and iron oxide (red). This represents an innovation on previous resin painting, and helped ensure the preservation of the vivid painted motifs.
The most common shapes of Nasca polychrome ceramics are bowls, dishes, vases and vessels with one or two spouts and bridge. They are reserved for the élite and are used as grave offerings.
The vessel represents a standing woman holding an instrument, possibly a spindle wrapped in a cloth. She is wearing facial and body paint with intricate motifs. A repeating motif circles the bottom of the vessel.
Human figures, both male and female, are either painted around Nasca vessels or modeled into a head or full figure. The figures depicted are associated with: subsistence activities, where they hold agricultural products and tools used in farming, fishing or hunting; with war scenes, where they hold weapons such as darts, maces, spears and trophy heads, and with music, where they play instruments such as pan pipes, drums, and rattles.
Effigy vessels representing human figures appeared in the first century C.E.. There are also vessels modeled into animals (such as birds, dogs or snakes) or edible plants (maize or fruits).
This globular jar depicts a fantastic bird in flight with a human face, adorned with a mouth mask and a diadem. The bird holds a human trophy head. Ritual beheading was a common practice in the Andes and scenes of decapitation can be seen painted on Nasca vessels. Not all birds depicted in Nasca art can be identified to a particular species. Some representations are quite naturalistic, while others combine fantastic and anthropomorphic elements.
Certain birds are still revered in the Andean region today. The people of the modern town of Nasca believe that the condor and other birds, such as the pelican and the heron, are manifestations of the mountain gods. To catch sight of one of these birds means that rain will fall in the mountains.
The technique and range of colors used on this large vessel mark the peak of Nasca achievements. The number of colors used by Nasca artists is larger than that used by any other culture in the Americas before European contact.
The body of the vessel is painted with a pelican holding a fish in its beak. Several species of birds, both marine and terrestrial, are represented on Nasca ceramics; although the depictions are quite naturalistic, it is not always easy to determine their species.
Birds played an important role for Nasca people and bird feathers were used as ornaments for high ranking people and textiles. A sixteenth-century chronicle written by a Spanish friar describes islands off the south coast where large quantities of bird droppings were collected and used as fertilizer.
Certain birds are still revered in the Andean region today. The people of the modern town of Nasca believe that the pelican and other birds, such as the condor and the heron, are manifestations of the mountain gods. To catch sight of one of these birds means that rain will fall in the mountains. Hummingbirds are considered to be the intermediaries of the mountain gods, or even a manifestation of them.
© Trustees of the British Museum
others combine fantastic and anthropomorphic elements.
Certain birds are still revered in the Andean region today. The people of the modern town of Nasca believe that the condor and other birds, such as the pelican and the heron, are manifestations of the mountain gods. To catch sight of one of these birds means that rain will fall in the mountains.
© Trustees of the British Museum
Source: The British Museum, “Nasca ceramics, an introduction,” in Smarthistory, May 25, 2021, accessed July 18, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/nasca-ceramics-an-introduction/.
Located in the desert on the South Coast of Peru, the Nasca Geoglyphs are among the world’s largest drawings. Also referred to as the Nasca Lines, they are more accurately called geoglyphs, which are designs formed on the earth. Geoglyphs are usually constructed from strong natural material, such as stone, and are notably large in scale.
Imagine encountering such a drawing. The hummingbird measures over 300 feet in length, and is one of the most famous Nasca Geoglyphs. Among the other celebrated geoglyphs of mammals, birds and insects are a monkey, killer whale, spider, and condor. Various plants, geometric shapes (spirals, zigzag lines and trapezoids), abstract patterns, and intersecting lines fill the desert plain, known as the Pampa, an area covering approximately 200 square miles near the foothills of the Andes. The zoomorphic geoglyphs are the oldest and most esteemed. Each appears to have been made with a single continuous line.
Today it is believed that the geoglyphs were created by the Nasca people, whose culture flourished in Peru sometime between 1-700 C.E. They inhabited the river valleys of the Rio Grande de Nasca and the Ica Valley in the southern region of Peru, where they were able to farm, despite the desert environment—one of the driest regions in the world. The high Andes Mountains to the east prevent moisture from the Amazon from reaching the coast, so there is very little rainfall; water that does arrive, comes from mountain runoff.
The Nasca people are also famous for their polychrome pottery, which shares some of the same subjects that appear in the Nasca Geoglyphs. Remains of Nasca pottery left as offerings have been found in and near the geoglyphs, cementing the connection between the geoglyphs and the Nasca people. Because the quality of the ceramics produced in Nasca is very high, archaeologists deduce that specialists shaped and painted the pottery vessels. This suggests a society that, at its height, had a degree of wealth and a division of labor. However, the Nasca people had no writing. In cultures without writing, images often assume an increased level of importance. This may help explain why the Nasca came together to create vast images on the desert floor.
Since the Nasca geoglyphs are so large, it seems clear they were constructed by organized groups of people and that no single artist made them. The construction of the geoglyphs are thought to represent organized labor where a small group of individuals directed the design and creation of the lines, a process that may have strengthened the social unity of the community. Despite the impressive scale of the geoglyphs, these remarkable works did not require complex technology. Most geoglyphs were formed by removing weathered stones from the desert floor, stones that had developed a dark patina known as “desert varnish” on their surface. Once removed, the lighter stones below became visible, forming the famous Nasca Lines. The extracted darker stones were placed at the edges of the lines, forming a border that accented the lighter lines within. Straight lines could be created by extending cords, one on each side of the line, between two wooden stakes (some of which have been recovered) that guided workers and allowed for the creation of sight lines.
For larger geometric shapes, such as trapezoids, borders were marked and then all the stones on the interior were removed and placed along edges or heaped in piles at the edges of the geoglyph. Broken pottery has been found mixed with the piles of stones. Spirals and animal shapes were made in a similar manner. Spirals, for example, would be formed by releasing slack in a cord as workers moved around in a circular path, moving further and further from the center where the spiraling line begins. For animal forms, such as monkeys, whales, or hummingbirds, portions of the figures might be made in the same manner as the spiral in the monkey’s tail, or the image might be based on a gridded drawing or textile model that was enlarged on the desert floor where lines were staked out to create the figure.
The oldest of the Nasca Geoglyphs is more than 2000 years of old, but, as a group, the Nasca geoglyphs were created over several centuries, with some later lines or shapes intersecting or overlapping with previously created lines. This is just one of the unusual features of these geoglyphs. Even more curious, the drawings are best observed from the air, which is why they did not become widely known until the 1920s after the development of flight. Although it is possible to observe some of the lines from the adjacent Andean foothills or the modern mirador (viewing platform), the best way to see the lines today remains a flight in a small plane over the Pampa (lowlands). These amazing images are so large that they cannot be truly appreciated from the ground. This, of course, raises the question: for whom were the lines made? And, what was their purpose?
Archaeologists are not certain of the purpose of the lines, or even of the audience for whom the lines were intended since they can only be seen clearly from the air (This is now particularly true of the older animal designs). Were they made to be seen by deities looking down from the heavens or from distant mountain tops? Perhaps the numerous theories that have been proposed will eventually be clarified as our understanding of the cultures of ancient Peru increases.
Shortly after the geoglyphs were first investigated, researchers sought an astronomical interpretation, suggesting that the geoglyphs might be aligned with the heavens, and perhaps represented constellations or marked the solstices or planetary trajectories. While some geoglyphs seem connected to celestial events, such as marking the summer solstice (in December) when mountain waters flow to the coast, it is difficult to find celestial alignments for most of the geoglyphs. As far as we know, Andean peoples did not form pictures by connecting the stars in the night sky as we do; rather they looked at the black spaces between stars and saw shapes that they converted into their own reverse “constellations.” It is important to note that these constellations do not seem to match the Nasca geoglyphs.
Many other reasonable theories have been proposed. Some scholars have suggested that the geoglyphs represent Nasca deities, or formed a calendar for farming, or represented ceremonial walkways. Because some of the lines do seem to direct people to Cahuachi, a Nasca religious center and pilgrimage destination, it seems possible that ancient Nasca people walked the lines. It is also possible that Nasca people ritually danced on the lines, perhaps in connection with shamanism and the use of hallucinogens. The geoglyphs, particularly the early animals which are clearly spaced apart from each other, may also have strengthened group identity and reinforced social interaction patterns as individual groups of people may each have tended or “owned” one of the geoglyphs,
A discredited theory proposed that the geoglyphs are the result of alien contact. While this is sensationalist and helped to secure the popular fame of the Nasca geoglyphs, there is no evidence to support this assertion. Archaeologists and scientists have rejected this proposal and it is important to recognize the implication of this theory is that the Nasca people needed the influence of aliens peoples to create their geoglyphs. We know that the technology to manufacture the geoglyphs was available to the Nasca people and that they had a social system that was fully capable of organizing and producing large geoglyphs. We also know that the designs are consistent with other art forms native to Nasca culture.
Among the most promising recent theories, archaeologists have begun to secure a link between the geoglyphs and farming, which sustained the Nasca people. Some geoglyphs may deal with fertility for crops; others may be associated with the water needed to raise the crops. In a desert, water is the most important commodity. In Andean mythology the mountains are revered as the home of the gods. It has been suggested that the lines were intended to be visible to the gods in the mountains. Some lines also seem to point in the direction of the mountains — the origin of fresh water for the desert South Coast of Peru. Snow pack melts high in the mountains and becomes runoff and a vital source of water for the coast. In fact, ancient underground water channels are sometimes marked on the surface by Nasca geoglyphs, particularly at the points of intersection. These have been dubbed “ray centers,” spots where lines converge. Offerings have been found at these points, including conch shells. The spirals on the desert floor, in the monkey’s tail, and as independent abstract designs, may refer to the spirals found in conch shells and thus may reference water. This same shape appears in Nasca puquios —gradually descending tunnels that tap ancient subterranean aquifers and water channels. Puquios have been described as wells, and formed part of this ancient irrigation system. Puquios, found in Nasca (and elsewhere in Peru), allowed people to reach water in times of drought. Geoglyphs other than spirals may also be directly associated with water.
Because the Nasca Geoglyphs were made directly on the earth by rearranging stones on the desert floor, these giant images are actually quite vulnerable to damage. In time the lighter-colored stones exposed by the Nasca people may attain their own patina, making them less visible, but the designs face greater threats from vehicle and pedestrian traffic. Crossing the lines can damage their borders and make the images less distinct. Because of this, the Peruvian government has created a mirador (viewing platform) along the Pan American Highway where visitors can climb to view a few drawings without damaging the lines.
In the end, it is likely that the Nasca Geoglyphs served more than one purpose, and these purposes may have changed over the centuries, especially given that new lines often “erased” older ones by “drawing” over them. It does appear that many geoglyphs made reference to water and agricultural fertility, and were used to promote the welfare of the Nasca people. The geoglyphs were also a place where people gathered, perhaps for pilgrimage, perhaps to walk or dance on the lines in a ritual pattern. As a gathering place, the Nasca geoglyphs may additionally have turned the Pampa into a map of social divisions, where different families or clans tended different geoglyphs. Although we do not know exact details, we can surmise that the geoglyphs represent a community investment meant to serve this ancient people.
In January, 2018, a semi truck traveling through Peru on the Pan-American highway veered off the road and plowed through the desert. The deep ruts that it made damaged several of the Nasca lines. Though the area is clearly marked as a protected zone, according to the archeologist Johnny Isla , co-director of the Nasca-Palpa Project, cases like this “occur daily.” The driver, who authorities suspect may have been trying to avoid a toll, was charged with an “attack against cultural heritage.”
Human interventions like this constitute the main threat to the Nasca-Palpa area, whose geoglyphs extend across almost 300 square miles. In 2014, Greenpeace activists damaged the desert floor around the famous hummingbird geoglyph as they lay out a large protest sign meant to be seen from the air. Their action was a protest against climate change during the United Nations summit in Lima, and was not intended to damage the site; the organization has since apologized. However, the marks made by the activists’ footprints have been deemed possibly “irreparable” by Luis Jaime Castillo Butters, a professor of archeology and Peru’s Vice Minister for Cultural Heritage. “A bad step, a heavy step … marks the ground forever,” he said . “There is no known technique to restore it the way it was.”
The construction of the Pan-American highway has also increased the risks to the area, not only because of vehicles that can potentially veer off the road, but also because rains and mud can wash off of the surface and damage the lines .
Nasca-Palpa was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994. In contrast to many other at-risk heritage sites around the world, UNESCO states that
Even though there have been some impacts caused by natural and human factors, these have been minimal and the geoglyphs maintain their authenticity and express their high symbolic and historic value even today.
The most pressing need, now being discussed by Isla and others , is for better, 24-hour monitoring of the area — possibly using drone technology — so that human incursions on the site can be quickly addressed and avoided.
Backstory by Dr. Naraelle Hohensee
Further Resources
Birds of the Andes on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History
UNESCO World Heritage webpage for Nasca-Palpa
“Rains damage Peru’s Nazca lines,” The Telegraph, January 20, 2009
Source: Jayne Yantz, “Nasca Geoglyphs,” in Smarthistory, October 1, 2016, accessed July 18, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/nasca-geoglyphs/.
Imagine living in the driest desert on earth located next to the richest ocean on earth. How would these extremes shape social and religious life? What kind of mythology would the drama of this landscape generate? Some ideas can be found in an ancient south-coastal Peruvian people now known as Paracas, from the later Inka Quechua word para-kos, meaning “sand falling like rain.” Paracas refers to both an arid south coastal peninsula and the culture that thrived in the region c. 700 B.C.E. to 200 C.E. The area is a starkly beautiful desert of ochre red, yellow, and gold sediments juxtaposed with the vivid Pacific Ocean. The ocean, enriched by the icy Peruvian current, is a haven for marine life. Ancient inhabitants, likely drawn to the ocean’s resources, had to make do with small coastal rivers trickling down from the Andes for fresh water and agricultural opportunities. In this environment, with visual contrasts so extreme the landscape approaches Color Field abstraction, small villages that depended on fishing and farming created one of the most extraordinary cultures and art traditions in the ancient Americas.
The Pacific bounty and the cotton grown in coastal river valleys gave Paracans the means to support a rich culture and forge reciprocal trade relationships with other Early Horizon highland cultures, principally Chavín. As a result, they assimilated and transformed art and ideas from the highlands, while inventing new beliefs and accompanying art forms that were largely inspired by their unique coastal ecology. Unlike other coastal and highland Andean communities, Paracans did not pursue monumental architecture, rather, they directed their considerable creative energies to textiles, ceramics, and personal regalia.
Belief in an afterlife led to the creation of subterranean burial chambers filled with elaborate mummy bundles and artifacts. Remarkably preserved in the arid coastal desert, the burials were forgotten and undisturbed for nearly 2,000 years. They were discovered in the early 20th century by Peruvian archeologist Julio C. Tello. The contents of these burials constitute the only known records of Paracas culture.
Most individuals were modestly wrapped in rough, plain cotton fabric to form a mummy bundle. Some adult males, presumably elites, were wrapped in multiple layers of vividly colored, elaborately woven and embroidered textiles made with cotton from the coast and camelid wool imported from the highlands. Ceramics, gold items, spondylus shells, feather fans, and individual feathers also accompanied these individuals.
Before his death and burial, an elite Paracas man would have been a dazzling sight in the desert, showing off concentrated finery that exuded status, power, and authority. These individuals are generally understood to be the religious and political leaders of Paracas chiefdom society, whose leadership and ritual duties likely continued in the afterlife. Such elites needed all their ritual attire and accessories to perform their duties and roles effectively on both sides of life and death, much like the pharaohs of ancient Egypt. Mummies may also have helped to maintain the tenuous desert agricultural cycle (often disturbed by El Niño climate events). As metaphorical seeds germinating the land, some bundles contained cotton sacks of beans rather than human bodies.[1]
The Paracas achievements in ceramic and textile arts are among the most outstanding in the ancient Americas. The majority of Paracas ceramics were decorated after firing, with plant and mineral resin dyes applied between incised surface lines to build an image in abstract bands. In a final, transitional stage, pre-fire monochrome clay slips were applied to vessels in the shape of gourds, resulting in smooth, elegant wares.
Other notable items found in the burials included pyro-engraved gourd bowls, as well as gourd rattles and ceramic bugles, revealing the culture’s interest in musical performance. Textiles were, without question, the most outstanding of the burial finds in both quantity and quality, with every known weaving and embroidery technique mastered. Their embroidered imagery is also a form of text and the source of nearly all interpretations of Paracas beliefs and conceptions of their ritual life.
Linear Style
Complex textile imagery was likely accompanied by equally complex oral narratives. At the start of the Paracas textile tradition, c. 700 B.C.E., the imagery is dominated by the traditional Andean animal triad of serpent, bird, and feline, rendered in an abstract style known as the Linear Style and accompanied by their own creation, the Oculate Beings.
Oculate Beings were named for their enormous eyes, possibly inspired by the coastal burrowing owl or the enlarged eyes of a person in trance, and are believed to be key Paracan supernatural figures due to their frequent and enduring presence in Paracas art. Oculate Beings appeared in both humanoid and zoomorphic forms. Art historian Anne Paul identified eight distinct Oculate Beings based on different animals and poses: serpent, bird, and feline, symmetrical, seated, inverted head, flying, and with streaming hair.[2] Paracas embroiderers developed the visual potential of the Linear style to the highest degree, embedding images of animals and Oculate Beings into complex visual effects.
Block Color Style
Beginning around 200 B.C.E., textile embroiderers added the curvilinear Block Color style to their production, resulting in an explosion of new forms and figures. Block Color embroidery broke away from the Linear Style iconographic template to include human figures in ritual costume, human/animal composite figures, and elaborate composites of multiple animals. Sprouting seeds, insects, flowers, serpents, sharks, the pampas cat, and in particular a wide variety of coastal and highland birds dominate this later phase of Paracas embroidery, and there are as many distinct figures as there are individual garments. This final, figural phase also often featured human figures in a state of flight or trance, akin to those found on both earlier and contemporaneous ceramics. While precise meanings remain elusive, the imagery suggests an intense interest in agricultural fertility, as well as an increasingly complex mythology and accompanying ritual activities.
Much about Paracas culture will always remain a mystery. Their artistic record reveals a set of beliefs and rituals reflecting their culture’s dependence on the natural world and concern with perpetuating agricultural cycles, the important role of animals in political and religious activities, and a deep investment in the afterlife. The major works of Paracas artists, particularly those expressed in the embroidered figures that embellish woven textiles, are a pinnacle of Andean textile art and acknowledged as among the most accomplished fiber arts ever created. In the trajectory of Andean art, Paracas stands as an independent, inventive coastal counterpart to Chavín. Paracas culture was also a vehicle for transferring both textile and ceramic technology and iconography to the slightly later, south coastal Nasca culture, before disappearing forever into the golden desert sand.
Notes:
Additional resources:
Anne Paul, Paracas Ritual Attire: Symbols of Authority in Ancient Peru (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990)
Anne Paul, ed. Paracas Art and Architecture: Object and Context in South Coastal Peru (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1990)
D.A. Proulx, “Paracas and Nasca: Regional Cultures on the South Coast of Peru,” in The Handbook of South American Archaeology, eds. Helaine Silverman and William H. Isbell, 563–585 (New York: Springer, 2008)
Source: Dr. Mary Brown, “Paracas, an introduction,” in Smarthistory, August 27, 2020, accessed August 16, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/paracas-introduction/.
At around the same time that Chavín culture flourished in the highlands, the Paracas peninsula on the southern coast of Peru witnessed the rise of a new society of farmers and fishermen. The Paracas culture (c. 700 B.C.E.–200 C.E.) is best known not for its monumental architecture, but for what lay buried below the ground: a necropolis of hundreds of miraculously preserved mummy bundles. The Paracas mummies were buried in two different types of burial chambers. The Paracas Cavernas (cavern) pits were small bottle-shaped shaft tombs, while the Paracas Necropolis crypts were large mausoleums fitted with masonry walls.
Located within these tombs were mummy bundles wrapped in sumptuous embroidered textiles, some reaching up to four feet in circumference. The textiles ranged in quality from rough swaths of undecorated cloth to finely embroidered mantles. Mummies were also buried with offerings of food and jewelry to accompany the deceased into the afterlife. The types of textiles and offerings associated with a mummy bundle shed light on the individual’s social status; the larger and more elaborate the bundle, the higher social standing the person held during his or her life.
Paracas textiles provide some of the most stunning examples of pre-Columbian Andean fiber art. Close examination of Paracas textiles reveals a great deal of information on the sophisticated embroidery techniques developed by Paracas artists, their system of textile production, and their belief systems.
Paracas embroidered cloths were made out of cotton and camelid fibers. Cotton is a local coastal crop that would have been readily accessible to Paracas artists. Camelid (related to the camel family) fiber, on the other hand, derives from llamas, alpacas, and vicuñas indigenous to the highlands.
Paracas weavers would have procured camelid fiber through long-distance trade. Cotton would have been used for weaving the ground cloth while the silkier, high-quality camelid threads were typically used for the embroidery.
Linear style
Linear Style textiles are embroidered cloths that feature repeating geometric designs. Many Linear Style textiles appear to be woven because the embroidery covers nearly the entire surface area of the ground cloth. Paracas textile specialists would embroider designs on a grid pattern instead of stitching along the contours of the design. In other words, the embroiderers would stitch each color separately in a linear fashion until the entire composition became filled in with lines. This required a great deal of planning and visualization to achieve the final product. Paracas textile specialists employed an apprentice system in which less experienced embroiderers produced designs alongside those of experts in order to mimic their designs and techniques. One single cloth could bear the work of many different hands with varying levels of expertise.
The Block Color style, on the other hand, was made by stitching outlines of shapes and then filling them in with broad areas of color. Block Color style tends to be less geometric than Linear Style, and has more open spaces between motifs. Both Linear and Block Color styles were being used during the same time period.
Felines, serpents, birds, and fish dominate the Linear Style symbolic repertoire, while human figures are added to the subject matter of Block Color textiles. Unlike what we see at Chavín, Paracas symbolism mainly consists of local wildlife, including fish, pampas cats, falcons, and hummingbirds.
In the Double Fish Mantle we see a series of paired fish transposed to one another, with each head facing the tail of the other. Art historian Mary Frame suggests that they represent sharks due to the appearance of gills behind the eyes. In the orange border, smaller sharks are enclosed within the protected space of their connected bodies, and may be a reference to fertility and reproduction. The Paracas embroiderers depicted a range of aquatic and terrestrial life in their textiles, providing a comprehensive picture of the peninsula’s thriving ecosystem.
Paracas textiles contain standardized geometric, linear representations of animal motifs. The repeating images have a rhythmic character and usually remain faithful to the pattern. The designs are dense and compact, and bear little distinction between foreground and background. In the Double Fish Mantle, the fish motifs are arranged symmetrically within the mantle, with four pairs of fish embroidered along the long edges, followed by a row of five pairs, with six pairs along the center of the mantle.
While the number and distribution of the fish pairs conform to a set pattern, a great deal of diversity can be found in the details of the embroidery. Some are green, blue, and pink; others are black, pink, and brown, while others are yellow, blue, and brown. The specific color combinations vary across the composition and do not fit into any discernible pattern. The subtle interventions made by the embroiderers, which break the pattern through the unsystematic distribution of colors, lend the mantle a powerful visual dynamism. The orange borders of the mantle offer a pop of color and also feature a slight variation of the fish motif.
Paracas embroidery adorned a number of different types of textiles and garments. Everyday clothing such as hats, and ponchos often contained embroidered sections executed in the linear style.
The most elaborate embroideries can be found in mummy bundles. Long swaths of cloth embroidered in the linear style were wrapped around the deceased to create a bundle, some measuring up to 85 feet in length.
Read more about Andean textiles at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Rebecca R. Stone, Art of the Andes: From Chavín to Inca (London: Thames & Hudson 2012)
Moche architects and artists raised spectacular adobe platforms and pyramids, and created exquisite ceramics and jewelry. Their art, unlike that of most Andean cultures, is naturalistic and rich in imagery, inviting us to explore their world.
The Moche culture thrived on Peru’s northern coast between approximately 200 and 900 C.E. Rising and falling long before the Inka, the culture left no written records, and the early Spanish colonists who chronicled the cultures of Peru found the Chimú people in what had earlier been Moche territory. The Moche are a prime example of how archaeologists and art historians use scientific methods of data collection and evaluation in understanding ancient, non-literate cultures.
In the early 20th century, there was very little scientific excavation in Peru. Many art objects that came into museums and private collections were taken from graves and had no record of their original context. Based on this limited knowledge, scholars thought that the Moche had been a unified state that held sway over a large swath of the north coast, from near the border with modern-day Ecuador in the north to the Huarmey river valley to the south (Huarmey is approximately 180 miles north of the modern capital city of Lima). This conclusion was based on the similarity of ceramic and metal artworks being found throughout the range.
As modern scientific archaeology began in the area, it became clear that the Moche were not a single, unified political entity. Archaeologists and art historians began to see that differences in style and iconography could be determined between areas. Architectural structures were different at different sites. In addition, carbon dating allowed scholars to understand that some styles of pottery could be from one time frame in one river valley, while being associated with a completely different time frame in another. As more data was accumulated, hypotheses were tested and the conception of the Moche was revised and reassessed. What emerged was a vision of the Moche as politically independent groups who shared a common ideology, mythical and religious beliefs and practices, as well as a common iconography for their artwork.
Independent areas (sometimes as large as a pair of river valleys, sometimes as small as one section of a single valley) would signal that they belonged to Moche culture by using Moche themes in their artwork, while at the same time asserting differences—in architecture, in iconographic style, and in which figures from the mythology were deemed important. In this way, separate Moche polities could express both their political independence as well as their sense of belonging to a larger cultural system. The biggest separation of Moche style and iconography splits them into northern and southern areas (see map above), which can then be subdivided into smaller, politically independent areas.
The Southern Moche tended to be expert ceramicists—producing a large amount of fine, thin-walled vessels painted in slip. Moche artists used only three colors—cream, red-brown or red-orange, and black to decorate their ceramics. Many Moche ceramics were made using molds, and so we have many duplicate pieces. The ability to control imagery through the use of molds seems to have been important to the political elites of the Moche.
Early Moche vessels are very sculptural, depicting humans, supernatural figures, animals, and plants in a great variety. Later Moche ceramics feature complex line drawings of similar subject matter (called fineline style). The Moche often used a distinctive spout on their vessels, called a stirrup spout. It is composed of a hollow tube of clay bent into an upside-down U shape, with another tube piercing it at the apex of the curve (see images below). This spout form has ancient origins in the Andes, and it seems possible that the Moche deliberately chose this form to echo its use in during the earlier Cupisnique (1500-500 B.C.E.) and Chavín (900-200 B.C.E.) cultures. Fine ceramics would have been used as gifts from the highest elites to the lower elites and middle classes, helping to cement the social bonds that supported the power that the elites held. Fine ceramics have been found in households, and the pieces in graves show evidence that they had been used.
The Northern Moche are celebrated for their metalwork, especially the exquisite pieces found in the tombs of Sipán in the Lambayeque valley. Working in gold and silver, Moche artists were adept at hammering, soldering, and setting stones, as well as developing a process to make a copper-gold alloy appear to be solid gold—a technique known as depletion gilding. Gold, silver, semiprecious stones and Spondylus shell were used to make the elaborate regalia of the highest elites. Massive necklaces and bracelets, ear spools, headdresses, nose ornaments, and more were made by Moche artists for the great lords. While there certainly were skilled ceramicists in the north and able metalsmiths in the south, the general division of materials between these two areas helps define some of their differences. Both areas also would have had weavers producing fine textiles, but few examples have survived.
Early scholars assumed that armed conquest was the mechanism of power for the Moche state and Moche art certainly has a great deal of imagery relating to armed combat. However, it now appears that only some Moche expansion was due to military action. Other areas seem to have simply been colonized in uninhabited areas, or Moche culture was adopted by local elites who were impressed by the ideology. The imagery of combat is, in large part, related to that ideology, but not as a call to conquest. Instead, it seems that a lot of Moche combat imagery has ritual meaning. It focuses on hand-to-hand combat between two individuals, using cone-headed clubs as weapons and small shields for defense. Interestingly, this ignores what we know archaeologically about Moche warfare—which included the use of spears and darts propelled by throwing sticks, as well as slings used to propel stones with astonishing force. The Moche artwork, in other words, tells us one thing about their culture but omits other things. We can think of this as a form of propaganda—emphasizing the ritual aspects of Moche elite power rather than the more practical aspects of war. Moche art and archaeology also tell us what the point of this hand-to-hand combat was.
In the art, we see victorious warriors knocking the helmet off of their foe, sometimes bloodying their nose in the process. The defeated warrior is then stripped of his armor and clothing. With a rope tied around his neck, he is led by the victor, who carries the armor and clothing in a bundle to signify his victory. The defeated warriors are eventually sacrificed in an elaborate ritual, their necks sliced and blood collected, to be drunk by figures that are dressed in the costumes of gods.
Archaeologists have uncovered three sets of sacrificed prisoners at the site of Huaca de la Luna in the Moche river valley. These large-scale sacrifices took place at different times over the course of hundreds of years. The skeletons show signs of having undergone combat, as well as having had their throats slit. These remains seem to show that what is depicted in the art was also carried out in life (at least these three times). Whether smaller-scale sacrifices related to this imagery took place is still being investigated, at Huaca de la Luna and other large Moche sites. The continued archaeological exploration and analysis of Moche artworks will help researchers to further understand this complex culture.
Source: Dr. Sarahh Scher, “Moche culture, an introduction,” in Smarthistory, August 27, 2016, accessed July 18, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/moche-intro/.
In 1987, Peruvian archaeologist Walter Alva received a tip from the police that local villagers had discovered gold in one of the huacas (a term for ancient sacred sites used widely in Peru) and were looting artifacts at the site of Huaca Rajada in the town of Sipán, near the modern city of Chiclayo on Peru’s northern coast. Recently, the local textile factory that had employed much of the town had suddenly shut down, and impoverished villagers turned to their local huaca for items to sell on the black market, largely driven by wealthy elites in the United States and Europe.
When Alva arrived at the scene, he discovered a rich Moche burial ground in Huaca Rajada, with some of the finest metalwork and ceramic pieces ever seen. This fateful night initiated an extensive archaeological excavation of the site over a period of nearly two decades, and excavation of the area continues today. The site has yielded over thirteen royal tombs, making it the richest burial site in the Western hemisphere.
This archaeological discovery was significant not only for the remarkable items contained within it, but because the tombs were found almost completely undisturbed due to the swift intervention on the part of the local police. Looted artifacts have been stripped from their archaeological context, making it very difficult for scholars to understand their original function and meaning.
The thirteen burials and all of their associated artifacts were discovered in situ (in their original place), enabling archaeologists to associate specific objects with the buried individuals.
The largest burial was devoted to the individual the archaeologists named the Lord of Sipán, who was interred with 451 objects of gold, silver, copper, and turquoise. The quality of objects associated with the Sipán burials is superb, and would have required a massive and specialized workforce to create.
Among the objects found in the tomb were a pair of elaborate earflares depicting warriors, as well as another pair with deer, and others featuring geometric designs.
In the tomb of the Old Lord of Sipán (so called because archaeologist believe it is probably an ancestor of the Lord of Sipán), a resplendent necklace was found, composed of beads over three inches in diameter that feature a spider whose body markings resemble a human face and warrior’s helmet, emphasizing the relationship between warfare and sacrifice in the Moche world (spiders, which ensnare and devour their prey, were associated with rituals featuring the sacrifice of bound prisoners, as well as a god that some modern scholars have called the “Decapitator”).
By discovering the tombs in their original context, archaeologists were also able to make an even larger discovery about Moche art as a whole. The Sacrifice Ceremony, found painted on ceramics and the walls of temples in parts of the Moche world, attained greater meaning after the Sipán discoveries.
The Sacrifice Ceremony involves the ritual sacrifice of prisoners, whose blood is collected in goblets and presented as an offering to the Warrior Priest by his entourage. While the images vary across media, all of the Sacrifice Ceremony scenes frequently include the figures scholars have dubbed the Warrior Priest and the Owl Priest, often accompanied by a Priestess and other figures.
The Sipán excavations revealed that these figures were not merely mythological characters, but were connected to real humans who were buried in regalia similar to those in the painted representations.
By cross-referencing the tombs and their contents with Moche iconography, the Sipán burials allowed scholars to gain a better understanding of how the characters may have been a part of elite symbols of power and prestige. While the ensembles in the Sipán tombs do not directly correlate to the costumes seen in the Sacrifice Ceremony, they contain many similar elements, showing how some Moche elites identified themselves with the major actors in the Sacrifice Ceremony. At another Moche site, San José de Moro, elite women over many generations were buried with objects that identified them with the Priestess of the Sacrifice Ceremony.
This gold backflap, an article of clothing hung from the belt and perhaps meant to protect the lower back, was part of a warrior’s costume in Moche art. This example is topped with a depiction of the Decapitator, who holds a ceremonial knife called a tumi in his right hand, and a severed human head in his left. The backflap’s overall shape echoes the shape of the tumi. The half-spheres surrounding the Decapitator are actually rattles, enclosing within them small pellets of metal that would have made sound as the person wearing the backflap moved.
The backflap was one of the items originally looted from the Huaca Rajada in 1987, and was trafficked out of the country sometime between 1995 and 1997. In 1997, undercover FBI agents purchased it in a sting operation that took place in a rest stop along the New Jersey Turnpike. On July 15, 1998, the FBI held a ceremony to officially return the backflap to Peru, and it is now in the Museo de la Nación in Lima. The items excavated from of the Sipán tombs are housed in the Museo Tumbas Reales de Sipán in nearby Chiclayo.
Source: Dr. Ananda Cohen-Aponte, “The Moche Royal Tombs of Sipán,” in Smarthistory, October 16, 2020, accessed July 18, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/moche-royal-tomb-sipan/.
Check out the El Brujo Archaeological Complex
Exhibition objects from Golden Kingdoms, including Moche works
Read more about Moche iconography from Dumbarton Oaks
Read more about Moche ceramics at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Source: Dr. Sarahh Scher and Dr. Steven Zucker, “Funerary bundle of the Señora de Cao,” in Smarthistory, April 21, 2021, accessed July 19, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/funerary-bundle-of-the-senora-de-cao/.
Made of gold and inlaid stone, these earflares were probably worn for ceremonies rather than daily.
Thousands of ceramic bottles were produced by Moche ceramicists, and many multiples were made using molds.
See also: This work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Source: Dr. Sarahh Scher and Dr. Steven Zucker, “Moche Portrait Head Bottle,” in Smarthistory, May 4, 2016, accessed July 18, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/moche-portrait-bottle/.
In the brilliant light of what is now Peru, sunlight once poured over a golden supernatural being from the Moche culture (100–700 C.E.). When finished by a Moche artist, light would have reflected dramatically off the smooth surface of sheet gold cut and shaped into eight serrated appendages ending in animal faces. Identified as octopus tentacles, they emanate in bilateral symmetry from a central face with oversized fangs, staring frontal eyes, curling hair, and curving clawed feet flanked by small, wave-like spirals. The drama of the sun reflecting on the gold and the powerful symbolic imagery would have emanated power and prestige.
This headdress (c. 300–600 C.E.), recovered from a looted burial site in the Jequetepeque Valley along the northern coast of Peru, is considered one of the finest surviving examples of Moche metalwork for its superb craftsmanship and imagery that is emblematic of their deities and unique artistic style.
The headdress frontlet is part of the exceptional Moche metalwork tradition. Inheriting the skills developed by the earlier north coast Salinar culture, the Moche developed the most sophisticated metallurgy in the Andes. Some of their metalwork techniques were so advanced that they made gilded copper surfaces appear to be pure gold. [1] One of the most widely used artistic methods involved hammering metals into sheets, resulting in planar surfaces which could be cut and shaped into a range of forms that maximized the sun’s reflective effects. Sheet gold was also pressed over wooden or metal three-dimensional objects to create raised images, a technique called repoussé.
These considerable skills were directed toward creating a rich array of personal adornment befitting a ruling class who, in part, consolidated and broadcast their power with regalia: headdresses, earspools, nose ornaments, beaded necklaces, pectorals, and even garments composed of individual metal pieces assembled with small wires. Some items included imagery as fine as spiders on delicately soldered webs. On the Octopus Headdress, small pieces dangling from the eyeshades would shimmer in the sun and further animate the face.
The Octopus Headdress is a category of elite objects known as frontlets. Frontlets are worn on the forehead and typically consist of an elaborate frontal figure held in place by a band encircling the head. The Moche artists explored the design potential of the frontlet by suggesting, in gold, the elaborate and orderly motion of octopus tentacles. The central face is also enhanced by blue eyes rendered by inlays of the mineral chrysocolla, and teeth expressed by inlaid shells. One of the curving claws retains small traces of a red mineral powder that might be cinnabar, a substance used to enhance the symbolic and spiritual power of high-status objects in Andean art.
Although the Octopus Headdress was found in a burial, Moche ceramics have been found depicting seated individuals wearing a similar headdress. This indicates that the frontlet was likely worn by an elite political or religious leader during life as the crowning feature of ceremonial attire, as well as accompanying such an individual in death.
Scholars have suggested that the fanged face belongs to a complex Moche deity, Ai Apaec, known in part as a protective figure who would assist the Moche in times of chaos and disorder. [2] The octopus tentacles may have added additional symbolic power. Octopus tentacles have also appeared as part of regalia in other significant burial sites, such as the metal pectorals on one of the burials from the Tombs of Sipán and on a headdress belonging to Wrinkle Face, another key Moche deity who shares some roles with Ai Apaec. Numerous other high-status and spiritual beings often feature octopus tentacles in combination with spider features.
This fanged face has appeared in earlier times and cultures in the Andes, including the Chavín culture. The face is part of a powerful and enduring Andean deity known as the Staff God, whose image spread throughout the highland and coastal regions of the Andes in various but consistently recognizable forms. The Moche adapted the ancient face by adding bulging eyes—possibly indicating a kind of trance, or simply exaggerating the significance of these features—and softening the edges around the mouth into curves.
The face also appears in relief sculpture in the enormous Moche temples of the Sun and Moon, encircled by curving, wave-like appendages, four angular heads with catfish characteristics, and a border of interlocking, stylized snakes. In the frontlet, the gently curving, stylized octopus tentacles double as snakes with catfish heads (identified as such due to the curving whiskers they possess). In the Andes, supernatural beings often feature composite imagery, such as two or three animals combined into one. The golden tentacles may also evoke the rays of the sun.
The Moche were unusual in the Andes for their richly expressive figural imagery in a region known predominantly for abstraction, such as the later Wari and Inka artistic traditions. When this imagery has been analyzed through comparative iconography, scholars have reconstructed some of the complex narratives the Moche possessed. The Moche cosmos was compartmentalized into different realms inhabited by varied creatures and deities, often in conflict with one another, and humans were vulnerable to the monstrous adversaries of the natural world.
As inhabitants of the river valleys along Peru’s north coast and frequent visitors to the Pacific Ocean, the Moche were deeply involved in and dependent upon coastal weather cycles. A frequent theme that emerges from their art is the need for supernatural intervention in times of extreme weather, particularly the warm El Niño current that arrived approximately once a decade, impacting ocean currents and their food supply, as well as bringing extreme weather events such as flooding and drought. They needed a hero, such as Ai Apaec combined with an octopus.
In the Octopus Headdress, we see how the Moche employed a combination of technical skill, artistry, and an awareness of the interplay of materials and their surroundings to create a stunning image. With Moche culture, we see a proliferation of mythological deities and narratives, many related to marine life, which greatly enriches the long-established Andean serpent/bird/feline supernatural triad. The face of an ancient Andean deity is enhanced by a creature of particular interest to the Moche, the remarkable octopus, forming one of the most powerful and enduring Moche images.
Source: Dr. Mary Brown, “Moche Octopus Headdress,” in Smarthistory, January 18, 2023, accessed July 18, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/moche-octopus-headdress/.
Blue and yellow horizontal rectangles, shimmering the way only natural feathers can, alternate in a stunning iridescent abstraction. The 96 panels (today split apart into different sections) are composed of two yellow and two blue rectangles made up of tens of thousands of macaw feathers.
The panels were made by the Wari culture, an empire that stretched from the mountain highlands to the southern coastal region of what is now Peru during the Andean Middle Horizon period, c. 600 to 900 C.E.
The panels were found in the Churunga Valley on the far south coast, and they are composed of feathers from the blue and yellow macaw, a bird found in the Amazon rainforest along the eastern slopes of the Andes mountains, some 500 miles (approximately 806 kilometers) away from the valley. The panels continue an earlier Andean tradition of extraordinary featherwork, demonstrating Wari artists’ excellence in conceptualizing abstract designs and their advanced skills in featherwork, a type of art so delicate and fine it is often called feather painting.
In 1943, farmers from the village of La Victoria discovered a cache of buried items, including the series of 96 feather panels. The feather panels had been rolled and placed into eight large (one by two meter) ceramic jars painted with faces and abstract designs, then buried in a mound of earth and stone and surrounded by concentric walls. The fragile feathers and their ceramic jars were, fortunately, well-preserved within the dry earth. Silver, gold, ceramics, and other luxury objects were also found.
Without a well-documented excavation by trained archeologists and art historians, key information about the nature of the site and its contents was lost, and there was no written text to accompany the materials. By some accounts, buried bodies were also unearthed, but they were immediately burned and destroyed by the locals who believed they possessed the power to cause harm if disturbed. [1] In some Andean cultures, mummies were included in complex burials. In other areas, buried bodies were naturally preserved by the conditions of the climate, a process that may have been understood and anticipated. Whether or not bodies were buried with the jars remains uncertain. When they were discovered, the panels were much admired for their beauty and craftsmanship, and soon caught the attention of Peruvian archeologists who collected and distributed them to museum collections.
Various interpretations about the panels’ functions in Wari culture have been proposed by scholars based on what we know about the Andean worldview. One key concept is the belief in a supernatural realm that should be honored with elaborate art and luxury goods, some of which were made only to be buried as offerings. A widespread belief in the afterlife also led to the inclusion of luxury goods as part of (presumably) elite burials. The panels’ burial context suggests that they may have been offerings meant for the spirit world, accessories of an elite tomb meant to accompany one or more individuals, or perhaps both.
Another possibility is that the panels were part of a ceremony that involved the living. Andean cultures often engaged in rituals as part of their spiritual practices. These events would have required enhancement with art, such as featherwork, in order to elevate them beyond everyday experiences. The panels might also have decorated and defined a sacred site, known in the Andes as a huaca. Huacas could be places (springs or other water sources, rock formations), human-made or natural objects in the landscape, or even people. A site identified as a huaca was often adorned with art or other identifying markers. The panels’ large size and the presence of braided cords on the corners meant for securing them to a surface suggest that they might have served as artistic enhancement on the walls of a huaca. It has been noted that the later Inka also honored this site as a huaca by placing their own art and artifacts within the burial mound. [2]
Humans throughout time and place have valued birds’ feathers for their attractiveness and have gone to extraordinary lengths to acquire them. In the Americas, birds and feathers had a sacred role in addition to their value as objects of beauty. The unparalleled splendor of natural feathers, never duplicated by artificial means (even in the era of synthetic manufacturing) was assigned a spiritual value. Prior to the rise of the Wari empire, two earlier cultures of the south coastal region, Paracas and Nasca, established long-range trade networks with the Andean highlands and eastern Amazonian jungle to access feathers for their garments and accessories. While both cultures had largely disintegrated by the time the Wari empire was established on the south coast, remnants of featherworking knowledge remained in the region. Also, the means to acquire them by trade was quickly assimilated by the Wari, whose artists transformed earlier motifs into powerful abstract statements of their own.
The Wari are known for their complex, abstract designs in woven and featherwork textiles—many Wari motifs appear strikingly similar to modernist expressions of the early 20th century (such as we see in Piet Mondrian’s paintings). The German modernist, Max Ernst, may have owned a section of the panels. Wari textiles surpassed experiments in shape and color, containing layers of cultural meaning that would have been immediately understood by members of their society. In a stratified, imperial system such as the Wari, an elite tunic might convey a statement of power, broadcasting in vividly dyed camelid fibers a wearer’s high social position.
The feather panels would have served a similar function, although as wall hangings rather than personal adornment. The powerful blue and yellow design has been created through the natural colors of the macaw feathers, trimmed, shaped, attached to strings, and sewn in rows onto a cotton and camelid fiber textile in a manner that highlights their intrinsic beauty.
The possible meanings assigned to the colors remain unknown, but due to the Andean attunement to their natural world, it is possible that the panels represent an abstracted south coast landscape of golden sand paired with a blue sea and sky, communicating an elite’s connection with each realm.
This extraordinary series of panels demonstrates the assimilation of earlier featherwork traditions from the southern coastal region and the continuity of the value placed on feathers in this area, as well as exemplifies the Wari abstract art style. One can imagine the drama of the blue and yellow surfaces, shimmering in the intense south coast sun during the day or illuminated at night by flame, transforming a monochromatic desert area into a colorful realm for ritual ceremonies. It is also possible that the feather panels were never meant for human eyes or experience, but only for the afterlife and the realm of the spirits. While speculation about their meaning is ongoing, contemporary audiences can certainly admire the abstract design and technical accomplishment of the Wari feather panels. They are considered to be among the most significant examples of Andean featherwork yet discovered.
See also:
Heidi King, Peruvian Featherworks: Art of the Pre-Columbian Era (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012)
Source: Dr. Mary Brown, “Wari feather panels,” in Smarthistory, December 6, 2021, accessed July 19, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/wari-feather-panels/.
Additional resources
“Andean Textiles” on The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art.
Source: Dr. Sarahh Scher and Dr. Beth Harris, “A Wari tunic,” in Smarthistory, February 7, 2023, accessed July 18, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/a-wari-tunic/.