EARLY HORIZON, FIRST CIVILIZATION,
CHAVIN:
~ 1000- 200 BC; TEXTILES AND METALLURGY,
RELIGION VS. POLITICS
Lesson objectives: trace development and understand relationships of Early Horizon cultures, including ideology and the concept of civilization.
How do anthropologists define civilization, or true states? You learned in introductory classes various definitions, not to mention various theories about how states emerge. Usually this most complex form of political system must be based on agriculture but have urban settlements, have centralized leadership and bureaucracy, usually centralized religion, monumental architecture and elaborate engineering, taxes and tribute to pay for it all, a standing military to protect it, market economies, and a writing system to keep records of it all. We will see how many of these criteria are present. Several have been manifested well in the Initial Period and we've noted that some think the first cities emerged then. But we do have the various criteria happening at various times and places so far. Will they all come together in the Early Horizon with Chavin? Or is this horizon just a widespread religious phenomenon?
What is a horizon? Similarity of style, architecture, and craft across a wide space for a specific, relatively short period of time is the basis for recognizing any horizon. The interpretation is of shared common belief systems as well as artistic styles. The more research results we have, the farther back in time we can see the origins of many of the traditions visible in later South American civilizations. Some sources credit Valdivia with the earliest civilization, others say coastal or highland Peru at places such as Caral. We saw that, by the time of the introduction of ceramics into Peru, there were large ceremonial centers on the coast and in the highlands. There is so much less preserved in the forest and lowlands that we are probably underestimating the possibilities there.
Describe the site of Chavin de Huantar. On the Mosna River, a tributary of the huge Mara Z on (find on your maps), that drains into the Amazon, this site is in the highlands at 3150 meters elevation. It has good farm land, and access to the jungle and the puna; so it is strategically located between the tropical forest and the coast. When early Spaniard Pedro Cieza de León visited there in 1548, he was told by the locals that it was built by giants. It had been ³abandoned² for 1500 years but local religious practitioners still did rituals there. Tello excavated there in 1919, then Lumbreras, Burger, and others, and there has been a great deal of study of Chavin art, especially pottery (Benson 1971, Burger 1992). The site has a 12-m high cut stone-faced temple with carvings in low relief of cats, birds, and geometric motifs, a very distinctive style. It is much smaller than the earlier Cerro Sechin. The earliest temple, the ³Old Temple,² was U-shaped, with a circular 69-foot diameter sunken plaza between the two wings. This is clearly related to all those preceramic sites on the coast and the Kotosh religious tradition not far away in the highlands. The circular wall of the plaza has a frieze of jaguars, part human-part animal figures, shells, and hallucinogenic San Pedro cactus plants. The Old Temple was 4 stories, with fancy engineering for galleries, air ducts open to the roof, and a drainage system to handle the 5-8-month rainy season. According to Lumbreras, the water would have roared rushing through. An important object deep in the center of the platform is the ³Lanzon,² a 2-ton, 15-foot high white granite stele of an unusual shape that is carved with a smiling human-looking figure with a fanged, snarling mouth (indicating the supernatural). The figure is called the Smiling God, and assumed to be male; it has clawed hands and feet, circular ear pendants, bracelets, and snakes writhing out of its head. Above it is a room where a floor slab could have been removed, and opening through which a priest could speak for the god? Other images (read Moseley's description, pp. 163-67) include birds and butterflies (indicating the sky?) and there are traces of paint on the walls. Other parts of the temple, later images include caimans.
The system of deities seems to include the Staff God, seen all over, and perhaps his female counterpart seen on south coast textiles; she was associated with domestic plants and animals. We have already seen how the number 2 was important, with paired images of all kinds, include paired male and female deities, apparently. At Chavin in the Galeria de las Ofrendas (offerings gallery) there were huge amounts of food, 800 pots and bottles, bones of camelids, cuy, deer, marine fish, shellfish, and humans (suggesting cannibalism). There was a lot of unusual pottery, and one room had a woman's skull surrounded by a ring of baby teeth. The Galeria de los Caracoles (gastropods) had cut strombus shells from Ecuador.
The New(er) Temple structure produced older materials too. The Tello Obelisk (there is a replica on his grave in Lima) was a granite column 8 feet high, with 4 flat sides, carved with the images of 2 facing caiman monsters ¯ crocodile-like beasts in the central Andes! Lathrap's analysis of this is famous (he is called the Gran Cayman by his students): they are mating reptiles, gods representing the underworld and the sky, with one having plants that grow below and a deep ocean Spondylus shell on the head, and the other having above-ground plants and a bird at the head. Is this a model of the Chavin cosmos? Certainly the importance of duality is seen here. The early period at Chavin is interpreted as already a time of pilgrimage to the temple, with perhaps at least 500 people living there, subsisting on hunted animals, herded llamas, tuber and grain crops. It looks like rapid growth to a population of 1000 and large-scale irrigation in the valley, and by 500 B.C., subsistence by strictly herding and agriculture. Moseley and Burger say by 800 B.C. Burger (1992) considers that this shift represents the beginning of long-distance transport by llama caravans. Evidence is ocean fish, obsidian, from 300 miles away, pottery from many places. By 200 B.C. Chavin is an urban center. The New Temple is expanded, with a large plaza for pilgrims, new representations of the Lanzon supreme deity bearing sacred strombus and Spondylus shells (central Andean myths of male and female power?). The latest of the important sculptures is the Raimondi stone (named after an Italian geographer), later called the Staff God by Rowe. This image is a continuation of the great god of the Lanzon, a frontally facing figure with the addition of long staffs.
Chavin art is world famous and very important. It is naturalistic but transformed, showing animals and plants but with various body parts becoming snakes and eyes and elaborated through time in very baroque images, like kennings, with added geometric forms such as circles and guilloches. These forms are seen in all media, including pottery, textiles, pyro-engraved gourds, metal. An important ceramic form seen all over South America (and sometimes in North America, not much later) is the stirrup-spout bottle, obviously named for its shape (and emphasizing that duality). The body of the vessel is often modeled into amazing shapes and forms, while still retaining the stirrup spout. The form and its varieties persist all through time until after the European invasion (see for example Bruhns, p. 133, photo of stirrup-spout vessel of a man with a deer).
So is Chavin true civilization? Or just an artistic and religious movement manifested as an archaeological horizon? Bruhns says the extent of any Chavin polity is difficult to gauge, but there seems certainly to have been administrative and economic control over many highland valleys, over trading routes to the coast and the tropical forest. We can see Chavin styles reinterpreted in many local traditions. Burger (1992) thinks Chavin is a religious ideology as an organizing principle, not a coercive state. Here we encounter a big question about the origins of civilization: can a true state emerge without conflict and coercion? Is the view that pristine states require not only standing armies but warfare perhaps a product of our modern world view requiring massive military buildups? To examine these questions we now look at sites in different areas related to Chavin, the reason for the Early Horizon name.
What is Huaca de los Reyes? A famous example of an Early Horizon site on the coast, in the Moche valley, some 25 km inland, this site actually had a 600-year occupation beginning in the Initial Period (see picture in Moseley, p. 139). It had a U-shaped platform in the Paraiso tradition, later remodeled and redecorated with large adobe cat sculptures (see picture p. 135, Bruhns). Another similar site on the coast is Garagay, featuring portrayal of a head with mucus running out of the nose (from sniffing hallucinogenic snuff) and images of cats. At Kotosh are pots of Chavin style and more highland-looking artifacts instead of the tropical forest styles seen here earlier. Bruhns says abandonment of several Kotosh sites suggests that Chavin may have been prospering at the expense of Kotosh and its allies. We must remember here Oscar Wilde's separation of style and substance. Does our adoption of Japanese cars and electronics in the U.S. signify imperialism? Does our buying of so many SUVs mean that we have so many rough roads? Just the opposite ¯ better roads than ever before.
What is the Paracas cultural manifestation? On the south coast of Peru, this is the manifestation of similar Chavin style, and deities reworked in local terms, especially through the medium of textiles (Paul 1990, 1991). But we must remember we see Paracas through textiles especially because they are preserved, not necessarily because they were not present in the highlands too. In the Ica valley and elsewhere there are similar U-shaped structures, distinctive pottery, with the iconography of the Oculate Being, a (possible) deity with huge red eyes, a curved smile, knives and trophy heads. Bruhns (p. 136-7) notes the fancy textiles in mummy bundles here and imagery that may be the first evidence of warfare (again, is it large-scale conflict or small-scale feuding or only threat?). The famous mummy bundles of Paracas are in bottle-shaped tombs cut into rock and necropolis tombs in abandoned buildings. Are they family groups? They are seated, naturally dried dead people with baskets, sewn into shrouds with artifacts, trophy heads, ponchos, shifts, turbans. The Necropolis was first excavated by Tello, who got 429 bundles of all ages and sexes, 40 of which were considered higher-ranking because they had fancier stuff. Many skulls show deformation and trephination. On the coast there are many marine items, Spondylus shell inlaid with gold, turquoise and other shell. There is a 6-valley area, 200 km long, from the Nasca valley onward, surrounded by fishing settlements. The evidence suggests elites exchanged coastal resources for agricultural products. At this time, around 500 B.C., roads first appear on the coast (probably they were there earlier). Many known from the Moche valley show trading links between important centers and between the coast and highlands.
In the southern highlands and Bolivian altiplano, beginning around 1200 B.C., the Wankarani culture features walled towns, circular adobe houses painted yellow inside and red outside, with the dead buried under clay floors, and built-up tells or middens. They grew potatoes and quinoa and herded camelids, and had a little ceremonial architecture featuring stone llama heads. Imagery borrowed, apparently, from the Paracas region demonstrates Early Horizon affiliation. Pukara, on the north side of Lake Titicaca, featured red, yellow, and black ceramics, stone sculptures, and trumpets. Similar to this, Chiripa, on the south side of Lake Titicaca, had 3-colored ceramics interpreted as part of the Yaya-Mama complex, with the iconography of male-female paired gods, dating to about 400 B.C. Lumbreras emphasized the connections with Paracas and the Lake Titicaca area. There are similar cultural expansions in northern Chile; possibly the llama caravans went there too. Do not worry about ceramic styles and phase names, but do see the similarities, as well as differences, around the continent during the Early Horizon. In northern Peru and southern Ecuador we also see Chavin-related material culture. One reason may have been the trade in naturally occurring Spondylus and strombus shells here, moving them south where they became sacred items. Sites seem to be located at strategic places for such exchange and transport.
What is happening at this time in Ecuador? The Valdivia adaptation is evolving into Machalilla and then Chorrera tradition, really a ceramic series with iridescent and resist painting on the pottery, bottles with whistles inside, and interesting hollow figurines in a distinctive style of tattooed people (see Bruhns p. 143). Chorrera extends into the southern Colombia coast and highlands, and dates as early as 1300 B.C., up till 300 B.C. It features villages with burials showing some status differences and lots of luxury goods indicating long-distance trade. Especially in the last few centuries B.C. we see gold coming in.
The Esmeraldas and La Tolita cultures (and there are other names) all the way up the northwestern coast of the continent represented people exploiting the rich mangrove wetlands. Lots of neat things wash out of the coast or are destroyed by historic looting and gold mining operations, but we can characterize these prehistoric people by their earthen house platforms, elaborate modeled ceramics, and small gold items. They also had cranial deformation, as seen in the figurine with the scaled or feathered outfit (Bruhns p. 146-7). La Tolita has a distribution along the coast and estuarine areas, with few stone tools but probably lots of wood, cane points. There is some agriculture, evidenced by manioc graters and metates for maize. There are models of boats, lots of figurines in elaborate costumes (though textiles are not preserved), and house mounds presumably to build up dwellings above the water. The houses are not preserved either but ceramic models show them to have been rectangular with thatched, gabled roofs. Burials are in the houses, both primary and cremations.
What is going on in the eastern tropics in the Early Horizon? Far less is known in Venezuela, Brazil, eastern Ecuador. Remember that in these environments much will be perishable and not preserved. Even pottery crumbles. Rivers move and destroy sites. Survey is done often by river and when patches of forest are destroyed. On the Ucayali River (find on your map) at an oxbow lake called Yarinacocha, Lathrap investigated the Tutishcainyo site, which had stilt houses of wattle and daub located on alluvial soils along the river. He saw this as contemporaneous with Kotosh and Chavin ceramics. There were red painted carinated bowls and beer cups (we assume, from ethnographic analogy), left by fisher-farmer people who are represented in a sequence of archaeological phases. Bruhns does not see manioc here because there are no griddles, but they may have been of perishable raw material.
Where is Marajó Island? On this huge island in the mouth of the Amazon, Roosevelt is now demonstrating the existence of mound-building, complex society as far back as about 1000 B.C. The Bruhns text emphasizes these settlements are quite small, and mentions the Meggers view of invaders from the east and assimilation of the intrusive ideas as the origins of this complexity. We will discuss this more later. There are descriptions of seasonally inundated sites on the Tapajos River, a big tributary of the Amazon; these sites have lots of stone tool manufacturing, T-shaped stone axes, manos and metates. It is so hard to find sites in the jungle, let alone dig them, let alone get much material culture preserved. But this results in the de-emphasizing of the prehistoric past of this kind of ecological area.
On the Orinoco River in Venezuela and from Maracaibo to the Andes many famous archaeologists such as Jose Cruxent, Mario Sanoja, Iraida Vargas, Irving Rouse, and Erika Wagner have documented a long cultural sequence. The Rancho Peludo style (of course, referring to pottery) seen from 1900 B.C. onward is a coarse, sand-tempered pottery with applique decoration; there are also clay manioc griddles. The people probably had maize agriculture later, and they farmed on the alluvium and hunted in the forest and savanna, and obtained many resources from the river and wetlands. On the middle and lower Orinoco we see the Barrancoid tradition of modeled and incised pottery from 1000 B.C. onward, as well as another tradition called Saladoid, which is incised and painted red and white, and includes female figurines of interesting design. There are clay griddles but no grinding stones so the inference is that there is no maize. The Saladero people lived on the levees, where they did manioc agriculture. There is disagreement about dates and whether new pottery styles mean new crops or just new dishes or new cooking methods. Roosevelt (1980) sees the introduction of maize agriculture into this already agricultural area around 800 B.C. and the emergence of complex chiefdoms. Bruhns thinks there is a 1600 year difference in the dates, but Roosevelt's dates are also supported by the bone chemistry.
How can we summarize the Early Horizon and Chavin in particular? Was it a veneer of style or religious imagery over local traditions? Chavin did not export the megalithic art, the stone carvings, but if you don't have stone, it is hard to do. However, if you have painted cloth or wood, it is far easier to export the images and ideas. Moseley (p. 169) notes that the largest single pile of clear Chavin art outside the type site was the hundreds of cloths from a looted tomb on the Paracas peninsula, with 25 Staff God pictures in many colors. Were they for public display? Wall hangings? This is an easy way to spread the word of religion, distributing cloth not only for exchange but for ideological purposes. Continuing the reconstruction of ideology, many think that the Chavin Lanzon was an oracle with a priest's voice, much as the Inca had oracles operating like this, recorded by the Spanish. We might compare the Inca's latest manifestation of these traditions with the Romans, who built upon the traditions of the ancient Greek civilization for their own huge empire.
What can we say about demography, environment, and change in the Early Horizon? Paraiso and other centers were abandoned, and the same thing in the Casma, Rimac, Lurin Valleys after 1000 B.C. Either fewer or no pyramid centers were being built. Demographic change seems to have straddled the end of the Initial Period and beginning of the Early Horizon ¯ maybe because of the natural destruction caused by irrigation? On the northwest coast of Peru are sets of Holocene beach ridges formed by huge El Ni Z os that may have washed out canals and stressed the system with the accompanying heavy rains. Did that make people give up their religion? (Burger 1992, Richardson 1994). In the central circular sunken plaza at Las Haldas the soils show abandonment of the site after torrential rains at about 900 B.C. Environmental stress at about this time is confirmed by data showing glacial advance. Junius Bird at Huaca Prieta saw evidence of a tidal wave that his son Robert McCormick Bird dated to 850 B.C. Could it have been a tsunami like those recorded at 70 meters high?
In the late Early Horizon we see in the Casma Valley a population explosion at the Chanquillo site, which has fortifications. Three encircling walls and baffled doors may have been for defense. Wilson (1988) says the same is seen in the Santa Valley, 21 fortified sites dating to the late Early Horizon, with bastions for positioning spear-throwers. There are also weapons such as the stone mace heads. Are we seeing competition for agricultural lands in addition to or because of environmental stress? Was the cultural continuity spread by missionaries or military force or both? Were there branch centers of the main oracle? The problem is that we do have evidence of economic hierarchy, indicated by wealth items buried with elites, but so much has been looted that most of the evidence is gone. However, the data we do have suggests llama caravans for coastal-highland exchange, perhaps explaining the stone walls along the roads, to keep llamas away from the agricultural fields. So perhaps accelerating trade increased communication and movement of people spreading religion and artistic style ‹ is this the first civilization? Was Chavin a consequence of earlier states or the original one? Or still a complex chiefdom?
We must also look at the origins of Chavin. Tello said to look east to the tropical forest because of the animal motifs deriving from there. Burger says the U-shaped architecture of course derives from the coast and the ceramics also. But we also saw the earliest ceramics in the Amazon and Colombia and Ecuador. But there was also more tropical forest nearer the coast, the relict tropical zones that persist today being a small remnant of this. The western slopes of the Andes are thought to have had more tropical forest 3000 years ago, perhaps even caimans and jaguars in the valleys at the Peru-Ecuador border. Burger says the harpy eagle motif thought to come from the Amazon is really a parrot found all over the west coast of the continent. Yes the motifs of plants such as manioc, peanuts, chili may be from the east, but these were introduced far earlier. Moseley mentions the debate on the dating of the earliest Chavin, traditionally dated to 1400-800 B.C., but now with new radiocarbon dates showing the earliest occurring at about 800 B.C., with the heyday of Chavin de Huantar at around 500-400 B.C. As for the cultural forces producing Chavin, we can see scenes of violence in the artistic representations and mummification of trophy heads, but this can be just small-scale, not true warfare (in which non-combatants and disinterested, unrelated folks also get attacked and killed ¯ something we really know about today.) Or we can see merely individual human sacrifice, ancestor worship, and religious expression, highlighted by trade or other exchange to spread the ideas around.
Lavallée (2000:213-15), asking whether Chavin was a melting pot or a crossroads, notes the probable tropical forest origins of the food crops, pottery, and animals portrayed in art and craft, and the apparent Amazonian religious influence. She also notes Lathrap's view of the Smiling God holding the strombus conch shell in his right hand, representing the male (!) principle of order and culture, and the Spondylus spiny oyster shell in the left hand, representing the female (!) principle of chaos and regeneration. This is compared with the interpretation of Lumbreras, who said the Spondylus was a bio-indicator, to foresee change in weather and marine currents from El Ni Z o events that could be catastrophic for agriculture. Either way, we see a balancing of nature and culture in the cosmological system.
Can you describe the manufacture, use, and importance of early South American textiles? This is a good place to discuss the art and craft of textiles because they seem to have been so important during the Early Horizon, and Bruhns's chapter 10 on how they were made and used is excellent to understand the enormous and elaborate production. They were made for thousands of years earlier, but intensified and standardized more during this time. Nowhere else in the New World are cloths so astoundingly well preserved. Here in the southeastern U.S. all we have are a few tiny fragments preserved by being stuck to copper artifacts or embedded in clay or leaving impressions only, for example. In the Andes people could also get wool, as well as working with the cotton grown on the coast and inland. Camelids produce various types, from coarse to very fine wool, the latter from the vicu Z a, which was not domesticated (nor was the guanaco). Also used were other animal and human hairs and feathers, very important because they added so much color, and bark cloth. In addition, metal sequins and sheet metal ornaments could be sewn on, feathers glued on, and wonderful dyes made from indigo, red cochineal (an insect that eats prickly pear cactus), madder root, and even urine. Threads were hand-twined, probably since Paleo-Indian days, then later spindle whorls (which we can see in the archaeological record) were used to make thread from the fibers. Many of these were very fine, 200 threads per inch, better than fine hotel sheets. The twist was either S or Z in direction, sometimes depending upon the region of manufacture. Both sexes spun, we assume, because the artifacts were buried with both, and because the Spanish recorded their alarm that men were spinning while women were farming. Sometimes the association was with age, not with sex. Inca women wove.
During the late Preceramic the heddle loom appeared, parallel wires or cords with eyes to help weave, to guide the warp thread through the weft. The backstrap loom was portable and simple technology but used to produce elaborate brocades and gauzes. Cloth was woven in patterns, painted, embroidered. Other fabrics were nets, not just for simple fishing but elaborate display. The Andean clothing included a tunic, kilt, loincloth, diapers, turbans, caps, all today given various names such as ponchos, huipiles, mantles. Clothing told social position, and the Inca had sumptuary laws, dictating who was allowed to wear what. There were no pockets so you kept your things in a purse or bag or pouch (such as your coca leaves and lim). There was no cutting or fitting, but clothing was woven to size. Jewelry was often more elaborate on men. Many figures, figurines, and other depictions are not sexable. Cloth was used as money, taxes, tribute, salary for state workers, religious sacrifices, and even modern oracles in Bolivia (the clothes of the ancestors). There certainly must have been such cloth oracles or other religious figures in prehistoric times. Not only was the imagery of Chavin spread this way, but also the accompanying practices (such as the Staff God holding the San Pedro hallucinogenic cactus). Fiber products were crucially important, probably to most prehistoric cultures, since they are made from plants It is no surprise that the only way the Inca could keep records, the quipu or khipu, was made of fiber. Was cloth important outside the coast and the highlands? Perhaps in the tropics there is less need for clothes, but twisted fibers for cords and fiber artifacts such as nets and net bags are important. For people, probably body stamps and tattoos were more important, as we see today.
Can you describe the development and importance of metallurgy in South America? Bruhns's chapter 11 also fits nicely here because we see an increasing number of metal artifacts and production evidence in the Early Horizon. Many think you must have true metallurgy to have civilization. In central Peru and Bolivia we have the earliest evidence, then later in Ecuador and Colombia, then Central America and Mexico. In North America there was no real metallurgy, though raw copper and silver were cold-hammered into both utilitarian and decorative/ceremonial artifacts. Most of the metal items in South America were of course either melted down by the Spanish or looted from tombs and sold at auction houses to the modern elites (not to mention faked for the art-house market as well). The first gold work was by the cold hammering technique, heating the metal over the fire and hammering it into shape. We see gold crowns, pectorals and other ornaments in Chavin by 600 B.C., at Kotosh by 1000 B.C. Then people learned to weld, solder, join sheets and make alloys, and gild. Copper smelting was just as early, which is interesting because it is complex, needs many stages of work. Bruhns notes a silver-copper alloy bead¯ pretty silvery stuff-- on the central coast at 2100 B.C. Later in time (in Moche on the north coast) we see depictions of metallurgy in clay (Bruhns p. 176-77), with workers using blow tubes into the brick furnace to get a hotter flame. Small items such as jewelry, rattles, figurines, often with stone and shell inlay, are buried with the dead. These may be folded or broken, defaced to let spirit out? High status burials will have more, by definition. What is tumbaga? It is a gold-copper alloy sometimes with silver, harder than copper, which can look like pure gold. They also had arsenical bronze, metal ingots that are called axe-money, piles of flat plates we will see more of later. Metallurgy could have been a family labor operation, as even kids can extract copper prills or drops from slag. In the north Andes very small objects were cast by lost wax. In La Tolita culture they even had platinum 1000 years before Europe. South American metal artifacts were usually not tools or weapons but social items until later. With the Inca there were utilitarian items and ceremonial versions of these items. Often the metal objects were buried with the dead and not even seen.