This is an extract from:

Andean Art at Dumbarton Oaks

edited by Elizabeth Hill Boone

published by

Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection Washington, D.C.

1996 Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University Washington, D.C. Printed in the United States of America

www.doaks.org/etexts.html

CHAVIN
Richard L. Burger

he Chavfn culture developed and flourished in the Mosna drainage in the northern highlands of Peru during the first millennium B.C. Its principal center was established at the crossroads of two trails across the glaciated Cordillera Blanca at a location occupied today by the modern town of Chavfn de Huntar. The founding of Chavfn de Huntar occurred centuries later than most of the major early public complexes on the coast, such as Garagay and Moxeke, and in other intermontane valleys, such as Pacopampa; the sculptors and builders of the Chavin ceremonial complex drew inspiration from older prestigious centers in the production of its temples and public art. The art of the Cupisnique culture was one of several sources that were blended to produce the distinctive Chavin style, a style considered by anthropologist Alfred Kroeber (1947) to have been the most beautiful ever produced in prehistoric South America. While coastal and tropical forest elements abound in Chavin art, the temple and its surrounding settlement at 3,150 m above sea level were the product of a highland society The populace responsible for supporting the Chavin center and its art subsisted on a mixture of high altitude rainfall farming and llama herding; many of the villages directly involved in the support of the Chavin temple were located near the upper limits of agriculture, just below the vast puna pasturelands that begin at 3,800 m. Thus, while the style of Chavin art may suggest a close kinship with the Initial Period cultures of the coast, this stylistic relationship should not be confused with social and cultural similarity. Even the historical ties implied by the shared artistic conventions and themes actually may be more of a conscious strategy to bolster the prestige of the newly founded highland center than the outcome of deep historical links. Chavin was the first civilization in the central Andes, and, despite the continuity that Chavin art presents with its antecedents, the culture that produced it broke new ground in almost every aspect of daily life. Unlike traditional Initial Period public centers, Chavin de Huntar developed a large resident population that was internally differentiated along both status and occupational lines. Society was dominated by an elite group with economic and political power, and groups of specialists devoted at least part of their labor to producing goods for this elite and the religious cult with which they were associated. The social and economic field within which Chavin de Huntar interacted included most of the northern and central Peruvian highlands and coast, and contacts were maintained with lowland groups further east. The cult of the Chavin temple spread to communities over much of this vast area and helped to bind these previously unrelated groups; travel and exchange between different regions sharply increased. It is not surprising that technological breakthroughs were common within this cultural environment, particularly since these new technologies were developed to help symbolize the supernatural character of the cult and the special prestige of the elite associated with it. 45

Chavin

As in pre-Chavin times, many of the greatest and most time-consuming works of Chavin civilization were produced to decorate the public buildings. The stone sculpture of the Chavin heartland is almost unique in its ubiquity and high quality. At the same time, portable religious art was produced and exchanged throughout the Chavin sphere of interaction. Some of these were items of ritual paraphernalia, but much of it was jewelry and clothing worn by and buried with special status individuals. Thus, the great art of Chavfn was created within the context of a hierarchically stratified complex society, a society unlike those of the preceding Initial Period. The two favored mediums of Chavin portable art were precious metals in the northern coast and highlands, and textiles in the central and south coast. The production of gold and silver artifacts was itself a remarkable accomplishment since it required the introduction of a host of technological innovations such as sweat welding, soldering, and champlev and repouss decoration. Through the development of these techniques, it was possible to go beyond the tiny gold foil sheets produced more than 500 years before, and finally produce extraordinary objects that could be used in costumes and religious rituals. Textiles, the oldest and most prestigious medium of artistic production in the Andes, were likewise transformed by the introduction of new decorative techniques, including polychrome painting and tie-dye. While woven cloth was a widely appreciated skill among all Andean households, the textiles bearing Chavin motifs went far beyond the technological capacity of the people observing them. The Chavin art style is the best known of the Early Horizon styles; its complex esoteric imagery has been recognized throughout an extensive area. Chavin themes and artistic conventions such as metaphorical substitution, double-profile composition, anatropic design, and rough bilateral symmetry (Burger 1988; Roe 1974; J. Rowe 1962) have been encountered at many sites, although the presence of some of these same features in earlier styles sometimes makes identification of a specimen as Chavn far more problematic than once thought. Moreover, many regional pre-Chavn artistic styles, such as Cupisnique, continued to evolve and even spread during the Early Horizon; sites with Chavin influence often yield objects that either combine Chavin and non-Chavin elements (see discussion of B562, P1. 8) or are primarily derived from non-Chavin regional artistic traditions.

46

PLAQUE
Plate 1 Chavin, Chongoyape in the Lambayeque drainage, 400300 B.C. Gold. H. 21 cm; W. 10.8 cm; Wt. 96 g B604 History: Purchased from the Textile Museum, 1979 Exhibition: Indian Art of the Americas, Chicago Natural History Museum, 1959; Dumbarton Oaks, 1979 Bibliography: Lothrop 1941; Collier 1959: fig. 65; Anton 1972: p1. 5; Cordy-Collins 1979: 58; Alva 1992: 57, lam. 43

This small, golden sheet-metal plaque is decorated with a representation of the principal deity of Chavin de Huntar. It is one of a pair of matching gold plaques. The other was acquired in 1946 from John Wise by the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA 46.117) (Fig. 12) (Margaret Young-Sanchez, personal communication, 1994). The similarities between the Dumbarton Oaks and Cleveland plaques go beyond questions of theme and style, and include many minor details. This suggests that the same mold may have been used to produce both pieces. Only minor differences in the finishing of some elementssuch as a snake emerging from the deitys proper left ankle, and the placement of a hole at the top of the plaquesallow the pieces to be distinguished from each other. The existence of nearly identical Early Horizon gold plaques has a direct parallel in the pair of matching gold plaques recovered in Tomb 2 at Kuntur Wasi by University of Tokyo excavations (Onuki and Kato 1993: 3132, fig. 12). The hole punched in the upper section of B604 perhaps allowed it to be hung as a pendant or an ear ornament. This functional interpretation is plausible because the use of pendants is represented in Chavin art (Cordy-Collins n.d.b: fig. 56). Samuel Lothrops (1941: 258) suggestion that the Cleveland plaque originally had been part of a crown is an unlikely alternative; neither the Dumbarton Oaks/Cleveland set of plaques nor the set from Kuntur Wasi shows evidence of ever being parts of crowns or any other object. A carefully crafted raised band frames the image of B604 and completes the object; there is no technical or artistic evidence that the object has been reworked. Lothrop (1941: 251) published this plaque for the first time along with two lots of gold that had been found near Chongoyape in the Lambayeque drainage, some 450 km to the north of Chavin de

Huntar. He suggested that it may once have been part of the treasure from the Hacienda Almendral, dispersed by the boys who discovered it (Lothrop 1941: 258). The Almendral find was one of the first discoveries of Chavin gold reported in the archaeological literature. According to the account published by Julio C. Tello (1929: 155162), in 1928 or 1929 several young boys found a hoard of gold at the bottom of an irrigation ditch on the Hacienda Almendral. The owners of the estate, the Gayoso brothers, attempted to recover all of the objects, but apparently some of the children fled and gave the gold artifacts to their parents or exchanged them for cookies at local stores. This lot of objects included minimally three gold crowns, a gold headband, two pairs of gold tweezers, seven decorated earspools, and four undecorated earspools (Lothrop 1941: 253) (Fig. 13). Lothrop believed that these pieces came from a single grave, since they all seemed to be made for a single individual. The earspools belonged to six pairs of increasing size, and Lothrop suggested that these sets may have been used by the buried individual at different points in his life, working on the assumption that the size of the earspool cylinders was increased as his ear lobe became increasingly distended with age. The largest earspools were undecorated and may not have been finished at the time of his death. Several years later, another tomb was discovered elsewhere in Chongoyape. The three skeletons in this interment had been buried with a somewhat different lot of items also in Chavin style. Lothrop (1941) concluded that the previously described lot had been associated with the burial of a male, while the grave goods in the second lot had belonged to a female. As noted, Lothrop believed that B604 probably came from the first tomb at Chongoyape; it is interesting, in this light, that the previously 47

Plate 1 48

Fig. 12 Chavin gold plaque. Cleveland Museum of Art, CMA 46/117, J. H. Wade Fund purchase. Photograph courtesy of the museum.

Fig. 13 Six of the gold Chavin earspools (one of each pair) and gold headband from the Hacienda
Almendral lot, as published by Lothrop (1941: p1. 17). 49

Chavin

mentioned plaques from Kuntur Wasi came from the burial of a male. These Chongoyape burials were anomalous for many decades until the 1989 project directed by Yoshio Onuki (1990) unearthed the set of tombs at Kuntur Wasi; the grave goods there included Chavin gold similar to that of Chongoyape. Extensive looting has uncovered still other rich Chavin tombs in Jequetepeque and Zaa (Lavalle and Lang 1981). Although pottery was sometimes found in these burials, gold artifacts decorated with Chavin iconography appear to have been the principal items of wealth of the deceased individuals. The lot from the Hacienda Almendral is of particular interest because of the extraordinary wealth that appears to have been interred in a single tomb, and because of the association of Chavin-style iconography with an individual. Chavin iconography appears on items of personal dress including earspools, nose ornaments, crowns, and other objects. It is significant that the religiously charged materials seem to have been buried with the deceased, rather than returned to the community for use by other individuals with the same status or role. It is also interesting that crowns and other objects replete with sacred symbols were found in association with gold tweezers, an item of personal hygiene used to remove unwanted facial hair. The style, iconography, and manufacture of plaque B604 are consistent with Lothrops interpretation of it as coming from the Hacienda Almendral although these criteria do not rule out other possibilities. No other analogous lots of Chavin gold were known at the time of Lothrops first publication of the Chongoyape materials. As stated earlier, the Dumbarton Oaks plaque is decorated with a representation of the main deity of the Chavin cult in classic late Chavin style. At Chavin de Huntar, this deity was only represented on the most sacred of stone sculptures; the best known of these images of the main deity is on the Raimondi Stela (Fig. 14). On this granite sculpture, as on the gold plaque, the deity is shown frontally holding a set of staffs. This characteristic pose, which has led some scholars to refer to the deity as the Staff God (J. Rowe 1962), is known from other sites as well, including Gotush near Chavin de Huntar and Carhua on the Paracas peninsula (see discussion of B545, P1. 6). Two of the crowns from the Hacienda Almendral lot are also decorated with the image of the principal Chavin deity in the staff god stance (Burger 1992: figs. 204, 222). Along with 50

the the the the

plaque, these images constitute evidence that Chavin horizon was the result of the spread of Chavin cult far from Chavin de Huntar during Early Horizon. A more finely grained consideration of B604 provides some intriguing insights into the variability in Chavin art and the relationship of the branches of the Chavin cult to the center at Chavin de Huntar. As already noted, this plaque and many other portable Chavin objects appear to have been strongly influenced by the representations on the stone sculptures at the cults center. This influence was not limited to the iconography. For example, the plain raised band that borders the plaque mimics the framing technique employed on Chavin de Huntar sculpture. As on these sculptures, the complex two-dimensional image is highlighted by surrounding lowered zones. It is worth emphasizing that these framing and intaglio conventions are not common in Andean art. Both are absent in the pre-Chavin sculpture of Cerro Sechin (for example, Fig. 24); even some Early Horizon sculptures from outside the Chavin de Huntar heartland, such as those from Kuntur Wasi, represent Chavin themes but fail to place them within raised frames. The style in which the principal deity is represented on the Dumbarton Oaks plaque conforms to the classic canons of the Chavin style. The image has a rough bilateral symmetry, and its fundamental theme is obscured by the abundant use of metaphorical substitutionsa convention called kennings by John Rowe (1962) in his well-known analogy to Nordic sagas. For example, on B604 the deitys hair is represented as snakes, as are the ends of his breechcloth. Anatropic design is another of the more distinctive conventions of Chavin art; images are arranged so they can be read in an alternative way when they are inverted (Burger 1988: 119; Kubler 1975). On the Dumbarton Oaks plaque, the top of the deitys head is shown as a mouth with four teeth and a central fang from which four vertical snakes issue; when the object is turned 180 degrees, this mouth becomes part of a new agnathic face incorporating the old figures eyes and nose. (This anatropic arrangement is strikingly similar to the one on Callango textile B545, P1. 6.) A second use of anatropic design occurs on the trunk of the deitys body A pair of snakes are shown inverted so that they can serve as eyes for a monstrous face when the object is rotated; in this case, the claws of the deity double as the fangs for this visage.

Chavn

Fig. 14 The Raimondi Stela. Drawing by John H. Rowe.

The style of the image on B604 indicates that it is an example of late Chavin art, perhaps coeval with the end of Phase D in Rowes sculptural sequence. The presence of squared eyes and the angular mouth with corner points resemble the features of the Phase D columns of Chavin de Huntars New Temple. The simplified snake heads (in which the nose and separate mouth are omitted), the bilobed ears, and the presence of scrolls are features that became popular in the subsequent EF Phase. Thus, the style of the representation, as well as the staff god stance, indicate that the piece was produced during the height of Chavin de Huntars New Temple, when the centers pan-regional influence was greatest. We estimate that the piece was made during the fourth century B.C. While the similarities between the plaque and the sculptures at Chavin de Huntar are striking, there are some interesting differences between this image and the representations of the principal deity at Chavin de Huntar. First of all, a triangular form is shown between the deitys legs on the plaque; this element has elsewhere been interpreted as corresponding to the form of breechcloths worn by males. Thus, in contrast to Chavn de Huntar, where the principal deity is shown without specifying gender, the deity on the Dumbarton Oaks plaque seems to be shown as male. This variation also occurs on one of the gold crowns from Chongoyape (Lothrop 1941: fig. 26c) and is part of a larger pattern. Outside of Chavn de Huntar, the main deity (or deities) is shown as either male or female on numerous representations. It has been suggested that the female representations may actually represent the sisters, wives, or daughters of the Chavn de Huntar deity, which served as the individualized divine patrons of branch oracles (Burger 1988). If this analogy is extended to later Andean regional cults, the male supernaturals, such as that represented on the Dumbarton Oaks plaque, could represent the brothers or sons of the principal deity (rather than being a representation of the principal deity as usually is assumed). A second interesting variation in the plaque representation is the arrangement of the deitys clawed hands and staffs. They are held upwards against the chest, as if the deity is holding a single horizontal staff, whose ends are kenned as two jawless fanged faces. The holding of a horizontal staff has parallels in the staffs held by the avian guardians on the columns of the New Temple (J. Rowe 1967: figs. 8, 9). However, the deity also appears to 51

Chavn

be holding vertical staffs in the form of the tooth bands that descend along the sides of the plaque, from the two agnathic profiled heads almost to the bottom of the piece. This visual ambiguity, like the confusion introduced by the metaphorical substitutions and the anatropic organization, appears to be intentional. A final noteworthy feature is that the deity represented appears to be standing on a pedestal or stool, decorated with a pair of agnathic faces. Serpents issuing from the main figures clawed feet run down the sides of the pedestal or stool. There is no known analogue in Chavn art to this arrangement. However, the craftsman who produced this plaque may have been drawing inspiration for this from the local Cupisnique artistic tradition of the north coast, a tradition which predated the emergence of the Chavn style. For example, adobe sculpture at Huaca de los Reyes, a Cupisnique center in the Moche valley repeatedly depicts an anthropomorphic deity in frontal position standing on a pedestal which, in some instances, is adorned with fanged agnathic faces (T. Pozorski 1981: figs. 10.7, 10.10, 10.11). RLB

Technical Description The metal from which this object is made is a gold-silver-copper ternary alloy Composition (Weight Percent) Au 68.8 Ag 28.8 Cu 2.3

The composition compares closely with that of objects B440, B441, and B605 (Pls. 3, 4, 2). Al-

though the level of silver is substantially higher, it is not uncommon for Andean gold placer deposits. Analysis of the plaque was performed by x-ray fluorescence (at the Freer and Sackler Galleries Department of Conservation and Scientific Research). Thickness measurements made along the perimeter of the plaque average 0.043 cm. The motifs, rendered in relief at the front, were accomplished from the back with tracing tools, their ends highly polished and rounded, that pressed the metal into a bed or backing of resilient material. No hammer blow marks remain from manufacture of the sheet itself, nor are such marks evident within any of the raised motifs or along their borders.24 All the relief work appears to have been accomplished by pushing and pressing metal, rather than by hammering it. Occasionally the borders around raised elements were clarified from the front with burnishing tools, whose marks remain as contours at the base of such features. Large flat areas, such as those adjacent to the ears or between torso and staffs, were worked from the front, sunk slightly below the original plane of the sheet. The burnishing in these areas is so expert that no traces of the original tool marks remain. In contrast to the central motif on disc B441 (P1. 4), the plane changes on this plaque are gradual, the walls of relief elements slope, and the intersections of planes are rounded. Sharp angles and crispness of effect were avoided by using polished, rounded tools and pressing the metal in long strokes along the working surface. A single hole at the center of the top framing border has been punched from front to back; the burr remains around the rim. Slightly oval, the average diameter is 0.37 cm. HL

24Lothrop (1941: 253) makes a similar observation about the kinds of tools used to render the relief decoration on the Chongoyape gold crowns: The relief was pressed out with tools of various sizes, as may be seen by close inspection of the surface. There are no indications of hammering.

52

Plate 2

FELINE CUTOUT
Plate 2 Chavin, perhaps from the Lambayeque drainage, 400300 Gold. H. 7.5 cm; W. 10.4 cm; Wt. 17.1g B605 History: Purchased from the Textile Museum, 1979 Exhibition: Dumbarton Oaks, 1979 Bibliography: Emmerich 1965: fig. 1; Easby 1966: 7281; Kan 1972: 73, fig. 6; Alva 1992: 18, lam. 1; Burger 1992a: 202, fig. 221
B.C.

The feline, particularly the jaguar, was one of the most common animals represented in the art of Chavn de Huntar and in the early religious art of the Andes in general. As the dominant carnivore in the tropical forests, the jaguar was a potent symbol of power, strength, and danger. As a lone and ferocious hunter with an ability to move from the land to the water or trees, the jaguar was a rich source for metaphor. Andean and Amazonian priests and shamans often described the jaguar as their alter ego and even claimed to transform themselves into jaguars during critical dealings with the supernatu-

ral realm. Julio C. Tello claimed that the jaguar was the basic element of Chavn art, and, while this view may be exaggerated, the jaguar is certainly a prominent theme in the sculpture of Chavn de Huntar and its branch cults. B605 is a small piece of gold sheet that has been cut in the silhouette of a feline; it was then worked in low relief to show the anatomical features of the animal. It should be noted that the gold feline representation under discussion lacks indication of the pelage markings that distinguish the jaguar from highland Andean felines, such as the 53

Chavn

puma. With its crossed fangs, upright ears, clawed feet, and prominent tail, in most respects this piece is a classic Chavn representation of a feline. Three small holes were punched in the top of the piece, perhaps so that it could be sewn on a textile hanging or piece of clothing. This class of artifact is not unique. Analogous Early Horizon gold cutouts of other figures have been found elsewhere, such as the cutout crab ornament recovered from the tomb at Chongoyape (Lothrop 1941: p1. 20). B605 may also have been recovered from the Lambayeque drainage (J. Rowe 1962: fig. 26). As was common with Chavn felines, the end of the tail was formed as a snake, or, more accurately a cat-snake, since ears were grafted onto the normal snake head. Another Chavn convention, double-profile composition, adorns the back of the feline, where it only partially succeeds. In most instances of double-profile composition, two adjacent profile faces are joined along a shared axis so that they can be read both as two independent silhouettes and as a single frontal face. On the saddle of the felines back in B605, two profile agnathic mouths with nostrils are shown, separated by a third small panel. This separation prevents their being read as a single frontal mouth and even obscures their identification as two profile faces. This may be a situation where the artist tried to represent an alien artistic convention that he or she did not understand. The attempt to employ the doubleprofile convention on the felines back is unusual in the corpus of Chavn art; this area was usually decorated with a single-profile agnathic face (from which the tail appears) or with repeating geometric elements representing pelage markings. The gold feline cutout has a different stance from the feline sculptures at Chavn de Huntar. The gold feline has its tail held upright above the body and its legs drawn up as though running. All the stone felines from Chavin, numbering more than two dozen, have their paws planted firmly on the ground with their curled tails hanging at a lower position (cf. Kan 1972, Lumbreras 1977). Although this gold felines stance is unorthodox, it is not without parallel. One of the bowls from the Ofrendas Gallery at Chavn de Huntar (Lumbreras 1971: fig. 11) is closer to this position than to those of the stone images, and the Chavin-style felines shown on textiles and gourds (see B562, P1. 8) are

sometimes depicted in silhouette, with the paw and tail positions varied in a similar, though not the same, manner (Cordy-Collins n.d.b: figs. 111, 116). RLB

Technical Description This single sheet of hammered gold was folded at one time and has been opened and probably burnished in some areas to flatten the metal. Four fold axes are visible; they are present either as raised ridges or as alternating ridges and depressions on the front of the object and should not be confused with the relief decoration itself: (1) a horizontal feature that runs across the entire body at mid-torso level; (2) a group of features running diagonally through the back legs from the buttocks to the knee; (3) a vertical ridge through the entire body located at the front of the saddle; (4) a diagonal ridge running through the lower front paw. The end of the tail may also have been folded. The sheet measures 0.026 and 0.030 cm thick at two edge locations. Two holes punched from front to back are 0.6 cm apart at the center of the saddle, near the upper edge of the animals back. The sheet metal is made from a ternary alloy of gold, silver, and copper:
Composition (Weight Percent)

Au 78.4

Ag 20.4

Cu
1.2

Its composition was determined by x-ray fluorescence analysis of the surface (at the Freer and Sackler Galleries Department of Conservation and Scientific Research). The alloy a native placer gold, is similar to those used for objects B440, B441, and B604 (Pls. 3, 4, 1). The low-relief decoration was accomplished by working the metal from the front. Tracing toolssmooth, rounded, and much like burnisherspressed the sheet down into a resilient bedding material. As with the relief plaque B604 (P1. 1), the use of these kinds of tools to compress metal and shape boundaries between planes produced rounded contours and relief that is gradual, not abrupt. Marks left by these burnishing-type tools are abundant in the depressions on the front surface; they are rare on the back. HL

54

Plate 3

BIMETALLIC EFFIGY SPOON

Plate 3 Chavin, probably from Chavn de Huntar, 400200 B.C. Gold and silver. H. 11.1 cm; W. 2.6 cm; D. 3.6 cm; Wt. 33.7 g B440 History: Said to have been found with gold gorget B441 in Chavn de Huntar; formerly in the collection of Juan Dalmau (of Trujillo), who acquired it before 1941, and then in the collection of Joseph Brummer; purchased by Robert Bliss from Ernest Brummer, 1947 Exhibition: Indigenous Art of the Americas, National Gallery of Art, 194849, 195262; 25 Centuries of Peruvian Art, 700 BC1800 AD, Peabody Museum, Harvard University and Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 1961; Gods with Fangs, Museum of Primitive Art, 1962; Dumbarton Oaks, 1963 Bibliography: Kelemen 1943: 252253, p1. 207a; Lothrop 1951: 226240; Bliss 1957: no. 300; J. Rowe 1962: fig. 23; Benson 1963: no. 347; Emmerich 1965: 8, fig. 9; Lechtman, Parsons, and Young, 1975: 14, fig. 11; Time-Life Books 1987: 157; Alva 1992: 55, lam. 41; Burger 1992a: 201, fig. 219 55

Chavn

This unique effigy spoon of gold and silver is one of the most remarkable examples of early metallurgy from the Andes. It apparently was part of a group of nineteen precious-metal artifacts purchased by Juan Dalmau of Trujillo sometime prior to 1941. Dalmau informed Rafael Larco Hoyle (1941:140 141) that the lot had been uncovered at Chavn de Huntar. The objects were subsequently acquired by Joseph Brummer, who told archaeologist Samuel Lothrop that Dalmau had bought them in the highland town of Recuay in the Callej6n de Huaylas (Lothrop 1951: 226; cf. Coe 1993: 278279; Boone, this volume: 7). Brummers comment to Lothrop lends credence to the assertion that this lot was discovered at Chavn de Huntar. One of the trails that connects Chavn de Huntar with the outside world crosses the Cordillera Blanca at Yanashayash and descends into the Callej6n de Huaylas near the modern village of Olleros; the only town nearby is Recuay Prior to the construction of the modern highway system, residents of Chavn de Huntar often journeyed along this trail to market their goods at Recuay Since visitors to Chavn de Huntar in the early 1940s were infrequent, it would have been difficult, perhaps even impossible, to sell precious Pre-Columbian objects there (even for the monetary value of their gold). Consequently it is logical that antiquities discovered at Chavn de Huntar would have been taken to Recuay for sale or for subsequent transport to the coast. The alternative possibility that the gold objects were found near Recuay itself seems unlikely since no Chavn sites have been discovered in this zone despite considerable research during the last half century If one accepts the Dalmau-Brummer account, it suggests that a hoard or grave lot larger than any of those known from Chongoyape or Kuntur Wasi may have been found at Chavn de Huntar. It is interesting in light of this hypothesis that the items comprising the Dalmau gold differs from all other lots of Chavn precious-metal objects. The Dalmau Collection consisted of four snuff spoons (Fig. 15), the Dumbarton Oaks gold gorget (B441, P1.4) discussed subsequently a set of matching pins decorated with male heads, four nose ornaments (three of which were decorated with Chavn serpents), two tweezers, a staff or pin head, a set of two elaborately decorated earspools, a cruciform gorget, a gold necklace and a gold flute (Lothrop 1951; cf. Kelemen 1943: p1. 207a; Larco Hoyle 1941: fig. 204). It is intriguing that the precious-metal crowns and headbands so common in the Chavn 56

tombs of Chongoyape and Kuntur Wasi are absent from this lot. From a functional perspective, B440 is a small spoon that was probably used for the inhalation of snuffs. There is compelling evidence that snuffs, probably hallucinogenic in character, were an important part of Chavn ritual; B440 may have served as a snuff spoon for the inhalation of hallucinogens during religious ceremonies. The long troughlike cavity of B440 is narrow and deep and would not have been appropriate for food consumption. Snuff spoons may have been part of larger ritual kits that included small ceremonial mortars and pestles in which the snuff was prepared. The latter mortars were sometimes carved in the form of jaguars or eagles. One of these, now in the collection of the University of Pennsylvania Museum, was found at Chavn de Huntar (Burger 1992a: fig. 145). B440 and the other three golden spoons present in the Dalmau group have no analogue in more northern tombs. Although there is a tradition of carved, stone snuff spoons from the northern coast (Larco Hoyle 1941: fig. 149) and highlands (Rosas and Shady 1970: fig. lSd), these have circular rather than elongated basins. In terms of the general design and form, the closest parallel to gold spoons like B440 are the bone spatulas (Larco Hoyle 1941: figs. 155, 158, 162) found in central and northern Peru; significantly these are often carved with religious themes. There are two holes on the back of B440 so that it could be suspended on a cord and worn as a pendant. Tiny pellets were intentionally placed inside the three-dimensional sculpture that decorates the end of the spoon so that it could also function as a rattle, an important instrument of shamanic ceremonies. Thus, B440 was a multifaceted piece of ritual paraphernalia, utilized as a rattle and part of the priestly costume, as well as a snuff spoon during the ceremonies of the Chavn religious cult. The decoration of the spoon is particularly interesting in light of this functional interpretation. An adult male figure is depicted crouching with his knees flexed on a small cylindrical stool or seat. Both hands hold a ceremonial conch-shell trumpet to his mouth, and he is apparently in the act of blowing it. The figure can be identified as a priest or mythical figure by the distinctive hairstyle in which the hair is drawn together to form a topknot above the forehead. This coiffure resembles the hairstyle frequently depicted on the sculptured

Chavn

Fig. 15 Four Chavin snuff spoons from the Dalmau Collection. B440 is labeled a. (after Lothrop 1951: 236).

heads that were tenoned into the upper exterior walls of the Chavn de Huntar temple. These representations of priests or their mythical forebears are commonly shown in the process of shamanic transformation to jaguars or crested eagles, and some of the sculptures show clear indications that the transformation had been facilitated through the nasal ingestion of psychotropic substances (CordyCollins 1977a, 1980; Can 1983; Burger 1992a). This is implied by the strands of mucus that hang from their nostrils, a result of the irritation of nasal membrane by the hallucinogenic snuff. In the tenoned heads, the transformational process is signaled by

the incorporation of non-human features into the visages of the topknotted priests, and, in some cases, the tenoned heads show the fully transformed individuals as felines or crested eagles. The figure on B440 is a naturalistic human representation, even to the extreme of carefully tracing the delicate outline of the fingernails and toenails onto the three-dimensional, gold sheet-metal effigy However, the involvement of this figure in shamanic transformation is alluded to by an emblematic symbol for the crested or harpy eagle, which appears on the back of the figure (see Fig. 15, photo a). The figure of the raptorial bird is represented in abbre57

Chavn

viated form by combining elements of the beak, tail feathers, and taloned feet, all in classic Chavn style. As noted, the figure blows a conch-shell trumpet which, unlike the rest of the object, was made of hammered silver rather than gold. The ritual importance of shell trumpets runs throughout Peruvian prehistory; today conch shells continue to be blown in parts of the Andean highlands to mark the beginning and end of public ceremonies. The modern Quechua term pututu is applied to these items of ritual paraphernalia (cf. Tello 1937), but, in the early colonial Quechua dictionary of Diego Gonzles de Holguin (1989: 192), the Quechua term for la bozina de caracol grande (trumpet of large snail shell, my translation) is given as huayllaqquepa. Gastropods of this size are not native to the coldwater currents off the Peruvian shoreline; the most common material for such shell trumpets was the Strombus, native to the warmer currents off what is now the Ecuadorian coast (Paulsen 1974). The blowing of the conch-shell trumpet was an important aspect of Chavn ritual; it is represented in the sculptured frieze that decorated the northwestern section of the Circular Plaza of Chavn de Huntars Old Temple (Lumbreras 1977). In this pair of twin sculptures (presumably mirrored by a second set on the southwestern side of the plaza), two anthropomorphic figures are shown in procession with the shell trumpets raised to their lips. In the plaza sculptures, the figures are wearing elaborate ceremonial garb, including crowns adorned with jaguar tails. The Strombus shell also appears on the Tello Obelisk, one of the oldest cult objects of the Chavn de Huntar temple. The transcendent importance of the conch-shell trumpet to Chavn ritual and symbolism also is made manifest in one of the two known representations of the principal deity from Chavn de Huntars New Temple (J. Rowe 1967: fig. 21). In this sculpture, the anthropomorphic supernatural holds a Strombus shell in one hand and a Spondylus shell in the other. Actual pieces of Strombus shell have been recovered from the Galeria de los Caracoles, one of the subterranean chamber and passageway complexes at Chavn de Huntar (Lumbreras 1977), and a Strombus-shell trumpet dating to the Chavn horizon was found near the Chiclayo airport in the Lambayeque valley (Fig. 16). More recently three Strombus-shell trumpets were uncovered in a tomb at Kuntur Wasi (Tello 1937, Onuki 1990). The example from Chiclayo has one end sawed off, indi-

Fig. 16 Chavin Strombus-shell trumpet. On anonymous

loan to the Brooklyn Museum, L.52.1. Photograph
courtesy of the museum.

cating that it could be used as a musical instrument, and, like the Dalmau spoon, it has holes drilled in it so that it could be suspended on a cord, perhaps around the neck of the priest. The Chiclayo trumpets exterior is carved with the image of a walking anthropomorphic figure blowing the conch-shell trumpet. A cascade of serpents issues from the trumpet, perhaps to represent the sacred character of the sounds produced. B440s anthropomorphic figure is shown seated with knees upraised on top of a cylindrical stool. The stool is decorated with a delicate openworked guilloche design; this convention suggests a stool made of basketry perhaps with a wooden frame. The shamans stool was an important piece of ceremonial paraphernalia in prehistoric societies of lowland South America (Zerries 1985), and it was likewise a sumptuary item reserved for officials and elite members of Inca society in late Andean prehistory (e.g., Menzel 1977: 10). The time depth of such stools is poorly known, perhaps because in most areas (with the exception of some areas in lower Central America and northern South America) these items were made of wood and other

58

Chavn

Chavn ceremonial stool of which I am aware. On the underside of the stool or the top end of the spoon, depending on ones perspective, there is a finely traced anthropomorphic face with bulging eyes, broad nose, and ovoid mouth (Fig. 17). This face would have stared directly at the individual inhaling the snuff from the spoon, while the pellets rattled within the hollow figure. RLB

Technical Description This composite object is one of the earliest pieces of three-dimensional sculpture in sheet metal we have found from the central Andes. It may be the earliest that combines gold and silver.25 Made from twenty-two individually shaped pieces of thin metal sheet, all assembled in a variety of metallurgical joins, it sets the stage for a long tradition of shaping metal by working it and of creating three-dimensional volumes by soldering or welding together pre-shaped components. The metalworkers who made this spoon knew about alloying and the different temperatures at which certain metals and alloys melt relative to each other. The use of metals with different melting points for the sequential joining of parts to form a whole is clearly at work here and was deliberately managed. Furthermore, metalsmiths were experimenting with gold alloys as weld material for certain types of join. Welding and sweat welding were employed, though not completely mastered. There is evidence that alloy gold, in the form of fine particles, was packed into voids at seams that needed to be built up solid. When heated, the powder coalesced and effected the join through sintering and sweating. This dual use of weld metal, to build up form and, simultaneously to join parts, is another characteristic of central Andean goldsmithing. The same technique has been observed on several hollow, gold miniatures from the Ica valley made of many tiny pieces of sheet (Lechtman 1988: figs. 30.2, 30.4, 30.5230.54). Spoon B440 is interesting and important as a forerunner to a tradition of Andean metal sculpture that continued, largely unchanged, through the Inca hegemony The Inca figurines in the Dumbar-

Fig. 17 Enlarged view of the underside of efgy spoon

B440 showing the face on the lower disc. Photograph
by Joseph Mills.

organic materials rather than stone. The stool shown on B440 is the only representation of a

25Lothrop (1941: 260, p1. xx-c) illustrates and describes a Chavin-style pin with a spherical gold head and silver shaft from a womans grave near Chongoyape. The analysis ofthe pin shaft is given here in the table of alloy compositions, p. 60.

59

Chavn

ton Oaks collection (B474 and B606, B607, B 608, Pls. 89, 88) are made on the same general principles as those already utilized here. Alloys The sheet gold of figure B440 is made of a ternary alloy of gold, silver, and copper. The determination was made by x-ray fluorescence analysis (at the Freer and Sackler Galleries Department of Conservation and Scientific Research) of an area on the torso. The alloy probably represents native gold, re-

trieved from placer deposits and melted down to form ingots large enough for the manufacture of metal sheet. Central Andean placer gold is typically high in silver and may contain minor amounts of copper. Such gold is often referred to as electrum. William Roots analyses (1949: 11) of gold objects from the Ica valley region on the south coast of Peru indicate that many were made of placer gold with an average composition close to that of B440: 76 percent gold, 20 percent silver, and 4 percent copper. He cites comments by sixteenth-century Span-

Placer Gold from Ecuador and Peru

Locale Au Composition (Weight Percent) Ag Cu

Tumbes River valley (northwest Peru) Chinchipe River valley (northern Peru) Ucayali River valley (northern Peru)
(Source: After Petersen 1970)

72.95 81 75

26.34 0.73 remainder not reported remainder is silver

Composition of Gold Alloys and Silver Alloys

in Chavn and Chavin-style Objects Collection or

Analysis no. Object

Composition
(Weight Percent)

Au B-440 B-441 MIT 3067

Figure on spoon 72.0 25.6 74.9 70.4

Ag 24.5 72.2 22.4 26.3

Cu
3.6 2.0 2.7 2.9

Pb n.d.
0.2

Conch shell Round gorget with boss

(Dalmau group)

n.d. n.d.

Janabarriu Phase ornament, excavated at Chavin de Huntar

Cruciform gorget (Dalmau group) Nose ornament,

Root 1345 Root 1346

72.5 71.6

23.7 24.2

3.8 4.2

n.d. n.d.

Root 1347 Root Key n.d. MIT

Root

dangler (Dalmau group) Nose ornament, ring (Dalmau group) Pin shaft, Chongoyape

71.0 26.0

22.0 74.0

6.8 0.0

n.d. n.d.

not detected Analysis performed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with electron microbeam probe (see Lechtman, appendix F, in Burger 1984)
Analysis performed by William Root by wet chemical methods (see Roots table 14, in Lothrop 1951)

60

Chavn

ish chroniclers who describe the stream gold of Peru as containing silver or copper and ranging between 18 and 20K, or 75 to 83 percent gold (Root 1949:11). Georg Petersen (1970: 49 and table 3) compiled chemical analyses of placer golds retrieved from rivers in southern Ecuador, northwest Peru, and northern Peru. They are similar to the compositions of the Chavn objects tabulated here. The analytical table of object chemistries (bottom, page 60) compares the composition of B440 with the composition of a Janabarriu Phase gold ornament (MIT 3067) excavated by Burger at Chavn de Huntar (Burger 1984) and compositions of those gold objects, for which analyses are available, that Burger describes as belonging originally to the Dalmau group and probably uncovered at Chavn de Huntar; one of these is the Dumbarton Oaks gorget B441. The others are a cruciform gorget (Root 1345) and several parts of a nose ornament (Root 1346, 1347). The uniformity in alloy composition among the five objects is striking. They could have been made from the same batch or similar batches of metal from a common source. The compositions of ten Chavin-style gold and silver objects excavated at Kuntur Wasi (Cajamarca) have been determined in Japan by the excavators and their colleagues (Hirao et al. 1992; Kato 1993). Semi-quantitative x-ray fluorescence methods gave the following results. Gold Alloys and Silver Alloys in Objects Excavated at Kuntur Wasi Tomb No. Object Composition
(Weight

Percent) Au Ag 1 1 2
2 2

Gold crown Small gold sheet Gold crown

Plaque Pectoral

85 91
63 73 76 79

15 9
37 27 24 21

nants. The copper content is related to the concentration of silver in the alloys, and there seem to be two systematic relationships in the copper content, leading the analysts to suggest that there probably were more than two sources of silver supply (Hirao et al. 1992: 30). Comparing the Kuntur Wasi analyses with the compositions determined for the Dumbarton Oaks Chavn objects and others reported in the table on page 60, it seems clear that some of the Kuntur Wasi alloys were made by melting together gold and silver; their silver contents (e.g., 3537 percent) appear significantly higher than the concentrations found in north Peruvian gold placer deposits, whose silver content hovers around 25 percent. Other objects from the Kuntur Wasi tombs have compositions close to those of the Dumbarton Oaks and Dalmau items. On the whole, the Kuntur Wasi objects exhibit a much broader range of alloy compositions than do the Chavn and Chavin-style artifacts reported in the previous table. The silver sheet used for the conch shell of B440 is a ternary alloy of silver, gold, and copper. It is an intentional alloy probably made by melting together metallic silver and native gold. This would account for the high concentration of gold in the alloy and for the presence of some lead, introduced with the silver. The proportion of silver to gold ensures a silver-colored metal. For purposes of comparison, the Chavn and Chavin-style table includes Roots analysis (in Lothrop 1951) of a pin from the north coast site of Chongoyape, the only other object of possible Chavn style made of gold and silver parts. The spherical pin head is gold; the shaft appears to be silver in color. The composition of the silver-looking shaft is extremely close to that of the B440 silver conch shell. Altering the colors of gold and silver through alloying was a widespread practice of Chavn metal technology Another impressive example of its use is treated in the technical discussion of B442 (P1. 5). Rattle The pellets that rattle inside the figure must be quite small and made of a low-density material. They do not appear on the x-radiographs of the object (see Fig. 18). Suspension Two circular holes located on the back of the figure, between the shoulders, served to suspend it. There is no indication of the kind of material used for the suspending cord. The holes were punched from the 61

2 3 4 4

Pectoral Two earrings Pendant Pendant of gold and silver

65 63
89

35 37
11

90
30

10
70

The investigators report that these gold-silver alloys contain small amounts of copper and sometimes iron; no other elements were found as contami-

Chavn

Feet: one for each leg Arms: left and right side Spoon: scoop and cylinder body; two cylinder ends Conch shell: left and right side The overall form of the larger pieces (e.g., the front and back of the head and front and back of the torso) may have been achieved by hammering and raising over an anvil, but anatomical details (eyes, nose, mouth, fingernails, and toenails) and all decorative features (the harpy eagle on the figures back, the face on the underside of the spoon, and the guilloche pattern on the spoon cylinder) were rendered by working the metal with tracing tools, primarily from the front, on a bed of resilient material. All such tracing, whether to establish volumetric form, such as the nose or mouth, or to provide linear detail, such as locks of hair, was carried out on the appropriate part before it was joined to a neighbor. Inside the sunken eyes, there is a traced cross hatch pattern on the eyeballs. The same tool used to detail the ears left its mark and is identifiable in the traced outline of the raptorial bird on the figures back. The slightly proud guilloche motif on the cylinder of the spoon was laid out and raised from the back when the cylinder was still flat (see Fig. 19); the holes were punched at the same time, from back to front, and the burrs removed later. Substantial tooling of the guilloche appears to have refined its form after the cylinder was closed. Figure 17 shows the face traced on the disc that closes the base of the cylinder. The nose may have been raised slightly from the back of the disc, but the tracing was accomplished from the front. The eye pupils are holes punched through from the back of the sheet; burrs remain. The scoop portion of the spoon was partly formed and undoubtedly finished by sinking the metal into a resilient backing; the prominent hammer facets on the concave surface indicate such a procedure and provide surface texture. This same kind of faceted surface, though less pronounced, occurs on the front torso of the figure. The rear torso, like the convex surface of the spoon, is more highly burnished, certainly to provide an adequate ground for the traced eagle motif; the buttocks retain some faceting. The general treatment of the metal surfaces on this object is similar in quality to the surface treatment of the disc with central boss, B441 (P1. 4). Both juxtapose textured and smooth areas. These

Fig. 18 X-radiograph of effigy spoon B440. The seams on the head and torso are visible. X-radiograph by Paul Jett. outer surface through to the hollow interior. They were made before the torso was assembled, facilitating removal of all burr around the exterior rim and most of the burr on the interior. Distance between holes: ~ 0.75 cm; hole diameter: 0.014 cm. Shaping and Decorating the Parts The object is an assembly of twenty-two individual parts. These are indicated in the diagram of Figure 19. Head: face, back of head, topknot, two ears Torso: front, back Legs: left and right side 62

Chavn

I~--~~~

Fig. 19 Schematic drawing of effigy spoon B440s construction: heavy lines outline individual, shaped parts; dashed lines indicate join locations. The diagram of the spoon shows stages in its forming and assembly. Drawingby Elizabeth Wahle.

objects differ markedly from gorget B442 and plaque B604 (Pls. 5, 1), for example, which emphasize highly burnished and polished metal fields. Joining the Parts The seams and joins referred to in this discussion are diagrammed in Figure 19; heavy lines represent the borders of an element (e.g., the rear torso or the face), dashed lines locate joins between elements. All joins are metallurgical. The Figure Head. The front and back of the head abut along their common perimeter; there is no overlap

at the seam. The join was achieved by sweat welding these opposite edges. X-radiographs of the figure (Fig. 18) reveal that the weld is intermittent along the seam; the join is tacked at sites where surface metal sweated, ran into the seam, and solidified there. Long stretches of the join are invisible; in the finishing operations, metal from adjacent surfaces was pushed over onto the join and burnished there. Patches of seam not covered in this manner exhibit a once molten, now dendritic structure. Torso. The lateral torso seams are so carefully finished that the joining procedure is no longer apparent. X-radiographs indicate clearly that front and back torso abut and are welded together, prob63

Chavn

ably by a sweat weld. There is no evidence of any added weld material at the join, either on the figure itself or in the radiograph, but the radiograph records tiny spherical pores along the join which were once gas bubbles in the molten metal sweated into the seam. This join is more continuous, thus sturdier, than the sweat weld on the head. At the base of the figure, in the buttock area, the back of the torso fits inside the front, in an overlap seam, but the nature of the join is obscured by the tight crowding of anatomy in that region. Arms. The two parts of each arm appear to have been joined by the technique used for the head and torso. There is no evidence of solder or of weld metal having been added at the seams. It further appears that the inner arm, closest to the torso, is fitted slightly inside the outer arm, forming a barely overlapping seam. Some sections of the join exhibit a slight difference in level on either side, a result of the overlap configuration and of the final burnishing of metal from one surface over and onto the other. Burnishing has hidden large portions of these joins, but evidence of once-molten metal at the seams occurs on both arms. The length of join at the underside of the arms is not well finished, probably because it could not be seen. Legs. The seams formed along the midplane of each leg exhibit a somewhat different aspect from those of the head, torso, and arms, although the leg joins are welds and may be sweat welds. Opposite edges of the halves of each leg meet in a butt seam. The back of the lower legs and the underside of the thighs experienced overheating and an excess of metal flow. This entire zone appears to have been heated locally to produce sweating and welding. The joins, normally hidden from view, were left as made, with no further surface finishing. In contrast, the seam along the upper thigh that continues down the front of the lower leg (between knee and ankle) is finished with great care. The lower-leg seams exhibit features not apparent elsewhere on the figure: excess metal that stands proud of the seam, on either side or on both sides of the join. The general configuration at the join is shown in Figure 19a. This excess metal takes the form of extremely thin strips of gold that run parallel to the seam and are pressed down onto one or both seam edges. They may represent thin ribbons of weld metal introduced at the seam, or they may be long burrs of metal deliberately raised by abrading the free edges, then pressed down onto their respective 64

Plan

Join Section
i2~~~-~~.

Join
~~/~~5~--

ZI:i

Proud Metal

Fig. 19a Diagram of the lower-leg seams of efgy spoon B440 showing the proud metal. Drawing by Elizabeth Wahle.

edge. In either case, these strips, made of the same alloy as the leg metal, served as weld filler material at the seam between the two abutting edges. During local heating of the seam, the extreme thinness of these features relative to the leg metal would cause them to heat quickly to sweat or melt and to run into the seam before the leg metal reached sweat temperature. Removal of the heat source allowed this molten material to solidify effecting the join. Sections through these lower-leg joins (see Fig. 19a) show their characteristic features: proud metal that travels alongside the seam on one or both sides, and a slight depression at the line of the join, filled with once-molten metal that shrank upon freezing. Careful burnishing of these joins tended to spread the proud metal laterally giving the joins a broader appearance. This technique is extremely sophisticated. It has been documented, in slightly different form, on a set of gold jaguars from the Lambayeque valley that date to the end of the Early Intermediate Period or the beginning of the Middle Horizon (Lechtman, Parsons, and Young 1975; Lechtman 1988). The principle is the same, but the spoon figure presents a much earlier example. The Spoon Figure 19 shows the construction of the spoon. Three joins close and secure the cylindrical portion:

Chavn

at the vertical seam, formed by the two short sides of the rectangular sheet, and along the circumference of the upper and lower discs. All three joins were accomplished by sweat welding. They are so finely rendered that details of their construction are visible only on an x-radiograph, where intermittent tacking and spherical pores characterize the sweated join. The vertical seam is an overlap; the upper disc rests on top of the open cylinder, but the circumferential join is hidden by careful burnishing of the seam; the lower disc fits up inside the base of the cylinder, flush with the edge plane. The Conch Shell The fragile sheet-silver shell is broken and has been reinforced to preserve its form. This modern intervention has made it difficult to determine how the two halves of the shell may have been joined or if they were ever joined (see Fig. 18). It is possible that one side was joined to the figures left hand and the other side to the right hand. There is good evidence that the middle finger of the proper right hand was soldered to the top of one half of the shell with what appears to be silver solder. But the details of the articulation of the shell with respect to its own integrity as an independent item and with respect to the figures hands are now obscured. All the joins on the constituent parts of the figure and on the spoon are welded joins, and most if not all are sweat welds. Those on the spoon are more expertly done than those on the figure. The sweat weld technique maintains at the seam the metal color of the adjacent surfaces. No added metal is introduced at the seam. Assembling the Whole In assembling the parts of the figure and in joining the figure and spoon, metal was added at the join sites. Many of the joins exhibit similar characteristics: the added metal is close to the color of the elements being joined; the added metal is often spongy or granular in appearance and may have been introduced in the form of tiny bits, resembling a coarse powder; the material at the join sintered or melted partially but rarely reached a temperature at which it ran freely along the join. In some locations the added metal appears to have been packed into recesses in order to build up the form, increase the surface area over which bonding could occur, and strengthen the metallurgical join. The composition of the added metal has not been determined. It may be weld metal, but it is more likely a gold

alloy solder whose melting point is somewhat lower than that of the gold alloy sheet. The Joins Ear to head. Added metal was introduced primarily behind each ear; partial melting and sintering occurred; the join has a spongy granular appearance; the configuration of added metal suggests complete melting was never intended. Topknot to head. X-radiography reveals the topknot as a hollow, independent element joined to the head; the join appears granular and as if metal reached a pasty consistency during heating. Head to torso. Anatomically the figure has no neck. The head is attached directly to the torso; only the added joining material makes a transition between them. Both head and torso are closed forms; the upper torso has neither hole nor collar to seat the head. At two locations at the back of the figure, metal added at the seam melted and flowed to make the join. Elsewhere, the join is discontinuous; small patches of added metal appear to have melted and solidified locally At the front of the figure, the metal at the join is granular and sintered. Here the appearance is of coarse metal powder having been packed into the juncture between head and chest, in part to build up the pronounced declivity The material was heated until sintering and some incipient melting occurred. As a result of this variety of joining events, the juncture between head and torso is discontinuous, bumpy and irregular. The added metal may have a melting point somewhat lower than that of the gold sheet. On the other hand, it may be of the same composition as the sheet, which might explain why it was introduced in particle form, to facilitate sintering and some sweating, effecting the join without bringing the metal sheet to its melting point. Arms and legs to torso. The front and back torso parts shown in Figure 19 indicate the mechanism by which partial sockets were created to accommodate the upper arm and upper thigh prior to their articulation with the torso. The rear torso provides four short extensions, almost like cap sleeves, that protrude toward the front at shoulder height and thigh level. With the limb in place, this cap or exterior socket rim is pressed down to hug the limb mechanically maintaining its position. On the front torso, the gently curved chest and abdomen bend in abruptly at the sockets to form flat, interior rimlike surfaces that complete the socket channel. Both interior and exterior socket rims provide large surface
65

Chavn

Stage 1

Assembly

Join Type Sweat weld

Temperature T1: surface melting temperature of all parts

Joining of like parts made of the same metal/alloy

Joining together of previously sweat-welded

Weld or solder;
sintering and scant liquid

T2: sintering or
sweating

elements, all made of the

same metal/alloy 3 Joining of two complete forms, each with sweat-

formation of added material

Solder

temperature of the weld/solder material T2 < T1

T3:

welded and welded or soldered joins; both made of the same metal/alloy

melting temperature of the solder T3 <T2

areas of potential contact with the limbs over which metallurgical bonding can occur. A range of join types, similar to the variety exhibited at the neck, characterizes the socket joins. Metal that appears to have been introduced as coarse bits was packed into the free space between a limb and its interior socket rim, In the case of the thighs, this material was also used to build up and fill out the form on the exterior, at the angle between thigh and torso. When heated, the packing may have sweated, sintered, and remained granular, or partially melted and run along the seam. All three stages in the history of the alloys behavior under increasingly elevated temperature are visible at the sockets. These joins are rough and even shabby but they are strong. Where the exterior socket rim metal presses close upon a limb surface, sweating of either or both surfaces often produced a bond. None of the socket joins on any of the limbs is finished with the care common to the sweatwelded joins. Surfaces that could not be seen were left as joined. Feet to legs. Each foot is shaped from a single piece of metal sheet. A hole cut in the ankle area accommodates the end of the leg, and a short rim raised around the hole provides some mechanical fit as well as increased surface area for bonding. Metal added around the rim circumference melted

and ran along the seam. These joins appear to be welds. Figure to spoon. The figure touches the upper circular disc of the cylinder at three sites, and it was soldered at all three: the buttocks and the heels of both feet. Only the join between the proper left foot and the cylinder remains intact. The solder appears to be silver alloyed with a small amount of copper; it may contain some gold. It was applied in the form of small but rather thick, roughly circular pallions, placed between the figure and the cylinder, then heated in situ. The intact pallion has largely maintained its shape, indicating that the heat applied caused just enough melting to make the bond. Discussion It appears that the three stages in the assembly of this object required joining procedures and materials chosen for their effectiveness at successively lower temperatures (see chart above). Without an analysis of the metal added at anatomical joints on the figure, we cannot be certain about the degree to which the compositions of weld metals or solders were controlled, but the physical state of the joins provides enough evidence about the heating properties of these materials so that we can observe their selective use. HL

66

Plate 4

GORGET
Plate 4 Chavin, probably Chavn de Huntar, 400200 B.C. Gold. Diam. 12.3 cm; D. 2.5 cm; W. 56.2 g

B441
History: Said to have been found with effigy spoon B440 in Chavn de Huntar; formerly in the collection of Juan Dalmau (of Trujillo) who acquired it before 1941, and then in the collection of Joseph Brummer; purchased by Robert Bliss from Ernest Brummer, 1947 Exhibition: Ancient Arts of the Andes, Museum of Modern Art, 1954; 25 Centuries ofPeruvian Art, 700 BC1800 AD, Peabody Museum, Harvard University and Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 1961; Gods with Fangs, Museum of Primitive Art, 1962; Indigenous Art of the Americas, National Gallery of Art, 194862; Dumbarton Oaks, 1963

67

Chavn

Bibliography: Larco Hoyle 1941: 141, fig. 204; Kelemen 1943: 252253, p1. 207a; Lothrop 1951: 226240; Harnoncourt 1955: fig. 3; Bliss 1957: no. 301; Sawyer 1961: 279281; J. Rowe 1962: p1. 22; Benson 1963: 348; Bushnell 1965: 153154; Emmerich 1965: fig. 7; Benson 1972: figs. 12; Lavalle and Lumbreras 1985: 68; Alva 1992: 59, lam. 46; Burger 1992a: 202, fig. 221

B441 is probably the best known of the seventeen pieces from Chavn de Huntar acquired by Juan Dalmau. It is a small circular object of hammered gold only 12.3 cm in diameter, with a shallow convex-curved center and a broad, flat edge. The center of B441 is decorated with a frontal, jawless fanged face, and the outer border is decorated with an angular guilloche. Two holes were punched in the upper section of the artifact so that it could be suspended, presumably to wear it as a breastplate or gorget. This dual perforation is typical of the Chavn horizon and directly parallels the treatment of B440 (P1. 3). The object has a strong reddish cast except in those places that have been repolished in recent times. Some scholars (Lothrop 1951) assumed that this color was due to remnants of red paint, but recent analyses of the red material identify it as a natural corrosion product of high-silver, gold-silver alloys (see Heather Lechtmans Technical Description). In contrast to many other gold objects, this piece has no direct analogue in the sculptures of Chavn de Huntar, and its inspiration may lie in textiles. The low-relief treatment of the decoration and its intaglio borders is, of course, reminiscent of Chavn stone carving, but the circular format of the object, including its border design and its central motif, is alien to the stone carving, in which a rectangular format is the rule. Similarly the stone carvers did not use the guilloche as a border, and the disembodied fanged face never appeared as the central or principal representation. On the other hand, both the guilloche and the agnathic fanged face are basic secondary elements in the classic Chavn stone-carving repertoire. The guilloche has a long history in the art of Chavn de Huntar. The main cult object of the Old Temple, known as the Lanz6n, had a long vertical guilloche running down its back from its uppermost section, set into the rafters, to its lowermost section, lodged in the floor. This guilloche seems to visually underscore the role of the Lanz6n as an axis mundi, and it appears as a rope connecting the world above with the underworld. On the same sculpture, three other smaller vertical guilloches ap68

pear on the lower section of the Lanz6n, which, along with the main guilloche, seem to mark four cardinal directions, perhaps corresponding to a cosmogram of the world or universe in its horizontal dimension (Burger 1992a). Guilloches also are used to represent the braided hair of mythical figures or priests of the Old Temple and of the principal deity in the New Temple (J. Rowe 1967: fig. 21; cf. Tello 1960: fig. 60). In these cases the guilloches end in snake heads. The agnathic face in the center of B441 is merely a version of the agnathic frontal faces that appear frequently on the stone sculptures as kennings in the representation of eagles, cayman, and the principal deity (J. Rowe 1967: figs. 8, 10, 18, 19). Thus, the frontal agnathic face may be a generalized indication of a figures sacred character. Its treatment on B441 conforms to the dictates of anatropic organization discussed previously What sets the iconography of this piece apart is not the guilloche or agnathic face per se, but that they are used independently rather than as secondary adjuncts to other themes. Nevertheless, this combination of the two themes appears on other portable media, particularly on pottery and textiles. Pottery bowls usually have a circular format, and there is a long tradition of decorating their exterior or interior with a continuous guilloche. On the central coast, this dates back to pre-Chavin times at sites such as Anc6n; on the south coast, the guilloche continued to be used as a circumferential band on the Paracas-style ceramics of the Early Horizon. In a similar vein, versions of the agnathic face depicted on the gorget appear as principal themes on the chambers of Chavinstyle bottles, many of which have been found in coastal cemeteries (e.g., J. Rowe 1971: 115, fig. 21). There also are close parallels between the iconography of this gorget and some of the Chavin-style textiles recovered at Carhua on the Paracas peninsula. Many of the painted cotton textiles from this site use a circular format in the decoration, and, in some instances, a disembodied frontal fanged face is shown within a circular cartouche (Cordy-Collins
n.d.b: figs. 72a, 72b; Wallace 1991: figs. 3.17, 3.21).

Chavn

In at least one of the textiles, a guilloche band was painted on a cloth to define a circular design register in a manner directly paralleling its use on the outer band of the gorget (Cordy-Collins n.d.b: fig. 74; Wallace 1991: fig. 3.16). The L-shaped lateral canines on the central face, the rectilinear corners of the mouth of the central figure, the conflation of the eyes and mouth of serpents (with the complete omission of the serpents nose), and the angularity of the guilloche all indicate that B441 was made late in the relative chronology of Chavn art, perhaps late Phase D or Phase ER In any case, this would suggest that the Chavn de Huntar gold was produced during the Janabarriu Phase sometime after construction began on the New Temple. It is likely that B440 (P1. 3) and the other gold objects said to have been found at Chavn de Huntar, likewise, date to the Janabarriu Phase and that they like the gold from the tombs at Chongoyape, were produced during the Chavn horizon. RLB Technical Description Alloy and Color The composition of the gold in this sheet-metal disc was determined by x-ray fluorescence analysis (at the Freer and Sackler Galleries Department of Conservation and Scientific Research) of an area on the back: Composition (Weight Percent) Au 74.9 Ag 22.4 Cu 2.7

(in September 1992), first identified this kind of corrosion on ancient Egyptian gold objects (Frantz and Schorsch 1990). She removed tiny samples of the red material from B441 at locations where the accumulations are thickest, the depressed areas. X-ray diffraction analysis with a Debye-Scherrer camera determined the mineral type, identified in comparison with the powder diffraction standard for AgAuS (JCPDS 191146). The levels of silver and sulfur in the material were measured by energy dispersive spectrometry with a scanning electron microscope.27 The contrasting red and gold color pattern on the disc is a result of modern cleaning procedures. It is likely that, when found, the entire disc was covered with the sulfide filmlighter accumulations on the raised areas, thicker layers in the depressions. On the front, mechanical cleaning and polishing of only the raised areas have removed much of the red film from these surfaces, leaving the dark red depressions undisturbed. Attempts to clean the mineral from the smooth, concave walls at the back of the boss were only partially successful; the surface abrasion marks left by this action are evident. Thus, the contrasting color zones of the disc are entirely artificial, the result of natural corrosion phenomena and a selective cleaning procedure. Fabrication Like disc B442 (P1. 5), this object was raised from a flat sheet of gold, hammering and stretching the metal from the front over an anvil, as if to produce a flat-bottom bowl. Unlike B442, the facets formed by individual hammer blows were left to be seen on the sloping convex front walls of the boss. In this respect, disc B441 is quite different from disc B442 and plaque B604, whose surfaces were carefully planished and burnished to remove all traces of tool marks. It is much closer in treatment to spoon B440 (P1. 3), which also retains hammer facets, especially on its scoop portion. The wide rim of the disc was hammered flat and its perimeter trued after the boss was complete. Thickness measurements made at locations along the rim perime-

This compares well with the compositions of objects B440, B604, and B605 (Pls. 3, 1, 2), and with William Roots analyses (in Lothrop 1951: 238) of a group of Chavin-style sheet-gold objects, including a plaque or gorget and parts of a nose ornament (see composition table for Chavn and Chavin-style objects in the technical discussion of B440, P1. 3). At the time of manufacture, the disc presented bright golden surfaces at front and back, similar to those of B442 (P1. 5). The red film presently distributed unevenly over these surfaces formed during the depositional history of the object. This material, a silver-gold sulfide, is a naturally occurring corrosion product known to form, under certain environmental circumstances, on gold alloy objects containing high concentrations of silver. Deborah Schorsch,26 who analyzed the mineral on the disc
26Deborah Schorsch is associate conservator at the Sherman

Fairchild Center for Objects Conservation, Metropolitan Museum ofArt, New York City. 27William Root, as reported by Lothrop, suggested that ... inasmuch as some of these specimens [the Chavin-style gold alloy objects he analyzed] contain a considerable amount of silver, the red coating may be the result of corrosion of that metal (Lothrop 1951: 229).

69

Chavn

ter give an average value of 0.051 cm; the metal is quite uniform in thickness all along this edge. The motif that fills the circular, barely convex center of the boss was achieved by working the metal from the front to define the design, followed by refinement of its contours from the back. Fine tracing tools pressed the gold sheet down into a bed of resilient material, sinking the narrow outlines of the design below the level of the surrounding metal. This created a field of flat, slightly proud areas (golden) with sunken borders (now red). The metal was then worked from the back with narrow tracing tools, hammered lightly around the borders (raised at the back), to create an abrupt change of plane between border and neighboring flat field. The tool strokes outlining the borders are visible. These changes of plane are near orthogonal at the back, so that the walls of each design element are steep. This provides the motif with a crisp appearance at the front, as if it had been carved. Certain details, such as the serpents eyes, are raised from the back. The precise, crisp appearance of the central motif on the boss of this disc is substantially different from the smooth, rounded contours and gentle changes of plane characteristic of the guilloche design of disc B442 (P1. 5) and the figure depicted on

plaque B604 (P1. 1). The carved quality is not an inescapable consequence of sinking metal from the front; portions of the B604 figure (P1. 1) were executed in that way and all the low relief on the B605 feline (P1. 2) was achieved from the front. The technique was chosen and enhanced to produce the desired effect. The guilloche motif on the flat rim is raised from the back. Two concentric lines on the front, one encircling the base of the boss, the other several millimeters in from the perimeter of the disc, outline the band available for the motif. The strokes of the tracing tool were rendered to the back of the sheet, delimiting the zone. The borders of each raised element of the design were further defined with tracing tools, hammered from the front. As with the boss motif, sharpness and clarity of junctures between walls and their surround were important and contributed to the crisp quality of the design. The guilloche was rendered free hand, working the metal on a bed of resilient material. Two holes, punched from the rear to the front, are located 2.55 cm apart on the boss wall above the central motif. Most of the rim burr has been removed. Though misshapen, the holes are roughly circular, measuring 0.020 and 0.024 cm in diameter. HL

70

Plate S

HUARMEY GORGET
Plate S Chavin, Maltina near Huarmey 400200 B.C. Deliberate alloy of gold, silver, and copper. Diam. 20.8 cm; D. 2.9 cm; W. 162.5 g B442 History: Said to have been found on the hilltop known as Maltina, east of the Pan American highway north of Huarmey; purchased by Robert Bliss from Walram von Schoeler, 1949 Exhibition: Indigenous Art of the Americas, National Gallery of Art, 194962; Dumbarton Oaks, 198S Bibliography: Lothrop 19S1: 227; Bliss 19S7: no. 302; Benson 1963: no. 349; Alva 1992: 58, lams. 44, 4S

Prior to the 1989 University of Tokyo discoveries at Kuntur Wasi in the Jequetepeque drainage (Onuki 1990), all major discoveries of Chavn gold had been made by huaqueros (illegal looters). Besides the looted materials said to come from Chongoyape in the Lambayeque drainage and at Chavn de Huntar in the Mosna drainage, there was a third im-

portant find made on a hilltop known locally as Maltina, a few miles north of Huarmey (Bennett 1932: 24; Goddard 1921: 447). This discovery was made around 1919 by an old huaquero named Seor Moreno. He is said to have learned of the location of the treasure from the spirits through the technique of automatic writing. While digging for the
71

Chavn

Fig. 20 One of the bi-color gold Chavin breastplates

from the Maltina cache. American Museum of Natural History, no. 41 .0/3706. Photograph courtesy of the
museum.

promised riches, Moreno accidentally burnt off the fog vegetation from the side of a hill and noticed gold sticking out of the sand on the side of the ridge. There was no evidence of a burial or other associated features, and it is not clear whether the objects were found in situ or whether they had eroded from their original interment in the hill. The Maltina cache consisted of at least twentysix gold objects. In the original discovery the looters found ten or eleven gorgets, seven breastplates (Fig. 20), six plumes, and two stirrup-spouted bottles. Apparently Moreno melted down at least three of the plumes and three of the breastplates for their metallic value, and other objects may have been dispersed without record. Two years later, Pliny Goddard, the curator of ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, visited the supposed location of Morenos discovery and was present when an additional matching gorget was uncovered. The gorget in the Dumbarton Oaks collection may be the final one recovered from the spot. At the present time, eight of the gorgets along with the other gold artifacts are part of the American Museum of Natural History collection; one of the gorgets is at the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania; and one is in the Museo Larco Herrera in Lima. Judging from the style and technology of B442, it can be dated to the mid-Early Horizon (ca. 400 B.C.), and can be seen as related to the Chavn de Huntar gorget already described (B441, P1. 4). B442 has two holes punched in it (as do the other Huarmey gorgets), presumably so that it could be
72

hung around the neck as a large pendant or chest ornament. It will be recalled that the Chavn de Huntar gorget had similar perforations. Although there is some difference in the size of the gorgets, all were decorated with an angular guilloche pattern resembling the same pattern that adorned the border of the Chavn de Huntar gorget. Like the Chavn de Huntar gorget, it has a convex-curved body with a broad, flattened shelflike rim. The guilloches on the Huarmey gorgets differ from those from Chavn de Huntar in being more stylized and representing a braid with a Z-twist rather than an S-twist. Except for the guilloche that rings the circumference, B442 and other Huarmey gorgets were left undecorated. The similarity in the form, size, technology decoration, and apparent function of the Huarmey gorgets to the Chavin-style gorget from Chavn de Huntar discussed above (B441, P1.4) has led most scholars to identify Huarmey gold as another example of Chavn metallurgy produced during the Early Horizon (e.g., Lothrop 1951; Emmerich 1965). In the 1940s, some specialists, such as Pal Kelemen (1943) and Wendell Bennett (1946: p1. 50), believed that they pertained to the Chimu culture, but subsequent research has shown the rarity of the guilloche design in post-Chavin times. Moreover, the type of gorgets in the Huarmey lot have no known analogue in later cultures; the Early Horizon date of the Huarmey gorgets now seems compelling. The guilloche on B442 has small raised circles in its interstices. If the guilloche at its lowest level represents cordage or rope, these could correspond to strands in the core or background of the cordage. Similar intersticial dots are shown in some guilloches on the Chavin-style painted textiles from Carhua (Wallace 1991: fig. 3.28). The other pieces from the Maltina lot share fewer features with other known examples of Chavn gold, and some scholars suggest that these may be later in date. If so, the gorgets may have been heirlooms kept from several centuries earlier (Emmerich 1965: 6). Although it remains an open question whether the other pieces from Huarmey were produced at the same time as the gorgets, the arguments raised against their contemporaneity are tenuous. The three massive golden breastplates (see Fig. 20) were considered to be technologically more advanced than the gorgets because they alternate bands of reddish gold and whitish gold, and this was said to imply a post-Chavin date. However, there is no doubt that Chavn metalworkers knew

Chavn

how to produce both white-gold artifacts and redgold artifacts (each with different alloy compositions). It is also established that the Chavn artisans possessed the technology necessary to join strips of these together by sweat welding or soldering. Lechtmans analysis of a soldered, gold jewelry fragment from Chavn de Huntar has demonstrated that Janabarriu Phase craftsmen already had excellent technical control over alloy composition and localized heating (Lechtman 1988). Thus, we cannot assume that production of multicolored breastplates in the Maltina cache were beyond the capacity of Early Horizon metalworkers. While no other examples of two-colored gold objects are known for Chavn times, it should be remembered that the Early Horizon was a time of great experimentation and technological development. Some innovations may have had only limited acceptance. It is noteworthy for example, that besides spoon B440 (P1. 3) and a Chavin-style pin from Chongoyape, no other examples dating to the Early Horizon are known of silverwork either alone or in combination with gold. Lechtmans conclusion that the gold surface of B442 has been intentionally enriched is more troubling for the Early Horizon dating of this specimen since surface enrichment has not been previously encountered in the analysis of preciousmetal objects of the Chavn horizon. On stylistic grounds, the pattern of geometric interlocking snakes that decorate the two golden stirrup-spouted bottles in the Maltina lot immediately call to mind the decorations of the Early Intermediate Period, particularly those of the Lima culture. But interlocking snakes were a popular theme beginning with late Preceramic textiles (Bird 1963b), and they appear on pottery by the late Initial Period (Burger 1987: 368).28 Thus, the representation of this theme on Early Horizon gold is not as puzzling as it might seem at first. RLB
28Recent looting in the Jequetepeque valley has produced goldwork similar to that of the Huarmey lot, and one of the stylized plumes is even decorated with interlocking snakes similar to that on the Huarmey stirrup spout bottles (Lavalle and Lang 1981: 128129). Unfortunately, the age and associations of the Jequetepeque specimens are also unknown, so they do not clarify the issue of contemporaneity of the pieces in the Huarmey hoard. One of the few examples of early goldwork comparable to the Maltina bottle is a gold plume decorated with bicephalic interlocking snakes that seems to have been recovered on the south bank of the Jequetepeque River in 1974 atthe site of Balsar (Alva 1992: 8182, lam. 50). It is said to come frofm a tomb containing dozens of gold objects. Alva believes that these materials

Technical Description Alloy and Color This object is fashioned from a ternary alloy of gold, silver, and copper. X-ray fluorescence analysis (at the Freer and Sackler Galleries Department of Conservation and Scientific Research) of the front and back surfaces of the central boss determined the gorgets composition: Composition (Weight Percent) Au
60.6

Ag
17.5

Cu
21.9

This is an intentional, not a natural alloy When cast into ingots, the metal would have a reddish or pinkish color. The alloy corresponds to about 14K gold, whose red coppery color is diminished by the gold and silver components. Considerable evidence on the front and back of the disc indicates that the gold surface is enriched and overlays metal of a different color. In areas where the gold has worn thin from abrasion or polishing, such as along the flat rim at the back or the tops of the raised, convex guilloche reliefs at the front, the exposed metal beneath has a pinkish cast. The metal color at a few small sites, where heavy abrasion or deep scratching has removed the gold completely is a strong silver-pink. Some of the low areas bordering raised relief motifs on the front rim exhibit thin corrosion films. During manufacture of the metal sheet for this disc and in the further sequences of hammering and annealing to shape and decorate the form, substantial amounts of surface copper were undoubtedly lost. Assuming that no copper remains in the ultimate few microns of surface metal and that the concentrations of gold and silver in the enriched surface zone have increased in proportion to their relative weight fractions in the original unaltered alloy the resultant surface layer is an alloy containing approximately 76 percent gold and 24 percent silver. This is the equivalent of 18K gold, and it is undoubtedly this enriched layer that is responcome from the tomb of a female, and, on stylistic grounds, he dates the gold objects from it to a transitional stage of the Formative, a term he uses to refer to the period immediately following the Chavn horizon (i.e., late Early Horizon or Upper Formative). Nevertheless, Alva illustrates Dumbarton Oaks Huarmey gorget B442 from the Maltina cache and places it within his category of Chavin gold that includes B441 (P1. 4) and the other gold objects said to havebeen found at Chavn de Huntar.

73

Chavn

Breastplate AMNH 41 .0/3706 Composition

(Weight Percent)

Band-pair
4 (top most)

Band No.
8 7
6

Band Color
Silver

Au
53.5 85.1 55.7 77.7 52.8 78.2 54.1 79.0

Ag
39.7 8.3 36.6 11.3 39.0 14.1 38.7

Cu
6.8
6.6

Gold
Silver

7.6

5 2
4

Gold
Silver Gold Silver Gold

11.0
8.2 7.6 7.2 7.6

3
1 (bottom most)

2
1

13.4

sible for the bright and slightly yellow color of the disc. As pointed out earlier, the ternary alloy of the metal sheet is no more than about 14K gold. Richard Burger refers to a group of large breastplates from Huarmey now in the collections of the American Museum of Natural History, that may bear a relation to disc B442. One of these is illustrated here in Figure 20. Each breastplate is constructed from eight alternating bands of goldlooking and silver-looking metal sheet. All eight bands have been analyzed on the breastplate shown in Figure 20; the results (above) illustrate how metalworkers controlled color through alloy composition.29 The gold-colored bands, probably native
29The analyses reported above were carried out with a scanning electron microscope (SEM) and an energy dispersive spectrometer. Deborah Schorsch removed the samples from the rear of the breastplate; Mark T. Wypyski conducted the SEM analyses. Both are staff members of the Metropolitan Museum of Arts Sherman Fairchild Center for Objects Conservation. In 1921, band-pair #1 was analysed by a metallurgical and chemical engineering firm in New York City According to the records of the American Museum of Natural History William Root analysed the same band-pair with somewhat different results. The analyses provided by the industrial firm and by Root are given here. Roots results are close to those obtained in the recent SEM determinations. These analytical values are published below with the permission of the Department of Anthropology American Museum of Natural History
AMNH 41 .0/3706 Band-pair # I Composition (Weight Percent) Au Ag Cu 79.6 80 12.8 14 6.9 6

placer gold, are equivalent to 19K gold, the silvercolored bands equivalent to 13K. The silvery alloy may have been made by melting together metallic silver, containing some copper, with placer gold. The versatility shown in the design of gold-silvercopper alloys to accomplish specific color effects links Dumbarton Oaks disc B442 to the Huarmey breastplates. It should be noted, however, that the composition of disc B442 differs substantially from the object compositions tabulated in the technical description for B440. Fabrication The metal sheet of B442 is extremely uniform in thickness along the disc perimeter (average thickness = 0.047 cm). Like disc B-441 (P1. 4), the central boss has been raised from the front over some form of anvil, as if the final form were to be a shallow round-bottom bowl. Individual hammer blows, oriented circumferentially are visible on xradiographs and on the front vertical wall of the boss, close to its juncture with the flat rim, where the metal was stretched most. But these traces of tool action are difficult to find. The planishing, burnishing, and polishing of the boss and rim are near perfect on both front and back. The broad rim surrounding the boss was hammered flat and trued around its perimeter once the central zone was raised. The guilloche motif was raised by working from the back. Each element of the design has been executed free hand, hammering the metal into a resilient bed. No guide lines are evident on the disc or in the radiographs. The blows left by round-end, highly polished tracing tools, including punches, are just visible within some of the depressions at

Analyst
Industrial Root

Gold-colored band Silver-colored band

Industrial
Root

46.7
54

43.9
40

8.5
6

74

Chavn

the back. Care was taken to exert uniform pressure in hammering so that tool strokes would not render at the front. The depressed motifs at the back also show evidence of final burnishing to achieve smooth, uninterrupted, and rounded contours. Nowhere is there an abrupt change of plane. It is possible that all of the work on this object was executed from the back, as there are no traces of finishing

operations along the borders of the raised motifs on the front surface. Two holes punched through from the front and spaced about 3.7 cm apart are located along the boss circumference, at the boss-rim juncture. They are quite circular and appear to have been reamed out; burrs were removed carefully at the back; hole diameters measure 0.250 and 0.258 cm. HL

Plate 6

PAINTED TEXTILE WITH SUPERNATURAL

Plate 6 Chavin, Callango, Ica valley 400200 B.C. Painted cotton. H. 27.4 cm; W. 78.5 cm B545 History: Said to have been found with B-544, a painted textile with cayman, and B562, a pyroengraved gourd, and a ceramic bottle in a tomb in Callango; acquired by John Wise and then by Michael D. Coe; given to Dumbarton Oaks by Michael D. Coe, 1964 Exhibition: Gods with Fangs, Museum of Primitive Art, 1962; Dumbarton Oaks 1968 ; The Ancient Americas: Art from Sacred Landscapes, Art Institute of Chicago, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 199293 75

Chavn

Bibliography: J. Rowe 1962: fig. 29; Menzel, Rowe, and Dawson 1964: 3839; Benson 1969: no. 456; Sawyer 1972: fig. 8; Cordy-Collins 1979: 51; Wallace 1991; Burger 1992b: 276277, fig. 19; Cordy-Collins n.d.c In 1962, two Chavin-style painted textiles (B545, B544, Pls. 6, 7) were displayed in an exhibit at the Museum of Primitive Art in New York. They had been found in 1960 or 1961 and were acquired subsequently by the collector John Wise. As far as is known, these painted Chavn textiles were the first of their type to be discovered. Their provenience was said to be a single tomb in the Callango basin (J. Rowe 1962: fig. 29, Michael Coe personal communication), a small but fertile pocket of agricultural land in the lower reaches of the Ica valley It was reported that these textiles were associated with an Ocucaje 4 bottle in the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Tischman (Menzel, Rowe, and Dawson 1964: 51, fig. 11a; J. Rowe 1962: fig. 53), the pyroengraved gourd in the Dumbarton Oaks collection (B 562, P1. 8) (see description below), and a small cloth that was found inside the gourd. Concerned about the preservation of these unique organic artifacts, Michael Coe acquired the gourd and painted textiles from Wise, and, after arranging for their conservation with the assistance of Junius Bird, he donated them to the Dumbarton Oaks collection (Michael Coe, personal communication, 1992). The two painted textiles from Callango provided strong support for Julio C. Tellos claim that the Chavn civilization had penetrated the south coast of Peru and had influenced the local Paracas style (cf. Kroeber 1953; Tello 1929). The classic Chavn iconography on the Callango textiles closely resembled the images on the Chavn de Huntar stone carvings, and they seemed to demonstrate that at least some people on the south coast had a detailed knowledge of the Chavn pantheon and the stylistic conventions used to portray it. Prior to these finds, the impact of Chavn religious art had been identified through local renditions on Paracas pottery but these simplified representations had not prepared archaeologists for the presence on the south coast of Chavn art in all of its beauty and complexity It is likely that the Chavn style was introduced primarily through painted textiles like those from Callango (Cordy-Collins n.d.b; Sawyer 1972). Since 1961, additional painted Chavn textiles have been uncovered, but as with the metals, virtually all came from looted tombs. The most impres76

sive of these lots came from a large burial at the site of Carhua, located to the south of the Paracas peninsula on the Bahia de Independencia, but isolated pieces also have been uncovered in the Chincha valley near Cabezas Largas on the Paracas peninsula, and at Samaca in the lower Ica valley (Burger 1992; Conklin 1971, 1978; Engel 1987: 115, fig. 11110). Thus the two Callango textiles are no longer an anomaly They can be discussed within the larger context of early Paracas culture, including the painted Chavn textiles found at some of its sites. Dwight Wallace (personal communication, 1992) has carried out a technical analysis of the two painted cloths at Dumbarton Oaks and found that they were structurally similar. Both are plain-weave cotton textiles with single two-ply warps and oneply wefts made of Z-spun thread. While this weaving configuration also occurs in some of the Carhua painted fabrics, it is not common nor is it typical of the weaving tradition of the south coast (Wallace 1991). Based on a comparison with other early textile assemblages, Wallace concludes that cloth with these features may have been brought from outside the south coast, and actually may have been woven on the central coast (Dwight Wallace, personal communication, 1992). Of course, it is possible that a weaver trained on the central coast could have produced the fabric in the Ica valley or that the textile was painted locally even if the plain-weave cloth was imported. B545 was painted with the image of a Chavn deity using brown and reddish-brown paint; a fine, dark brown outline delineates the details of the multicolor figure. The textile under discussion is only a piece of a much larger cloth. It measures 79 cm in width and 27 cm in height, but if we calculate the size of the complete deity its height was at least 70 cm. Similar textiles from Carhua represent a vertical column of deities and the cloth originally may have had a length of 140 cm or more. Both B545 and B544 (P1. 7) were probably equivalent or larger in size than many of the well-known sculptures from Chavn de Huntar, and their original function may have been similar to the stone carvings that inspired them. Such textiles may have served as wall hangings at the local branches of the Chavn

Chavn

cult or in the residences of elite members associated with the cult. As in the case of the Carhua textiles, the purported interment of the Callango textiles in burials may not directly reflect the original function of the painted fabrics. The image on B-545 is executed in a style similar to that of the dual columns used in the Blackand-White Portal of Chavn de Huntars New Temple (Menzel, Rowe, and Dawson 1964: 39). This assessment would place the textiles date sometime in the Janabarriu Phase or Phase D of John H. Rowes sculptural chronology The squared eyes, the simplified snakes, and the decorative points in the mouth of the main figure all point to this chronological position. Thus, the Callango textiles appear to be roughly equivalent in age to the Chavn gold described earlier in this section. The iconography in the fragmentary Dumbarton Oaks textile represents the upper portion of a major deity in the staff god pose with interlocking canines and stylized rectangular eyes; snakes and cat-snakes issue from the top of the head. On either side, the clawed hands of the deity can be seen grasping vertical staffs that terminate in profile fanged faces. The top of the deitys head opens into an inverted agnathic face out of which a central snake and six leaflike plumes emerge. This portion of the textile was designed with anatropic principles in mind, and the image reads well when turned 180 degrees. While the staff god pose and most of the specific elements of B545 share their style with the sculpture of Chavn de Huntar, several elements appear to be local. The most significant of these are the leaflike plumes and the ovoid fruitlike appendages that figure prominently on the deitys head and on the staffs. If a specific plant is being referred to here, it has not yet been identified, but the strong vegetative associations of the deity represented are clear. A link between the deity with staffs and plants also exists in painted Chavn textiles from Carhua (Cordy-Collins n.d.c, 1977a, 1979), and several Carhua textiles represent a deity in the staff god pose with virtually the same leaflike forms growing from the head and staffs (Fig. 21). The Carhua textiles are more complete, and it is evident that the deity in question is a female, with her breasts and genitals represented by metaphorical substitutions. Although there are some minor differences between these Carhua cloths and B545, such as the absence of the ovoid fruitlike elements and the

Fig. 21 Female supernatural painted on a Chavin textile from Carhua (after Sawyer 1972: fig. 9).

pointy-nosed snakes (which appear on other Carhua cloths), it seems very likely that the deity on the cloth from Callango was also a female supernatural associated with agricultural fertility Elsewhere we hypothesize that this deity may be a wife, sister, or daughter of the main deity from Chavn de Huntar (Burger 1988); alternatively Alana Cordy-Collins proposes that this image represents the female aspect of Chavn de Huntars principal god. In either case, this textile in the Dumbarton Oaks collection would have been associated with the local branch of the Chavn cult, and it illustrates the linkage between the society on the south coast and other groups sharing such beliefs in central and northern Peru. RLB

77

Plate 7

PAINTED TEXTILE WITH CAYMAN

Plate 7 Chavin, Callango, Ica valley 400200 B.C. Painted cotton. H. 90 cm; W. 63 cm B544 History: Said to have been found with B545, a painted textile with supernatural, and B562, a pyroengraved gourd, and a ceramic bottle in a tomb in Callango; acquired by John Wise and then by Michael D. Coe; given to Dumbarton Oaks by Michael D. Coe, 1964 Exhibition: Gods with Fangs, Museum of Primitive Art, 1962; Dumbarton Oaks, 1968 ; The Ancient Americas: Art from Sacred Landscapes, Art Institute of Chicago, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 199293 Bibliography: Rowe 1962: fig. 30; Benson 1969: no. 455; Dynner 1972: 511, 30; Lapiner 1976: fig. 115; Cordy-Collins 1979: 51; Lavalle 1983: 41; Clifford 1984: 50; Lavalle 1986: 365; Wallace 1991; Burger 1992a: 197, fig. 209; Burger 1992b: 276277; Cordy-Collins n.d.c

The second textile said to have come from the Callango tomb in the Ica valley is also a fragment from a large cloth hanging. It measures 63 cm in width and originally measured 1.2 m or more in height. Like B545 (P1. 6), the designs on its white cotton, plain-weave cloth had been outlined with dark brown pigment, and selected zones had been filled in with brown or reddish-brown color. The cloth represented at least two supernaturals with cayman attributes. The uppermost of these two figures is incomplete, but it appears to be almost identical to the lower complete one. The dense forest of metaphorical substitutions makes these images particularly difficult to recognize. Perhaps even more frustrating for the uninitiated viewer is the splayed-pelt convention that is employed in representing the cayman. The figure is split down the middle and opened up, thus allowing the depiction of all sides of the threedimensional supernatural creature in a twodimensional format. As a result, a single vertically oriented fanged mouth is shared by the eyes and nostrils that flank it on both sides. In classic Chavn sculpture, the splayed-pelt convention is used only for the cayman, and its best-known example is the large granite carving documented in Yauya by Julio C. Tello (1960). Near the bottom of the Dumbarton Oaks textile, the two back legs of the cayman are visible in flexed position as though the creature is swimming or flying; this is the typical position in which the

cayman was shown in Chavn sculpture. The central axis or vertebral column of the cayman on the Callango textile is represented by repeating agnathic faces; six cat-snakes and two snakes issue from the tail end of the creature. It is worth noting that the cayman was probably the most important supernatural at the Chavn de Huntar temple, other than the principal anthropomorphic supernatural discussed previously In the Chavn de Huntar heartland, this special status is expressed by the unusually large blocks on which the cayman was carved and the rarity with which it was depicted. Unlike raptorial birds and jaguars, the cayman supernatural was never represented in repetitive friezes of small stone carvings. Only the cayman supernatural and the principal anthropomorphic deity were carved on the notched prismatic stone columns that functioned as major cult objects (or idols) at Chavn de Huntar. The prominence of the cayman in the Chavn pantheon is also evident on the Callango textile (and the related Carhua textiles). It is one of the few images that fills an entire large cloth without the addition of secondary supernaturals or motifs; no other animal image (birds, jaguars, etc.) are shown on the south coast textiles at a scale comparable to that of the cayman. In terms of B544s date, the style is similar to that on B545 (P1. 6) and is consistent with a Phase D date or mid-Early Horizon date. As in B545, there are a series of local elements that distinguish the Callango cayman image from those on the stone 79

Chavn

sculptures in the Chavn heartland. Among the most notable of these are the small stems with circular and bi-color rectangular flowerlike endings that sprout directly from the body of the creature and from the cat-snakes that project from it. While these plantlike appendages are unusual, it should be remembered that the single Chavn sculpture on which plants are most common was the Tello Obelisk (Fig. 22), a carving that shows the supernatural cayman as the bearer of lowland cultigens. Another local feature of B-544 is the use of profile agnathic

mouths and squared eyes as semi-independent elements that hang from the cayman body rather than being incorporated as metaphoric substitutions. Other oddities of this textile are the interlocking snakes that appear on the posterior of the cayman in place of the usual tail feathers (or fins), and the frontal face with upturned mouth that was inserted into the corner of the caymans mouth. These and other features are unusual, but even in the Chavn heartland there is tremendous variation among the known cayman representations. RLB

Fig. 22 The Tello Obelisk. Drawing by John H. Rowe. 80

Plate 8

PYROENGRAVED GOURD
Plate 8 Chavn and Cupisnique influenced, Callango, Ica valley 400200 Gourd. H. 8.3 cm; Diam. 15.9 cm B562
B.C.

History: Said to have been found with B-544, a painted textile with cayman, and B545, a painted textile with supernatural, and a ceramic bottle in a tomb in Callango; acquired by John Wise and then by Michael D. Coe; given to Dumbarton Oaks by Michael D. Coe, 1967 Exhibition: Dumbarton Oaks, 1968 Bibliography: J. Rowe 1962: figs. 55, 552; Benson 1969: no. 457; Burger 1992a: 196, fig. 206

Unlike gold jewelry and painted cloth, the production of pyroengraved gourds has a long history dating back some two millennia before the Chavn horizon (Bird 1963b). Although pyroengraved gourds were valued in Pre-Hispanic times, they never seem to have been invested with prestige comparable to that accorded to fine textiles and precious metals.

The depiction of Chavn motifs on the pyroengraved gourds of the south coast, like their appearance on Paracas-style pottery, illustrates the penetration of the Chavn cult into the daily life of Early Horizon agriculturalists and fisherfolk, and the adoption of Chavn religious themes and stylistic conventions by local artisans. 81

Chavn

However, the Chavn culture was but one of the many involved in the Chavn interaction sphere, and the Chavn style was not the only source of inspiration for artistic innovations on the south coast. The Cupisnique culture of the north coast continued to be influential during the Early Horizon, and aspects of its art style were emulated even at the site of Chavn de Huntar (Burger 1992a). The small decorated gourd in the Dumbarton Oaks collection exemplifies the way in which the Cupisnique and Chavn traditions both influenced the art of the south coast during the Chavn horizon. As noted above, this piece may have come from the same Ocucaje 4 tomb in Callango, where the painted cloths were found. Throughout the central Andes, the fruits of the bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceria) were dried, and then used as containers and for serving and storing liquids. The decorated gourd in the Dumbarton Oaks collection is a small container only 15.9 cm in diameters. Considering its size and form, it may have been used as a drinking vessel, perhaps for maize beer (chicha). Cut gourd vessels are still a popular alternative to glasses at modern picanteras (bars) serving chicha in many parts of the Peruvian highlands. To produce B562, the top or neck of the fruit of a bottle gourd was cut away and discarded, and the remnant edge was then abraded to form a rim beveled on the exterior. The gourd was decorated by a combination of scraping, burning, and incising. Most of the iconographic detail was produced by narrow incisions made in the surface of the gourd with a sharp instrument in a manner not unlike the tracing of details in golden objects. By scraping selected zones, a contrast was created between the matte reflection of the abraded zone and the naturally reflective surface of the unmodified one. By burning some scraped zones, a dark tone was achieved that differed markedly from the natural brown surface color of the bottle gourd; these blackened areas were used to make the imagery more vivid and easier to understand. In several panels, the background was scorched to a dark tone to serve as a foil for the lighter and slightly higher (and more lustrous) iconography carved in the foreground. In other portions of the gourd, the artisan darkened specific features within a thematic element (such as the pupil of an eye). The decoration enveloping the exterior of B562 depicts a looped, net bag filled with felines and trophy heads (Fig. 23). The bag is represented by an interlocking angular guilloche, or twined fret pat82

Fig. 23 Drawing of images on pyroengraved gourd B562. Drawing by Elizabeth Wahle.

tern. A continuous angular fret pattern was carved on the scraped but unburnt rim of the gourd. It may represent an S-twisted cord at the edge or the top of the looped bag. The interstices of the bag are irregular pentagons and hexagons arrayed in two horizontal registers. In the upper register, one anthropomorphic head with crossed fangs and four profile felines can be seen through the openings. In the interstices of the bottom register, there are three anthropomorphic heads and two felines in profile. The bottom of the bag was represented by a cross with a circular center. A looped bag filled with trophy heads was not part of the symbolic vocabulary of Chavn de Huntar, but it was one of the most popular themes depicted in the Cupisnique pottery of the north coast. During the late Initial Period, numerous singlespouted and stirrup-spouted bottles have this image as their central or sole theme; reference to it is made in the description of a Cupisnique steatite cup in the Dumbarton Oaks collection (see B580, P1. 11). Even a cursory review of the many examples of this theme on Cupisnique ceramics reveals variations in the treatment of the bag and the portrayal of the trophy heads (Alva 1986: figs. 222225, 248, 442; Larco Hoyle 1941: 7; Lumbreras 1974: fig. 81). Nevertheless, the style of the heads on the Callango gourd is similar, though not identical, to some of the profile trophy heads on Cupisnique pottery

Chavn

(e.g., Alva 1986: figs. 247442). In many of the Cupisnique bottles, as in B562, the heads are shown with open eyes and a closed downturned mouth. While the profile heads are not naturalistic representations of severed heads, as is the case in Cerro Sechin or Yurayaku sculptures, the vertical scoring above and below some of the heads could represent flowing blood. A single face on the Dumbarton Oaks gourd has a set of exposed teeth and interlocking fangs, and it may represent a supernatural. While the looped-bag theme and the trophy heads have strong similarities on the north coast, there are numerous iconographic elements on the Callango gourd that cannot be explained by recourse to Cupisnique antecedents. The portrayal of profile felines in conjunction with the bag of trophy heads has no known analogue on the north coast. The portrayal of repeating felines in profile is more similar to the procession of jaguars decorating Chavn de Huntars Circular Plaza than to anything in Cupisnique art. The portion of the frieze that flanks the Circular Plazas eastern entrance features profile felines in both the upper and lower registers. While felines are depicted on Cupisnique pottery they generally are shown modeled and as the principal figures on the vessel (Alva 1986: figs.
174, 180185).

The form of the felines and the profile heads shown on B562 also reflect the influence of the Chavn art style. For example, three of the felines have a tail that ends as a simplified serpent, a local version of classic Chavn metaphorical substitution. This specific treatment of the feline tail appears on most feline representations at Chavn de Huntar (Lumbreras 1974: fig. 59), whereas felines depicted on Cupisnique pottery have naturalistic tails. The recurved rays that emerge from several of the felines and profile faces on B562 are characteristic of the later portion of the Chavn artistic sequence. Although the recurved rays are best known from the Raimondi Stela (Fig. 14), they also were used to adorn felines (Lumbreras 1974: fig. 59). Finally the design element at the bottom of the gourd is a central circle bordered by four wedgelike projections that form a cross. The center of the circle incorporates the natural protuberance that exists on the base of all bottle gourds, and the cross motif is highlighted by scorching the cross to a blackened shade. Iconographic elements analogous to this combination of cross and circle play an especially important role in Chavn iconography This element appears on the top of the notched portion of the Lanz6n, and it occupies an equally crucial position

on the Tello Obelisk (Fig. 22) and the Yauya Stela (Burger 1992a: 219; J. Rowe 1967: figs. 6, 18). All three of these sculptures were major cult objects, and in all cases, the circle-cross element was shown at critical junctures in the iconography Donald Lathrap suggests that the cross (or notched square) represents the membrane between the upper and lower halves of the universe, which in Quechua cosmology corresponds to the earths surface, and that the circle is interpreted as representing an orifice in this membrane through which the flux of supernatural power is channeled (Lathrap 1984: 251). If Lathraps idea is correct, the crosslike arrangements surrounding the circle may represent the four cardinal directions that define the world of humans. Thus, the cross-circle element can be seen as a shorthand cosmogram in Chavn art for the universe and the way in which supernatural forces could be channeled through rituals and other ceremonial activities. Although crosses are sometimes shown as secondary geometric elements on some Cupisnique art, the cross-circle cosmogram is not represented. Thus, the Callango gourd can be seen as being the result of a fusion of Cupisnique and Chavn elements. There is also an admixture of purely local features. For example, the stance of the felines with at least one and in some cases two legs flexed as though running is unlike classic Chavn representations, as is the decoration of the felines body with small punctuations rather than the stylized spots that distinguish the jaguar from other large cats. Although metaphoric substitutions were popular in Chavn art, termination of the upper lip of a profile face as a snake was not considered appropriate; yet, that is how one of the trophy heads on the gourd is shown. The organization of the figures in the interstices of the bag is, likewise, dissimilar from both Cupisnique and Chavn art. In the former, it is common to have profile figures facing in a single direction, while in Chavn art, the figures are usually arrayed symmetrically around an imaginary central axis (Salazar-Burger and Burger 1983). In contrast, B562s figures face to the right in the upper register and to both the right and the left in the lower register. In summary, the pyroengraved gourd reflects the complex patterns of long-distance interaction and the innovations that these stimulated in participating small-scale societies. In the past, the development of the Paracas style sometimes has been seen as a local response to Chavn influence. The iconography on B562 illustrates the rich multicul83

Chavn

tural influences that were unleashed during the Early Horizon by the growth of the Chavn sphere

of interaction, and the impact they had in the formation of the Paracas style. RLB

Plate 9

MACE HEAD
Plate 9 Salinar, north coast, 200 B.C.A.D. 100 Diorite. H. 12.6 cm; Diam. 10.7 cm B428 History: Purchased by Robert Bliss from Walram von Schoeler, 1948 Exhibition: Indigenous Art of the Americas, National Gallery of Art, 195262; Art and Life in Old Peru, American Museum of Natural History 1961; Gods with Fangs, Museum of Primitive Art, 1962; Dumbarton Oaks, 1963 Bibliography: Bliss 1957: no. 299; Natural History 1958: 133; J. Rowe 1962: fig. 36; Benson 1963: no. 344; Lapiner 1976: fig. 135 84

Chavn

When Rafael Larco Hoyle first identified the existence of the Cupisnique culture, he emphasized its distinctive style of pottery as the primary basis for its identification. At the same time, he recognized that it was also characterized by a particular set of non-ceramic artifacts, including a class of carved stone artifacts that he identified as mace heads. In his volume Los Cupisniques he illustrates six of these pieces (1941: 92, 95) referring to them as mazas de piedra admirablemente talladas. All but one of those published by Larco Hoyle are characterized by a combination of projecting vertical ribs and nubbins in their upper section and a tapered, unadorned lower section. The sixth piece in the Larco Hoyle volume (1941: fig. 128) imitates the form of the hallucinogenic San Pedro cactus and consequently lacks the circular nubbins and strongly tapered lower section. None of these six pieces, or artifacts similar to them, were found by Larco Hoyle in association with the Cupisnique tombs from Palenque and Barbacoa. Although no provenience was provided for the illustrated pieces, it is probable that they came from looted cemeteries in Chicama, Cupisnique, or one of the other valleys of the north coast. Larco Hoyles identification of this class of artifacts as mace-heads was based on their formal features. It is a plausible interpretation and has been accepted by many subsequent investigators. The Dumbarton Oaks mace head strongly resembles three of those illustrated by Larco Hoyle (1941:136). Presumably B428 was designed to be hafted on a wooden shaft or staff, for it has a circular hole drilled through it, which tapers at its top from 3.4 cm in diameter to 3 cm in diameter. Between four fan-shaped vertical ribs are pairs of vertically arrayed spikes or ribs. The ribs and spikes completely encircle the circumference of the stone artifact. There can be little doubt that if B428 were used as a club head, it would have been potentially lethal and that its effectiveness is enhanced by its distinctive and characteristic form. It is worth noting that the stone selected for this artifact is a gray diorite, a relatively hard stone. While this raw material is more difficult and timeconsuming to carve than the steatite used in production of Cupisnique ritual cups and plates, it is far more resistant to wear and breakage, particularly if used in combat. Like many mace heads, B 428 seems to display some user wear in the form of small chips along the edges of its projecting ribs. The patterning and possible sources of damage on this class of artifacts have never been studied sys-

tematically but such an analysis might shed light on its function. The care and skill with which B428 was carved far exceeds the minimal requirements of a weapon of this kind. The exterior of the entire piece has been carefully smoothed and polished using abrasives to produce an aesthetically pleasing product. This surface treatment is much finer than that of most star-shaped mace heads from later PreHispanic times. Moreover, there are elements on B 428 that appear purely decorative in function. For example, each rib is flanked by a pair of superficial vertical incised lines and all of the circular spikes or nubbins have low tubelike frames surrounding them. In contemporary English dictionaries, the mace is defined both as a heavy often-spiked weapon and as an ornamental staff carried as a symbol of authority Indeed, in many unrelated cultures macelike artifacts serve both as arms of war and as emblems of special status. B428 also may have fulfilled both functions, although we cannot establish this with any certainty That it could have served as a weapon in handto-hand combat is a serious possibility Its raw material and ribbed and spiked form is consistent with such an interpretation. Stone-tipped maces and clubs were a popular weapon in the Pre-Hispanic Andes immediately prior to the Spanish conquest (J. Rowe 1946: 276); Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala (1980: 128) illustrates their use in his treatment of Inca and pre-Inca battles. It also is worth noting that the individual buried in the Early Horizon tomb at Kuntur Wasi had apparently been killed by a blow to the head (Onuki 1992: 35). Evidence of skull fractures resulting from violent conflict are common in the burials of the late Early Horizon cultures, such as Salinar; in fact, blows to the head appear to have been a major factor leading to the widespread practice of trephination (John Verano, personal communication, 1992). At the same time, iconographic representations of ornamental staffs are well known from the central Andes. Guaman Poma (1980: 76, 78, 88, 90, 92, 336) illustrates several Inca emperors holding a star-headed mace as a symbol of their authority Ceremonial staffs with elaborate silver heads continue to serve as emblems of civil authority among Quechua communities in the southern highlands of Peru. Representation of staffs or scepters emblematic of special status were produced during the Early Horizon. Perhaps the best-known example is the staffs held by the deity on the Raimondi Stela 85

Chavn

of Chavn de Huntar (see Fig. 14). A more direct antecedent for B428 can be found on the famous stone sculptures decorating the lower terrace of Cerro Sechin in Casma. This Initial Period frieze dating to approximately 1300 B.C. depicts a mythical or historical procession of victorious warriors and mutilated victims. The victors are distinguished from the vanquished by their costume, which includes pillbox hats, breechcloths, and maces (Fig. 24). The maces or staffs (Tello 1956: figs. 54, 72) have a circular element on the bottom of the shaft which can be interpreted as a stylized depiction of a mace head seen from above with its central circular perforation and four vertical ribs, In the Cerro Sechin sculptures, the mace or ceremonial staff appears to have functioned both as an emblem of status and as a weapon. Larco Hoyle did not publish evidence that clearly established the Cupisnique affiliation of stone mace heads like B428. There have been relatively few archaeological investigations of Cupisnique sites since Larco Hoyles work, and no pieces resembling the distinctive stone mace heads have been reported from unambiguous Cupisnique contexts. Recent excavations at the late Initial Period Cupisnique cemetery of Pumape failed to encounter stone mace heads (Elera and Pinilla 1993), and although a ceramic club head was recovered at the Early Horizon site of San Diego in the Casma valley (Pozorski and Pozorski 1987: 59), it does not resemble B-428. According to Jos Pinilla (personal communication, 1994), there are unconfirmed reports that looters have encountered elaborate stone mace heads like B428 in Salinar burials at the site of Urricape in the southern branch of the quebrada of Cupisnique. At the present time, the best evidence for dating B-428 and similar artifacts comes from the work of the Viru Valley Project. A finely carved stone mace head similar to B428 was found at Cemetery V-66 near Puerto Moorin in the backfill of a looted Salinar burial. It has evidence of an old break that had been repaired with resin. Subse-

Fig. 24 Major monolith B (22) from the side of the principal facade of the temple at Cerro Sechin (after Tello 1956: g. 54).

quent excavation in refuse deposits of the Salinar culture at the site of V-272 encountered two similar mace heads in unambiguous Salinar contexts (Strong and Evans 1952: 5556, p1. IIIE). Thus, the existing information suggests that the Dumbarton Oaks mace head was probably produced by the Salinar culture during the final centuries of the Early Horizon. RLB

86