Comparison of Seminal Figural Art in Peru and Mesopotamia
In approximately 3500 BC, the civilization of ancient Peru was beginning to fully take off. Slowly, an incipient figural art is being discovered by archaeologists working in the many river valleys punctuating the coast of Peru. The earliest iconographic works were likely dried gourds which preceded fired ceramics in Peru. That is not to say that ceramics did not exist anywhere.
The earliest indications and fragments of ceramics are actually found downstream on the lower Amazon river sometime around 6,000 to 5,000 BC near Santarem in Brazil, approximately the same time or perhaps a bit after they were being experimented with in Mesopotamia (Iraq). They made it up to the northern Andes and down to eventually reach Peru at Ancon in approximately 2,200 BC, and at La Florida in around 2,100 BC.
This doesn't mean late archaic people in Peru were drinking with cupped hands. Their earliest vessels were made of cured and oftentimes sculpted gourds. It's interesting to note that their later ceramics were modeled on the forms of the earlier gourds just as it was among the earliest ceramics of Mesoamerica. Some of the earliest pottery in the Fertile Crescent also take the forms of gourds (dark faced burnished ware) such as those examples found in Shir, Syria dating to the 8th millenium BC.
This invention of early 3D ceramic figural art seems to predate the arrival of fired ceramics and non-fired vessels, a very unique parallel development from the path followed in the Near East where fired ceramics long preceded the development of figural art.
Meaning
Sumerian statuary seems to place emphasis on royal power and a canonical body posture that would continue beyond the fall of the last indigenous Mesopotamiain state after the conquest by the Achamaenid empire.
Meanwhile, early 3d figurative art in Peru seems to emphasize personal status markers through facial decoration.This tradition of facial decoration would persist in Peruvian art from ancient antiquity to the time just before the Inkas, as seen on Wari figurative art whereas it was almost unknown in other major world civilizations save perhaps for Mesoamerica.
Here I have to add a major caveat. It's possible to refer to face painting as a merely cosmetic phenomenon, similar to how Chinese ladies would whiten their face or apply symbols to their cheeks and forehead or how Roman rulers would wear makeup. It's definitely possible. The other possibility is that it could be a community signifier in the same way that clothing is and was in Andean culture. Even up to the modern age, indigenous Andean communities in the highlands of Peru and Bolivia still produce textiles with designs and colors that mark it as belonging to that community. And members of other communities well-versed in this symbological system would be able to "read" these markers. For example, "Juan" is from lower or upper so-and-so community.
In like manner, it's possible that facial painting served, at least in art, as a representation of belonging or at least of world-ordering.
Another thing I noticed is that the Mesopotamian figures have rather formulaic or rather, rigidly prescripted facial expressions. They are severe and of very fine workmanship. You can see their large almond eyes and well-defined browline which became somewhat of a canonical form in later Mesopotamian and Levantine figurative art.
In the case of the Peruvian figures, their eyes are turned from dead center, their mouths agape. A feature of these early figurines is that it shows very prominent women. Not that its' rare in later figurative Andean art, but it's interesting in that the earliest representations are not of male authority but rather include women as well as men. These women are richly decorated, with brightly colored hair, reminiscent of Amazonian hair coloration practices in bright red and ochre dye, keeping perhaps with the theory that early Peruvian religion was a cross fertilization with the Amazonian world of the Yungas and lowlands. We see paralells such as toads and fire altars. We know from ethnography that toads or frogs are bringers and protectors of the cosmic fire. To add to this theory, there are representations of toads in the iconography at Vichama, a late archaic site and many fire altars have been found dating to precisely this time. It may be that when gazing upon these figures, we are gazing upon people who would have been steeped in Amazonian culture and indeed, possibly Amazonian people themselves in many cases.
The Uruk seal picture above, like many others like it, is an early form of the two-dimensional side profile common in later Mesopotamian and Iranian art. In this example the figures seem to be holding what looks like a stalk of wheat or barley.
Indications of production in place of direct royal authority representations
While no production related imagery has yet been found in late archaic Peru, We know from archaeological studies that this society produced native cotton (Gossypium barbadense) in large amounts, and that this was supported by extensive irrigation of the desert river valleys, an interesting parallel to other cradles of civilization such as Mesopotamia, the Nile valley, and the Indus valley.
This production of cotton was the primary signifier of state activity and large amounts of textile fragments have been recovered throughout late archaic coastal Peru. The earliest examples of textile production in the form of knit cordage comes from the Guitarrero cave where specimens dated across a range of time from 8,500 BC to 6,000 BC show just how precocious textile production was, possibly long before any extant examples in any place in Asia. That is, thousands of years before textiles had been fully developed in the near east or east Asia, ancient Peruvians were already producing cotton textiles. Possible imprints of textiles exist on early Mesopotamian ceramics but much later than Guitarrero carbon dates. The clothing most available in early Mesopotamia seems to have been finely processed wool skins. More on the significance of clothing and fabric in the Andes some other time.
So very clearly, textiles were of much antiquity and highly prized in early Peruvian civilization.
Re-evaluating the Norte Chico khipus
Perhaps by inferring and then extrapolating the modes of production and the nature of power in the later Andean region, most notably the Wari-Tiwanaku and Inka horizons (empires), we can possibly even start making well-founded assumptions. Due to the finding of khipu cords at early Norte Chico urban sites, we can infer that some type of accounting was taking place. This seems to be almost undoubtably so, due to the seemingly growing complexity of state building, textile production, and exchange networks across various valleys and highland regions and as mentioned, quite likely even the Amazon foothills and lowlands.
This was not an anarchical society (unrelated to anarchism). These were urban societies with priesthoods, specialized crafts, monumental construction, intensive agriculture based on maize (not anchovies as previously argued), cross-regional exchange, and clear hierarchies. These were the baseline of later Andean civilizations and indeed the baseline of most other places where the spark of civilization first set alight.
In later Andean civilizaiton, khipus were the way in which complex multivariable accounting took place. By the time of the Inka state, the khipukamayuq (recordkeepers) had innovated double entry accounting in parallel to the Arab and Italian merchant classes of the middle ages. These khipus tracked origin, product type, numerical value up to many magnitudes, among other variables yet not fully understood (see publications by Gary Urton on khipu studies). Indeed Gary Urton, the foremost khipu scholar today proposes khipus as primary sources in a long-duree annales-style historiography in parallel to the narrative one which is often so spotty due to the great social and demographic tumult of 16th century Peru. This history would focus on economic production and trends across various regions in conjunction with archaeological information and traditional narrative histories.
Conclusions
This inference can lead us to conclude that figurative symbolism, at least in the late archaic, was not as necessary for the representation of power as we know it in the Near East, from where it spread to Crete and then to the Peleponnese. It's certainly different from Mesoamerica where early power and authority is clearly represented in Olmec art in megalithic portraiture in the Tabasco plains. Plenty of ideas have been put on paper regarding the organizing principles of Andean civilization rooted in complementarity and reciprocity.
In the place of a rigid "auctoritas" we can infer an early and complex "ayni" which is not at all alien to the Western Hemisphere much less the greater Andean region. The Inka based almost their entire mode of production on the "ayni" between different complementary productive and climate zones on a continental scale. In Mesoamerica this institution was called Tequiyotl (tribute service) from the root Tequitl meaning "work" in Nahuatl. Work batallions rebuilt infrastructure, worked fields, in a season capacity (state lands, priestly lands) in both the Andes and Mesoamerica and there is reason to believe it happened in late archaic Peru as well.
My conclusion, then, is that the late archaic Peruvian figurative 3d figurines differ from the Mesopotamian Uruk period ones in its absense of political power as we know it. Power representation may have taken a different shape. And there is the other possibility that the Norte Chico figurines may have morturary functions which, for those who know Andean civilization, may actually be huge. Andean civilization is a culture that emphasized mortuary ritualism and mummification. But that's perhaps a topic for a different post.
Adovasio, James M., and Thomas F. Lynch. “Preceramic Textiles and Cordage from Guitarrero Cave, Peru.” American Antiquity 38, no. 1 (January 1973): 84–90.
** I added this citation because of the comparative claim I make about Andean textile tradition being older than in Asia.
Comments
Post a Comment