NICHOLAS J.

SAUNDERS

ANCIENT
Americas
THE GREAT CIVILISATIONS
I N AD 1492, Christopher Columbus
stumbled across the Americas while
searching for a route to the spice-rich
Orient. This was a unique moment in world
history, akin to an encounter with alien
species in our own time. What Columbus and
his successors discovered was an unsuspected
continent, a New World full of civilisations
strangely different from European societies in
their languages, appearances, institutions,
religions, architecture and ideas of life and
death.
In this breathtaking new book, Nicholas J.
Saunders explores, among others, the Moche,
Nazca, Teotihuacan, Maya, Aztec and Inka
cultures who - developing in isolation from
the rest of the world for thousands of years -
had created highly sophisticated civilisations
without the wheel, draught animals or metal
tools. From the first settlements of the
Olmecs in Mesoamerica, and South America’s
great mud-brick cities on Peru’s Pacific coast,
to the arrival of the Spanish in 1519, the
book’s unparalleled breadth and scope allow
us to appreciate the Pre-Columbian Americas
as among the world’s greatest flowerings of
civilisation. The kingdom of the Nazca is
famous for huge desert drawings or
‘geoglyphs’; Wari innovations included
roadbuilding, planned architecture and
agricultural terracing; Teotihuacan, ‘place of
the gods’, was Mesoamerica’s greatest
metropolis dominated by 600 pyramids and
ruled by a secretive elite; and the Maya
developed America’s most accomplished
hieroglyphic writing and mathematical
system.
The triumphs and tragedies of the
European conquest can be fully appreciated
in this authoritative overview of Amerindian
culture. Nicholas J. Saunders shows that
while the indigenous societies collapsed - and
thousands of years of cultural development
disappeared - the ultimate result was a new
‘mixed society’ in which the shadows of the
Pre-Columbian world can still be discerned.
Ancient
Americas
The Great Civilisations

Nicholas J. Saunders

SUTTON PUBLISHING
First published in the United Kingdom in 2004 by
Sutton Publishing Limited • Phoenix Mill
Thrupp • Stroud • Gloucestershire • GL5 2BU

Copyright © Nicholas J. Saunders, 2004

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored

in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the
prior permission of the publisher and copyright holder.

Nicholas J. Saunders, has asserted the moral right to be identified as the

author of this work.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 0-7509-3340-2

Typeset in 11/13.5 Sabon.

Typesetting and origination by
Sutton Publishing Limited.
Printed and bound in England by
J.H. Haynes & Co. Ltd, Sparkford.
 Contents
List of Maps and Illustrations iv
Chronological Chart vi
Acknowledgements vii

PART ONE Ancient America - a New World

One Alien Encounters: America and Europe 3

PART TWO Mesoamerica - the Classic Cultures

Two Mesoamerican Beginnings and the Olmec 19

Three Zapotec 37
Four Teotihuacan 51
Five Maya 65
Six Aztec 91

PART THREE South America - Kingdoms and Empires

Seven Andean Origins and Chavin 119

Eight Moche 137
Nine Nasca 151
Ten Wari and Tiwanaku 165
Eleven Sican and Chimu 185
Twelve Inka 201

Glossary of Terms 223

Bibliography 227
Index 243
 List of Illustrations

Map of Mesoamerica 16
Map of South America 116

TEXT ILLUSTRATIONS

La Venta, Monument 19 27
Chalcatzingo, the ‘El Rey’ carving 30
Bowl from the Maya city of Altar de Sacrificios 68
Classic Maya ruler Dark Sun at Tikal 81
Toltec-Maya jaguar carving from Chichen-Itza 85
Textile from Huaca Prieta 121
Early example of Andean Staff God 122
El Lanzon at Chavin de Huantar 131
Shaman-priest at Chavin de Huantar 133
Mythical animal and human heads on Wari pottery 172
Guaman Poma drawing of royal Inka mummy 208
Guaman Poma drawing of ‘Keeper of the Quipu’ 211

COLOUR PLATES between pages 24 and 25

Olmec colossal head

Olmec were-jaguar jade figurine
View over Monte Alban
‘Street of the Dead’ at Teotihuacan
View of Uxmal and Pyramid of the Magician
Temple of Inscriptions at Palenque
Toltec warrior statues at Tula
Aztec statues at The Great Temple, Tenochtitlan

COLOUR PLATES between pages 152 and 153

Royal Moche burial

Sunken plaza at Tiwanaku
Nasca mummy
 List of Illustrations v

Puquio wells at Nazca

Quechua woman and llama at Sacsahuaman
Machu Picchu

BLACK AND WHITE PLATES between pages 120 and 121

Amerindian petroglyph from Trinidad

Carib church at Salybia, Dominica
Olmec crying baby ceramic figurine
La Venta female figurine
Danzante figure at Monte Alban
Teotihuacan funerary urn
The ball court at Monte Alban
Teotihuacan mural figure
Teotihuacan, Quetzalcoatl head
Aztec Calendar Stone
Jade burial mask of Pacal from Palenque
Aztec carved-stone jaguar heart container
Aztec god Xipe Totec, ‘Our Lord the Flayed One’
Jaguar men fighting at Acatlan
Chavin-style pottery vessel
Moche Sacrifice Scene from Panamarca
Nasca ceramic trophy head
Nasca desert drawing of a Hummingbird
Wari polychrome ceramic
Gateway of the Sun at Tiwanaku
Pyramid at El Purgatorio (Tucume)
Ponce Stela at Tiwanaku
Adobe frieze at Huaca del Dragon, Moche Valley
Coricancha Sun Temple in Cuzco
Inka terraces at Pisac
Inka ceramic showing man carrying an aryballus
Chronological Chart

MESOAMERICA

Olmec l:
1250-400 BC
Zapotec 5<
500 BC-AD 750
Teotihuacan 1.
150 BC-AD 750
Classic Maya A
AD 250-900
Toltecs A:
AD 900-1200
Aztecs AD 1350-1521
A

SOUTH AMERICA

Chavin 8.
850-400 BC
Paracas 3l
300 BC-AD 150
Nasca K
AD 150-600
Moche A
AD 100-750
Wari AD 400-800
A:
Tiwanaku A
AD 100-900
Sican A:
AD 800-1375
Chimu AD 1200-1476
A:
Inka AD 1438-1532
A:
 Acknowledgements

Kl[^his book is one result of thirty years’ involvement in the

iL archaeology and anthropology of pre-Columbian America,
during which time I have been engaged in teaching, research, and
academic publication in the United Kingdom, Mexico, Peru, and the
Caribbean. This period has seen dramatic changes not only in the
quantity of our knowledge of the ancient Americas, but also
qualitatively in the sophistication of the ways in which we interpret
and understand what we discover. In one sense, as archaeology has
been increasingly influenced by anthropology, our ability to
‘interrogate’ the past has become sensitised to issues and ideas that
would have been considered impossible three decades ago.
As the chapters in this book illustrate, archaeology has not only
become more scientific and technological - DNA profiling of ancient
remains being an outstanding example - but also more philosophical
and reflexive. We are now more interested than before in why
ancient Americans did certain things in particular ways, how they
made their choices, and what they believed about the natural world
and their place within it. Bearing in mind all the people from many
different disciplines who have influenced my thinking over thirty
years I would like to thank the following for their advice, criticisms,
support and friendship - though they of course bear no
responsibility for what I have made of this.
I am especially grateful to Elizabeth P. Benson, Jeffrey Quilter,
Clive Ruggles, Peter Ucko, Michael Coe, Gustavo Politis, Gerardo
Reichel-Dolmatoff, Tom Dillehay, Stephen Hugh-Jones, Danny
Miller, Suzanne Kiichler, Jay Kettle-Williams, Marion Oettinger,
Peter Roe, Arie Boomert, Mary Helms, John Carlson, Sonia Rivero
and Michael Roth. The following institutions have greatly facilitated
my research: Southampton University, Sheffield Univerity,
Cambridge University, Dumbarton Oaks (Washington DC),
University of the West Indies (Trinidad and Jamaica), Mexican
viii Acknowledgements

National Autonomous University, National University of La Plata

(Argentina), University College London, and the British Museum.
On a personal note, the support of my wife Pauline, and of my
children Roxanne and Alexander, as well as my parents Geoff and
Pat, has been invaluable. And for the long march, the friends of
decades include Bill Chandler, John Wyatt, Phil Reeve, Steve
Cunliffe, Gerry O’Connell, Barry O’Shea, and Bob Craig. Finally I
would like to thank my editors at Sutton who have done such a
wonderful job in bringing this book to life!
Nicholas J. Saunders
 PART ONE

Ancient America
- A New World
 ONE

Alien Encounters: America and Europe

I magine a world full of mirrors in which everything seems

strangely familiar yet subtly and inexplicably different. For an
instant everything appears fixed and real, then splinters into a
thousand broken images, shifting in and out of focus. People
materialise, and they too seem familiar but unknown. They are part
of this place, yet move and talk in unfamiliar ways, sliding between
the brilliant reflections of this strange reality - a reality that for all
its otherness will change the shape of world history.
The year AD 1492 was the time and the Caribbean the place for
this otherworldly experience - an experience shared by Amerindians
and Europeans. When Christopher Columbus came face to face with
an unknown Amerindian on a small Caribbean island it was akin to
an encounter with alien species in our own time. Here was an
unsuspected land, discovered in the middle of the ocean and in¬
habited by human beings who seemed to experience things
differently - to live, love, worship and die according to a different
sense of the world. Here were a land and a people who simul¬
taneously confirmed and subverted the medieval European view of
how the world should be. This was an encounter in which not only
enormous differences in language and technology collided, but one
with a civilisation whose ideas about disease, natural philosophy,
morality, spirituality and the human experience of the natural world
had evolved along a profoundly ‘other’ trajectory.
Amerindians and Europeans were mutually confused and misled
by their early encounters with each other — how could it have been
otherwise? Two worldviews had come into contact and not a single
word was shared between them. And yet this was only the
beginning. Within thirty years the Aztec kingdom of Mexico would
be conquered, and a decade or so later the Inka empire of South
America would follow. Cultural traditions that had been shaped by
thousands of years of isolation from the rest of the world would
come to an end in little more than a generation.
4 Ancient Americas

Yet, while brilliant civilisations fell and Europeans fought over the
spoils, indigenous beliefs proved more resilient and malleable.
Militarily, economically and politically Europeans had wrested the
Americas from its own people - yet in everyday life and belief it
seems as if a part of the Amerindian spirit had in its own way colon¬
ised the faith of its own conquerors. Today, native traditions endure
from Mexico to Chile and Argentina. The old ways, sometimes
mixed with the historically recent and new, continue to give meaning
to indigenous peoples and places, the living and the dead. This is
one part of their story, and it begins with a man who some believed
was about to sail off the edge of the world.

FIRST ENCOUNTERS

On 3 August 1492, Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos on

Spain’s Atlantic coast with three ships - the Santa Maria, Nina and
Pint a. Ele sailed west, expecting to find a shortcut route to the spice-
rich Orient, and for which reason he had brought along a Jewish
linguist who spoke Chaldean and Arabic as well as Hebrew. There
were some, however, who believed that he would simply drop off the
world’s rim and never be heard of again. After a brief sojourn in the
Canary Islands, the little fleet set sail again on 6 September, running
before the north-east trade winds that blew westward from Africa.
Land was sighted at 2 o’clock on the morning of Friday
10 October, and when the sun rose, Columbus waded ashore to take
possession of a small island for King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella
of Spain. He christened it San Salvador, though later learnt that its
native name was Guanahani. Columbus noticed the shiny gold orna¬
ments the natives wore in their noses and, though neither the
Spanish nor the natives could speak each other’s language, he
endeavoured to discover the source of the precious metal. He then
made a move that established an enduring template for such meet¬
ings by offering glass beads in exchange for food, water, information
and local goods. Such were the first manoeuvres in one of the most
momentous chains of events in history.
Columbus noted the timid nature of the natives and added that
they would be easy to enslave and convert to Christianity. To
illustrate his point, he abducted seven of the Amerindians to take
back to Spain. On leaving San Salvador, the three Spanish ships
cruised the Bahamas, hearing more rumours of a gold-rich island
 Alien Encounters: America and Europe 5

called Cipangu. On 28 October, Columbus believed he had finally

reached Cathay (China), although in fact he was off the coast of
Cuba. Expeditions inland proved unrewarding, and by 5 December
he was offshore of the island known to its Tamo inhabitants as
Bohio, and which he named La Espanola (i.e. Hispaniola - modern
Haiti and Dominican Republic).
Disaster struck as he was sailing along Hispaniola’s northern coast.
The Santa Maria ran aground and only the timely help of the local
Taino chief Guacanagarf enabled the Spanish to salvage their
valuables from Columbus’s wrecked flagship. In meetings between the
two leaders, Columbus repeated his previous act of exchanging low-
value European goods for Amerindian gold jewellery. Conversations,
such as they were, soon came around again to the source of the
precious metal, and Columbus was heartened to learn that there was a
gold-rich land known as Cibao in the centre of the island.
Ever the opportunist, Columbus made a virtue of necessity. His
two remaining ships could not transport all his men back to Spain
and so he decided to build La Navidad as the first European settle¬
ment in the Americas. The thirty-eight men whom he left behind
were charged with finding and collecting gold ready for his return.
And so, on 16 January 1493, the Nina and Pinta set sail for Spain
with the momentous news of Columbus’s discoveries.
Such are the bare bones of the tale of this first encounter between
Europeans and the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Yet, they
conceal far more than they reveal. In the real life experiences framed
by these events lay hidden worlds of meaning that would shape the
European experience of the Americas and change world history
for ever.
Columbus’s accidental discovery of the Americas was full of irony,
not least of which was the collision between two mutually incom¬
prehensible worldviews. In the Caribbean itself there was an immed¬
iate confusion of real and imagined landscapes, illustrated by
Columbus’s belief that he had reached the East Indies and his
consequent labelling of the native peoples as Indians - a term still
used some five hundred years later.
Along with trade trinkets, Columbus took with him the intel¬
lectual baggage of late medieval Europe, much of it derived from
classical antiquity, which conceived of strange and foreign places as
inhabited by equally exotic creatures such as Amazons and
cannibals. These represented the polar opposites of European social
6 Ancient Americas

and moral norms. Amazon societies were controlled by women, and

cannibals were people whose habit of eating human flesh was the
antithesis of civilised Christian behaviour. Amerindians walked
about naked and, even worse, appeared to be unashamed of the fact,
in defiance of Biblical injunction.
Columbus, and those who travelled in his wake, heard rumours of
monsters - people without heads, with only one eye, or who spent
their lives carrying trees around. Ideas from medieval alchemy also
influenced the Europeans, such as the belief that gold was produced
by warm climates. At first the Caribbean and then Central and
South America, along with their inhabitants, were understood as
definitively ‘other’, a mythical landscape and people constructed in
European minds, and into which Columbus’s discoveries were
forced, as if into a straitjacket.
Apart from these preconceptions and misconceptions, there were
problems of translation and interpretation. Columbus quickly
classified the Taino as peaceful and the Carib as warlike. From the
outset, the cultural geography of the Caribbean was drafted by
Europeans in terms of docile, co-operative but simple-minded
Indians and savage, warlike and troublesome sub-human cannibals.
The richly varied and endlessly fascinating complexity of Caribbean
Amerindian peoples was thereby reduced almost immediately to
bizarre stereotypes - a typical outsider’s view which is still taught in
many of the region’s schools.
In fact, Columbus’s first voyage saw him stumbling not into a
world of savagery, but rather into a sophisticated universe where
mythology had the force of history and humans, animals, plants and
even the weather were inextricably and eternally connected to the
powerful spirit forces of ancestors and gods.
When the Taino of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico first met the
Spanish, they recognised a powerful ally against their Carib enemies,
accusing the latter of eating their men and stealing their women.
These accusations appeared to be supported by Columbus’s sub¬
sequent experiences in Dominica and Guadeloupe where he rescued
captured Taino women and encountered human bones hanging
inside Carib houses. The Spanish misunderstood these traditional
Amerindian customs of respect for the dead and humiliation of
defeated enemies, customs that included the ritual display of human
bones, the tasting of small strips of flesh and the drinking of manioc
beer mixed with powdered human bone.
 Alien Encounters: America and Europe 7

This ‘evidence’ of bestial behaviour clearly suited the desire of

Columbus and his successors to justify continued attacks on and
enslavement of the Caribs. Carib and cannibal quickly became
synonymous, with the term cannibalism replacing the older Greek
word anthropophagy as a universal term for the ultimate crime of
consuming human flesh. It was another irony that the region would
soon come to be known as the Caribbean.
Such were some of the complex issues that surrounded
Columbus’s first encounter with the native peoples of the Caribbean,
and that helped shape the idea of the Americas in the European
imagination. But what of the people themselves? Who were they?
Where did they come from? And when?

THE PREHISTORIC CARIBBEAN

The islands of the Caribbean offered a bewildering variety of

landscapes and resources to early prehistoric peoples. The diversity
of their interactions with local environments led to different kinds of
lifeways, dwellings and material culture that are often difficult for
archaeologists to interpret. One consequence of this has been differ¬
ent ways of classifying cultural remains, and of trying to build an
overall picture of cultural development from the scattered, fragment¬
ary and often ambiguous evidence.
The earliest Caribbean peoples belonged to the so-called Archaic
Period and appear around 5500 BC at the sites of Banwari Trace and
St John Oropuche in Trinidad, opposite the South American
mainland. They were hunters, fishers, and gatherers who lived a
transient existence probably in small family groups. They did not
make or use pottery but did have spears tipped with bone, roughly
shaped stone tools and manos and metates for grinding. From the
archaeological remains it appears they gathered vast quantities of
shellfish whose empty shells they discarded on to huge heaps known
today as shell middens. These sites are typically located near man¬
grove swamps and beaches.
Slightly later, around 4000 BC, comes the earliest evidence for the
human occupation of Cuba, far to the north. Sites such as Seboruco
are often rockshelters or caves with flaked-stone tools scattered on
the floor. Some sites are thought to date back even earlier, possibly
to 6000 BC. However, around 2000 BC these early pre-ceramic sites
become more frequent and are divided into a number of different, if
8 Ancient Americas

not universally accepted, subdivisions of the Archaic Period. Such

places include Painted Cave in Cuba, Barrera-Mordan in the
Dominican Republic, and Angostura in Puerto Rico which also had
human burials. Some sites, such as Cayo Redondo on Cuba, had a
long life, inhabitation spanning the period 2000 BC to AD 1300, and
include shell middens and painted caves. On Antigua, the site of
Jolly Beach flourished around 1800 BC as a workshop area where
stone flakes were struck from the abundant local pebbles. Similarly,
at Hope Estate on St Martin, flint flakes and shell artefacts have
been dated to between 2350 and 1800 BC. On St Thomas, the site of
Krum Bay has yielded stone tools and jewellery made from bone and
shell produced between 880 and 225 BC.
Making archaeological sense of this early evidence continues to be
problematic. Some sites that lack pottery have been called pre¬
ceramic and assigned to the Archaic P.eriod rather than more
accurately being called aceramic and thus potentially of a much later
date. Arguably the most notorious problem has been identifying the
first pre-ceramic inhabitants of Cuba. These people, called the
Ciboney, lived in caves with lifeways defined by simple stone tools.
They were assumed to be the ancestors of the primitive
Guanahatabey people who occupied the same area when Europeans
arrived. The thorny question remains whether the Guanahatabeys
should be considered a surviving relic of the Archaic Period
surrounded by more sophisticated pottery-using peoples, or the
creation of our inability to make sense of a patchy archaeological
record.
Somewhere between 500 and 200 BC, a new and different kind of
people arrived in the Caribbean. These were the pottery-using,
village-dwelling Saladoid peoples who had left their South American
homeland for Trinidad and then sailed north in seagoing canoes to
colonise the Greater Antilles. Their advent isolated, marginalised and
possibly absorbed the earlier hunter-gatherers of the Archaic Period.
The Saladoid peoples originated from the mouth of the Orinoco
river in Venezuela. They brought with them a settled village life,
agriculture and a shamanic religion typical of tropical rainforest
societies in lowland Amazonia. They grew manioc, sweet potato,
cotton and tobacco, and introduced pottery making in the form of
distinctive white-on-red decorated ceramics which take their name,
Saladoid, from the type-site of Saladero in Venezuela. Their stone-
tools were more varied and efficient than those of their predecessors,
 Alien Encounters: America and. Europe 9

and they were able to fell larger trees and clear more extensive areas
for their fields and villages.
By about AD 300, Saladoid peoples had spread throughout the
Caribbean and most islands probably had some variation of
Saladoid culture. The sea continued to play an important role in
everyday and spiritual life as canoe travel connected the islands with
each other and also with mainland South America. For the Saladoid
era and later periods, there is a strong argument for looking at the
Caribbean islands and South America as an integrated unit - an
‘interaction sphere’ of diverse but connected peoples and landscapes,
rather than the separate political entities they became after
Europeans arrived.
Saladoid cultures eventually developed in different ways on
different islands into what archaeologists call the Ostionoid cultural
tradition, named after the Ostiones culture on the island of
Hispaniola dated to around AD 500. Local developments of the
Ostionoid tradition are known as Meillacan in Hispaniola, Cuba
and Jamaica; Elenan in the Leeward and Virgin Islands; and
Palmetto in the Bahamas. By around AD 1200 on Hispaniola, local
developments led to the Chican Ostionoid culture - the name given
by archaeologists to the remains of the Taino peoples, those people
first encountered by Columbus in AD 1492.

The Tamo

Like their Saladoid predecessors, the Taino - sometimes also called the
Arawak - lived a settled village life and practised agriculture, growing
so many of those foods that would, in time, colonise the world: maize,
manioc, sweet potatoes, guava, papaya, pineapple and tobacco. They
grew cotton from which they made clothing, collected clams, oysters
and crabs, and hunted birds, snakes, manatees and sea turtles.
Their arts and crafts included body painting and the fashioning of
earrings, nose ornaments, lip plugs and colourful feather headdresses.
Carved-stone beads and ornaments known as gibas were worn with
gold ornaments which were in fact usually a gold-copper-silver alloy
known as guanin. For the Taino, guanin’s sacredness was due partly
to its smell, which recalled sexuality and fertility and which they
encountered also in European brass - a strange similarity that led to
exchanges of what Europeans misunderstood to be pure Amerindian
gold for worthless European scrap.
 10 Ancient Americas

The Tamo were expert woodworkers and carved distinctive

ceremonial stools known as duhos, often decorated with shell and
guanin. Shamans (behiques) and chiefs (caciques) sat on these stools
and connected to the supernatural realm of ancestors and spirits.
The Taino built large elaborate canoes, travelling regularly between
islands and maintaining a network of trade relationships. Many of
their sophisticated guanin items were obtained in down-the-line
maritime trade between islands from their original source in South
America. Regarded as high-class possessions, these objects embodied
supernatural power and as such were ceremonially exchanged
between Taino chiefs. It is no surprise that such valuable items were
among those offered to Columbus in 1492 by chief Guacanagari on
Hispaniola.
Taino society was ruled by hereditary chiefs, their status inherited
through the mother’s line. Consequently, highborn women could
have great status in Taino society. Chiefs could have many wives, an
indication that many marriages were often little more than strategic
political alliances. This tight social organisation is reflected in the
size and sophistication of Taino villages. The larger ones could have
hundreds of communal houses occupied by extended families, built
around a central plaza which was used for social and religious
events such as ceremonial dances and music called areitos and
rubber ball-games known as batey.
Hidden away in the mountainous area of central Puerto Rico,
Caguana has the densest and most elaborate grouping of ballcourts
and plazas of any Taino site. At its peak around AD 1350, Caguana
was a ceremonial and probably political centre, dominated by its
specialised plaza architecture which included images of mythological
creatures and figures engraved on to stone slabs that flanked the
central plaza. Caguana is thought to have been the seat of the
powerful Taino chief Guarionex.
Taino religion was based on the shamanic tradition inherited from
their Saladoid ancestors. In keeping with all Amerindian peoples of
the Americas, they saw plants, animals and landscapes as infused
with spirit force derived from the ancestors and the natural world. It
was the Taino chiefs and shamans who controlled these forces of life
and death through their active interpretation of a philosophy
founded on symbolism and analogy — ideas that will surface time
and again as we explore ancient Mesoamerica and South America.
In such a spiritually animated universe, all things possessed sacred
 Alien Encounters: America and Europe 11
and secular dimensions and blended into each other in ways which
we today, as well as the first European conquerors, find difficult to
comprehend.
Taino belief that spirits inhabited sacred places is revealed at the
site of La Aleta in the Dominican Republic (the eastern half of
Hispaniola). Here, between AD 1035 and AD 1420, a flooded cavern
was used by the Taino and the watery conditions have preserved
such normally fragile items as basketry, gourds and carved wooden
artefacts. La Aleta appears to have been a ritual and ceremonial
location and not a heavily populated town, an impression reinforced
by the presence of four ceremonial plazas.
The Taino considered caves to be entrances to the underworld and
they feature in myths of origin as places of emergence and as the
homes of the spirits of the dead - the opia - who, transformed into
bats, flew out of their cave-roosts at night to feed on guava fruit. At
the bottom of the La Aleta cavern, archaeologists found an under¬
water hill upon which were scattered stone tools, pottery, wooden
items and baskets, seemingly having been placed there deliberately
as offerings to gods and ancestral spirits. A small duho, decorated
bowls, a crocodile figurine and a war club were among the items
retrieved, along with a ‘vomiting spatula’ used to purify the body
during religious rituals.
The main focus of Taino religion was the veneration of gods and
spirits known as zemis whose supernatural powers were embodied
in sacred images - three-dimensional objects fashioned from stone,
bone, wood, shell, clay and cotton, sometimes in combination.
Zoomorphic examples took the form of birds, frogs, turtles and
sometimes vegetable foods like cassava. Others are more abstract
with geometric designs carved or painted on rocks and artefacts.
Some were anthropomorphic carved wooden containers in which
the remains of dead chiefs were kept, while others were doll-like
cotton figures decorated with stone beads. However, zemis were also
personifications of spiritual forces which resided in trees, rocks,
caves, rivers and other features of the landscape.
This connection with the sacred landscape of myth was embodied
in the most common form of zemi - the three-pointed stones whose
triangular shape has been interpreted as a miniature mountain or
volcano, but perhaps also was representative of women’s breasts,
conical seashells or the shoots of the manioc plant. Some depict
stylised human faces, animals or fantastical half-human half-animal
 12 Ancient Americas

creatures which recall the startling imagery experienced during

shamanistic trances. Zemis were well looked after, given food and
drink and rubbed with cassava; each had different powers, ranging
from promoting successful childbirth to guaranteeing victory in war
or enhancing agricultural fertility when buried in the manioc fields
known as conucos.
Wooden zemis demonstrated the shaman’s or chief’s ability to link
everyday life and the spirit realm in the cohoba ceremony. Taino
chiefs and shamans inhaled this hallucinogenic powder in order to
commune with spirits, especially those of their venerated ancestors.
Columbus himself witnessed such a ritual in 1495, commenting on
the paraphernalia used and the resulting intoxication of the partici¬
pants. Zemis were a vital and integral part of Taino spiritual and
social life. Uniquely Caribbean, each possessed its own powers and
symbolism depending on its material, shape and the stories attached
to it by its owner. Zemi objects were associated with the cosmic
powers of the universe, ancestral spirits and the acquisition and
maintenance of political power by the elite. Zemi designs bestowed
supernatural power on artefacts and landscape alike.
The Tamo had several important gods such as Yucahu - the invis¬
ible lord of fertility and ‘spirit of cassava’. His female counterpart
was Atabey, ‘Mother of Waters’, who was associated with rivers and
the rain needed to nourish the cassava crops. She was also respons¬
ible for women’s fertility and childbirth. The relationship between the
Taino, their gods and the universe was enshrined in myths which
emphasised the belief in metamorphosis. Here, heroes had super¬
human animal strength and animals possessed uncannily human
qualities. Some animals were tribal ancestors, some trees the spirits of
dead chiefs. Taino myths accounted for the origins of the world, of
women, and of tobacco; one myth tells how women were created
when woodpeckers pecked a hole in strange sexless creatures where
female sexual parts are now located.
Although the evidence for warfare in Taino society is ambiguous,
undoubtedly battles took place between different chiefdoms to
resolve disputes. Nevertheless, it was the Carib peoples of the Lesser
Antilles to the east and south who were the common enemy,
possibly because they raided Taino islands, mainly for marriageable
women. Whether or not such accusations were true, the Taino
initially saw the Spanish as powerful potential allies against the
traditional foe - only too late did they realise their mistake.
 Alien Encounters: America and Europe 13

The Caribs

The Caribs, unlike the Taino, were late arrivals in the Caribbean.
They sailed large sea-going canoes from South America perhaps
around AD 1400, and began colonising the Lesser Antilles, especially
Dominica, Martinique, St Vincent and Guadeloupe. They
maintained close trading relationships with their mainland cousins
up to and beyond the period of European colonisation.
Carib society was primarily agricultural, though not as intensive
as that of the Taino. They grew and consumed manioc, making it
into cassava bread, and also ate a stew known as pepper-pot. These
were supplemented by sweet potatoes, yams, beans and tobacco.
Fishing was also important and the Carib used nets, hooks and har¬
poons to catch a variety of fish. They also collected shellfish, hunted
sea turtles and the agouti (Dasyprocta aguti) which had been
introduced from South America.
Carib society was less hierarchical and sophisticated than that of
the Taino. There were no major chiefs, though each village had its
own headman. Wider alliances seem only to have formed during
war, at which time outstanding war leaders exercised temporary
authority. Carib villages were small and focused on the men’s house
or carbet, which also served as the communal meeting place within
which a special men-only language was spoken. This phenomenon
was misunderstood for many years, having given rise to the
erroneous belief that Carib men spoke one language and their wives
another.
Carib arts and crafts were also basic when compared to those of
the Taino. Their pottery was undecorated, though basketry was
highly prized, and cotton weaving was used to make hammocks and
jewellery. Their canoes were especially valued due to the economic
importance of long-distance maritime trade, which provided luxury
items from South America such as the caracoli, a crescent-shaped
guanm object worn as jewellery.
As with the Taino, Carib religion followed the shamanic traditions
of South America, where plants, animals and landscapes were
infused with the spirituality of ancestors and nature. There were few
recognisable gods, and no evidence of the elaborate zemi figures of
the Taino. Nevertheless, they made and wore figurines of stone and
wood to protect against evil spirits known as mabouya, and used
these images to decorate their war clubs and canoes. Good spirits
14 Ancient Americas

were called akamboue, and each Carib was believed to have their
own guardian spirit. Zoomorphic and geometric designs of these
supernatural beings were carved as petroglyphs on boulders and
rockfaces throughout the Carib region.
Carib culture is dramatically and endlessly misrepresented by the
emphasis on cannibalism. Taino accusations of Carib cannibalism
made to Columbus became a defining feature of savage behaviour
perpetrated by indigenous Caribbean peoples.
Unlike the Taino, the Caribs survived well into the European
period in the Caribbean. It was not until the seventeenth century
that French missionaries in Dominica, Guadeloupe and Martinique
began to observe and record Carib cultural traditions. The most
influential of these missionaries was the Dominican Father
Raymond Guillaume Breton, the ‘Apostle to the Caribs’. Carib
society as we know it today is in many respects a seventeenth-
century creation, and is clearly entangled with European propa¬
ganda and misunderstandings, and further confused by the
comparatively little archaeological research which has been carried
out to date.

LEGACY AND HERITAGE

The prehistoric Caribbean was a region of unique cultural

development and diversity - as much a mosaic of peoples and places
as it was to become after the arrival of Europeans and the
introduction of slavery and plantations. The Caribbean and its
indigenous peoples also represented the first European experience of
the hitherto unsuspected continent of the Americas. Many of the
impressions, tragedies and misunderstandings that occurred between
Amerindians and Europeans throughout the Americas happened
first in the Caribbean.
Here, Amerindians initially considered Europeans powerful gods, or
their representatives, and Europeans regarded the Taino as gullible and
child-like, and the Carib as pagan savages suitable only for
enslavement. The encomienda system, which gave Amerindians to
Spanish colonists for whom they were expected to provide food, goods
and labour for no pay but instruction in the Christian faith, was
invented in the Caribbean and exported to the rest of Spanish America.
Today, the Caribbean remains a vibrant mix of peoples, religions
and cultures, and one of the world’s most famous holiday
 Alien Encounters: America and Europe 15

destinations. Beneath the silver sands, however, lies a rich pre-

Columbian heritage. Among the living descendants of the Taino and
Carib too things are changing. There is a resurgence of interest in
their own indigenous past - a long-overdue claim is being made to a
unique cultural heritage. Yet, despite its important archaeological
remains and the pivotal role it played during the European
encounter, the Caribbean was never home to pre-Columbian
America’s great civilisations. These belong to Mesoamerica and
South America, and it is to them that we now turn.
200 miles { Pacific Ocean
300 km
 Mesoamerica -

the Classic Cultures

 Mesoamerican Beginnings and the Olmec

^ If '''he origins of civilisation in Mesoamerica are later than in South

A America and are associated mainly with the rise of the
precocious Olmec civilisation around 1250 BC. Building on the
advent of agriculture and settled village life which preceded them,
the Olmec created Mesoamerica’s first major art style and organised
religion and constructed the region’s first ceremonial architecture
during the late part of the Early Formative Period (1200-900 BC).
The Olmec were thus Mesoamerica’s first civilisation, but were not
necessarily the first or only people to show signs of sophisticated
culture based on hereditary inequalities; this development in social
organisation was a pan-Mesoamerican phenomenon.
Sometime around 1600 BC in the Soconusco region of Meso¬
america’s southern Pacific coastal area, Early Formative-Period
culture had become increasingly sophisticated. The site of La
Victoria has yielded the technically advanced Ocos pottery, a well-
fired and polished kind of ceramic decorated with rocker stamping
and cord impressions and finished with iridescent paint. In the
nearby Mazatan area, sites such as Paso de la Amada had emerged
as chiefdoms, with this site functioning as a ceremonial centre and
containing a population of some two thousand people, a ballcourt
and large plaza capable of holding perhaps ten thousand people.
More generally throughout this area there developed a distinctive
ceramic tradition depicting such varied animals as duck, rabbit, dog,
monkey and fish. Around 1000 BC a change occurred and these
local groups seem to have become organised into a larger chiefdom,
a change reflected in the appearance of typically Olmec motifs on
their ceramics. Some sites, such as Paso de la Amada, disappeared
for ever while others flourished.
Further north, in the valley of Mexico, early cultural development
also took place. Around 1400 BC at Zohapilco/Tlapacoya, on an
island in the south-eastern part of the valley’s lake system, there is
evidence for the region’s first use of simple gourd-like pottery
20 Ancient Americas

followed within two centuries by more sophisticated kinds and

baby-faced ceramic figurines. At the same site have been found
ceramic figurines wearing the elaborate paraphernalia of the ball-
game player dated to c. 1250 BC. Further north, at the site of
Tlatilco, along the margins of the ancient lake there is evidence of a
65 hectare village flourishing around 1200 BC. Excavation of
storage pits revealed animal bones and fragments of pottery and
sophisticated ceramic figurines still bearing the traces of red, yellow
and white paint.
Over three hundred burials were excavated at Tlatilco and each
was accompanied by grave goods that included figurines sometimes
of monstrous figures with three eyes, two heads, or wearing masks.
Tlatilco pottery was masterful and included polished jars and plates
as well as a beautiful effigy vessel in the shape of a fish. In among
this distinctive ceramic repertoire were examples of Olmec style
ceramics that suggested some contact with the Olmec heartland to
the southeast.
In the Oaxaca Valley to the south, between 1900 and 1400 BC,
small rural villages appeared, as did the first ceramics in the region.
San Jose Mogote is the best known of these early villages, and some
time around 1350 BC public architecture appeared there alongside
pottery with increasingly complex decoration. Between 1150 and
850 BC, craft specialisation had embraced the manufacture of shiny
mirrors from locally available magnetite (iron ore), examples of
which found their way to the great Olmec centre of San Lorenzo. It
is becoming increasingly clear to archaeologists that the develop¬
ment of Mesoamerican civilisation was a complex and multi-
regional process but that within that process the culture known as
Olmec played a unique and pivotal role.

THE OLMEC

The Olmec came as a surprise and an enigma to archaeologists

who specialised in ancient Mexico. Until their discovery, and the
realisation of their antiquity, no one suspected that a hitherto
unknown civilisation lurked in the swampy jungles of eastern
Mexico.
The story began in 1862 when the explorer Jose Maria Melgar,
who was travelling through the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz,
investigated rumours of a giant sculpture near the small town of
 Mesoamerican Beginnings and the Olmec 21

Hueyapan. What he discovered was to change the course of

Mexican and, indeed, wider Mesoamerican prehistory. Melgar
unearthed a giant stone head with no trace of an accompanying
body. In his opinion, it looked like an Ethiopian - a comment that
led to a rush of outlandish explanations as to its possible origin.
This was followed in 1886 by the publication of a picture of an
intricately carved piece of jade which appeared as a half-human,
half-feline creature, and which was labelled a ‘votive axe’. At the
time, there was no obvious connection between these two appar¬
ently quite different objects.
In 1900, Marshall Saville published an illustration of what is now
called the Kunze Axe, noting its feline characteristics and making the
prescient comment that its sophistication indicated the existence of a
hitherto unknown art style. A quarter of a century later, the Danish
archaeologist Frans Blom and his companion the ethnographer
Oliver La Farge discovered a second colossal stone head, quickly
followed by the finding of a stone figure on the peak of the volcano
known as San Martin Pajapan in the Tuxtla highlands of coastal
Veracruz. This was a momentous discovery for in a pit beneath the
sculpture were found pieces of pottery and several items of carved
green jade - providing a secure archaeological link between the two
previously separate kinds of object.
Blom and La Farge continued their odyssey southeastwards across
the low-lying riverine area and made a second major discovery - an
archaeological site now known as La Venta appearing as an ‘island’
in the middle of a swamp. Here they discovered Mexico’s oldest
pyramid - an earthen mound some 25m high - and a variety of
elaborately carved stone monuments. It was clear to both men that
they were wandering around in the midst of a huge and previously
unsuspected archaeological site. With hindsight, it is obvious that
the two men had discovered what we now call the Olmec culture,
though at the time such was the pre-eminence and fame of the
Classic Maya civilisation that both they and the archaeological
community assigned these new discoveries to that culture.
The name Olmec was first used by the German scholar Hermann
Beyer who recognised a similarity between the stone sculpture of
San Martin Pajapan and a jade figurine he had previously owned. In
many ways, this name was a misnomer. During Aztec times, the Gulf
Coast region was a major producer of rubber, paid as tribute to the
Aztecs, and from which balls were made for the ceremonial ball-
22 Ancient Americas

game. To the Aztecs this country was Olman or ‘rubber country’

and its inhabitants the Olmeca or ‘people of the rubber country’.
Thus the naming of what was to become one of Mexico’s most
famous civilisations was an accident of history, not an accurate
reflection of what the people would have called themselves. Once
used, the name Olmec became impossible to dislodge.
Despite further Olmec objects coming to light during the 1930s,
and Marshall Saville christening the zoomorphic votive axes as
‘tiger-faces’ or ‘were-jaguars’, it was not until 1938 that any serious
archaeological attempt was made to identify and investigate the
culture which had produced these striking images. It was Matthew
Stirling, an archaeologist working for the Smithsonian Institution in
Washington D.C., who, with the support of the National Geo¬
graphic Society and Mexico’s National Institute of History and
Anthropology, began work at Hueyapan (now renamed as the
archaeological site of Tres Zapotes). He discovered an extraordinary
monument called Stela C inscribed with a precociously early and
typically Maya Long Count date of 31 BC. This angered those
archaeologists who championed the Maya cause, and they refused to
recognise the Olmec as a pre-Maya civilisation. It was not until
1955 that the new technique of radiocarbon dating confirmed that
the Olmec were indeed a separate and earlier civilisation, flourishing
a thousand years before the Classic Maya.
Stirling went on to excavate La Venta, retrieving more colossal
stone heads, carved stone sculptures with images from Olmec
mythology, caches of buried serpentine blocks, jadework and
polished mirrors of magnetite. Human remains, however, were
almost non-existent due to the tropical conditions of the region. It
was not long before the Mexican archaeologist Alfonso Caso was
referring to the Olmec as the ‘Mother Culture’ of Mexican civilisa¬
tion. As if to reinforce this view, Stirling continued to make ground¬
breaking discoveries. In 1945, he found and excavated the Olmec
site of San Lorenzo, recovering five more colossal heads and fifteen
other carved stone sculptures. By the late 1950s, the Olmec had
emerged from the shadows of Mexican prehistory - their enigmatic
feline imagery, huge stone heads and delicate jadework had finally
coalesced into a real archaeological culture. x
 Mesoamerican Beginnings and the Olmec 23

San Lorenzo

A plateau rising 50m above the meandering River Coatzacoalcos is

home to the archaeological site of San Lorenzo - in fact a group of
three smaller sites: Potrero Nuevo, Tenochtitlan and San Lorenzo
itself. According to Michael Coe who excavated there during the
1960s, and Ann Cyphers who worked there in the 1990s, this
plateau may in fact be artificial - shaped into a giant stylised bird of
prey flying eastward. If true, this is the first known example in
Mesoamerica of a ‘sacred mountain’.
Originally, Olmec sites were regarded as ceremonial centres
largely devoid of permanent occupation or craft specialisation and
used solely for religious purposes. This view has been altered
radically during recent years and we have a much more accurate
picture of such sites. San Lorenzo is now known to have been not
only a huge regional centre extending over at least 7sq. km, but also
the largest known centre in Mesoamerica at the time. Locally, San
Lorenzo’s traders took advantage of the network of rivers that criss¬
crossed the region. The discovery of causeways that probably served
as riverside docking areas indicates the importance of canoe
transportation.
San Lorenzo’s prehistoric mounds are arranged along a north-
south axis on top of the plateau and one of these is thought to be
Mesoamerica’s first ball-court. Earlier than La Venta, San Lorenzo
dates to c. 1500 BC at which time the earliest occupation phases of
Ojochi and Bajio are regarded as non-Olmec. San Lorenzo took on a
distinctly Olmec appearance around 1200 BC during the so-called
Chicharras phase (1250-1150 BC) - though where the Chicharras
people came from remains a mystery. In the past, various explana¬
tions have been offered - they invaded from the highlands of
Mexico or travelled across the Atlantic from Africa; in fact, they
almost certainly developed in situ from the peoples who already
lived there and knew the area and its resources well.
In any event, at this time typically Olmec material culture appears
- white kaolin pottery and figurines, ceramics known as Mojonera
Black, and the beginnings of a monumental stone-carving tradition.
Exotic materials and minerals also appear in San Lorenzo at this
time, indicating the forging of long-distance trade relationships with
other parts of Mesoamerica. Particularly well documented are its
relations with the early village of San Jose Mogote in the Oaxaca
24 Ancient Americas

Valley from where it seems it obtained small highly polished

magnetite mirrors and left elements of its distinctive art style
in return.
Recent investigations have thrown much light on the way the San
Lorenzo Olmec organised their society. Excavations have revealed a
series of palaces and high-status houses on the higher parts of the
site, with less prestigious buildings on the lower slopes. The so-
called Red Palace investigated by Ann Cyphers reveals what she calls
the ostentatious use of carved stone features such as aqueducts,
cylindrical columns and steps. The economic and possibly ritual
significance of the ‘expensive’ basalt was highlighted by the dis¬
covery of a basalt workshop and an area used for recycling monu¬
ments made from the stone - both in close proximity to the Red
Palace. In one example, a large monument was being broken up and
used to make metates and other smaller practical items.
The high value set on basalt was apparent also in ordinary houses
where fragments of sculptures were apparently being kept for future
re-use. Obsidian tools seem also to have been produced on a house¬
hold basis, with blades and scrapers being made from cores
imported from the highland sources at Otumba in Mexico and El
Chayal in Guatemala. It is becoming clear that San Lorenzo was a
thriving centre of craft specialisation; apart from the previously un¬
suspected recycling of basalt statues and the manufacture of
obsidian implements, huge quantities of ilmenite were also being
worked, with one area yielding 6 tonnes of ilmenite blocks marked
with traces of drilling.
The site’s stone monuments include colossal stone heads and
monuments called ‘altars’ - many if not all appear to have been
carved from the basalt quarries of Cerro Cintepec in the Tuxtla
mountains some 70km away. The investment of time and effort in
stone-working which had a ritual purpose is seen clearly in the
fascinating discovery that beneath San Lorenzo’s ceremonial centre
was an elaborate drainage system composed of U-shaped basalt
blocks, and that was traced by archaeologists for some 170m. The
drainage channels seem to have been associated with supplying
water to a number of stone-lined depressions around the site’s
centre, and have been interpreted as having a ritual purpose linked
to the worship of rain gods.
Recently, it has been suggested that monumental Olmec sculptures
may not have been intended for use as single monuments but rather
Olmec colossal head.
(© Author’s collection)

Olmec were-jaguar jade figurine.

(© Werner Forman and The
Trustees of the British Museum)
 Mesoamerican Beginnings and the Olmec 25

were arranged as ensemble pieces associated not only with each

other, but also with ritual space, sacrificial offerings and even the
ritual flow of water, perhaps as backdrops for ceremonies. One
spectacular example of such an ensemble still in situ was discovered
at the site of Loma del Zapote. On the site’s acropolis, known as El
Azuzul, two Olmec-style kneeling male figures with elaborate
headdresses were found facing two squatting felines. Possibly this
arrangement of sculptures represented some act or episode from
Olmec mythology, and also may be associated with myths of the
heroic actions of primordial cosmic twins, as is well documented for
later Mesoamerican civilisations.
Although the humidity and acidic soils of the Olmec region has
often militated against the preservation of more fragile remains such
as wood, textile or significant amounts of human bone, there are
occasional exceptions. Perhaps the most spectacular is El Manati, a
small hill on the other side of the Coatzacoalcos river from San
Lorenzo. Ancient freshwater springs gush forth from the base of the
hill which also has natural hematite deposits.
El Manati appears to have been a sacred place for the Olmec
between 1600 and 1000 BC, as springs still are today throughout
Mexico and beyond. The Olmec made ritual offerings of unique
wooden busts in typical Olmec style that have been preserved by the
anaerobic watery conditions. Some were interred wrapped in straw
matting, treated the same way as human corpses in later Aztec times
when they were referred to as ‘death bundles’. Along with the
carved-wood heads, greenstone beads and celts, seeds and human
bones - probably of newborn children - were also deposited, though
whether the latter were sacrificed or placed there after dying a
natural death is not known. Lumps of copal resin and no less than
fourteen rubber balls used in the Mesoamerican ball-game were
also found.
San Lorenzo reached its peak during the San Lorenzo Phase
(1150-900 BC), whose two pottery types, Calzadas Carved and
Limon Carved-Incised, are considered reliable archaeological
markers for the period, and also carry typical Olmec designs. The
distinctive pottery from this period is found in other parts of
Mexico, such as the Olmec-influenced site of Chalcatzingo in the
highlands, and so may be the period at which the Olmec changed
from a purely local culture to one of pan-Mesoamerican signifi¬
cance, though the nature of this significance is hotly debated (see
26 Ancient Americas

below). The succeeding Nacaste phase (900-700 BC) saw the end of
Olmec society at San Lorenzo - the giant heads were defaced and
buried, and new kinds of pottery appeared that seem to have
nothing to do with previous types. Whatever happened at San
Lorenzo, the flame of Olmec civilisation did not die, it simply
moved to the other great Olmec site of La Venta.

La Venta

La Venta, like San Lorenzo, was once thought to be a ceremonial

centre devoid of resident population. Recent investigations have
proven this a false assumption, revealing a sizeable population living
around the civic and religious architecture at the heart of the site.
Today, as presumably at its height, La Venta is dominated by its
volcano-shaped pyramid - the first such structure in Mesoamerica,
though built of earth not stone. The site itself stretches northward
from the pyramid and includes two long narrow mounds, smaller
mounds and a plaza which was originally surrounded by a row of
2m high basalt columns. The extraordinary range of stone sculp¬
tures found scattered around the site is on display at a specially built
archaeological park in the nearby city of Villahermosa.
While San Lorenzo has yielded a small amount of greenstone
objects, La Venta has produced vast quantities. If this is an accurate
reflection of contemporary reality rather than of archaeological
sampling, it indicates a technological, economic and presumably
political shift in the nature of Olmec society and ideology. The time
and effort involved in obtaining (via trade) and making polished
figurines, slabs and celts of jade and serpentine must have been
immense. This is especially significant inasmuch as many, perhaps
most, of these items were then buried in so-called dedicatory caches
at least nineteen of which have been discovered in the area north of
the earthen pyramid alone. These offerings included greenstone slabs
arranged in the shape of a stylised jaguar face, and greenstone axes
together with jewellery made from jade and serpentine. The effort
required to make then bury such valuable objects is indicated by the
fact that one cache had no less than 1,180 individual items.
Apart from such burials, the La Venta Olmec, also followed the
intriguing practice of designing then burying huge mosaics of
serpentine blocks in layers of olive-coloured clay. One of these was
discovered in 1955 by the archaeologist Philip Drucker who
 Mesoamerican Beginnings and the Olmec 27

described it as laid out in the shape of a jaguar mask with a head¬

dress, plumed eyebrows and fangs. Beneath this was another layer of
coloured clays and more serpentine blocks arranged in twenty-eight
levels. The multi-level burial lay beneath a platform of adobe bricks
which itself was capped with a covering of red clay and flanked by
basalt columns. Altogether, there was over 1,000 tons of stone in
this single location - all of which had to be brought from great
distances.

La Venta, Monument 19, showing Olmec person wearing jaguar helmet and sitting
cradled by a giant serpent. (© Pauline Stringfellow, after P. Drucker, R. Heizer and
R. Squier. Excavations at La Venta, Tabasco, 1955. 1959, Bureau of American
Ethnology Bulletin 170, Fig. 55. Washington DC)
28 Ancient Americas

Perhaps the most extraordinary of the buried caches was also one
of the smallest. Offering 4 consisted of a carefully arranged ensemble
scene - 16 carved and polished Olmec-style figurines, 2 of jade, 13 of
serpentine and, mysteriously, 1 of red sandstone standing in front of
a row of 6 jade celts. All the figurines had a typical Olmec appear¬
ance and intriguingly were already weathered when deposited. Over
the centre of the cache was a ‘check shaft’ which had been dug
through the multi-coloured clay layers of the original burial, perhaps
to see if the figures were still there. Whoever made this cut was
apparently satisfied as it was filled in during prehistoric times.
While the humid and lush conditions of La Venta and the whole
Olmec area are not favourable for the survival of human bones, one
major tomb was discovered at La Venta. Tomb A had been built just
to the north of the pyramid and consisted of large basalt columns
covered with earth. Hardly any human bones remained, but the
surviving fragments suggested that two children had been interred
here, covered with red ochre and accompanied by luxury items,
notably a female figurine wearing a shiny haematite mirror on her
breast and a jade pendant. This discovery indicated that Olmec
society was organised in such a way that status could be inherited
(as well as achieved), as these young children could never have
accomplished deeds worthy of such a burial in their own short
lifetimes.
Of the many superb stone sculptures discovered at La Venta
arguably the most intriguing is a group misleadingly called ‘altars’.
These are monolithic basalt blocks carved with various scenes from
what may have been Olmec mythology. Some depict a seated figure
emerging from a niche, and several are cradling babies in their arms.
The so-called ‘baby theme’ is most prominent on Altar 5 which has
a central figure holding a baby and two more adults each cradling
an infant on each of the sides. The niches themselves have been
interpreted as cave entrances represented as stylised jaguar-monster
mouths. The term altar has also been replaced by the description of
these monuments as thrones on which La Venta’s (royal?) elite sat,
surrounded by the symbols of their mythological origins.
Equally sophisticated in their production were other stone
sculptures found at the site. Stela 1 shows an Olmec figure wearing
a helmet, earrings and a skirt watched over by a stylised jaguar
mask. Most famous, however, as at San Lorenzo, are the colossal
heads found at the site. Weighing between 11 and 24 tons each,
 Mesoamerican Beginnings and the Olmec 29

these giant sculptures are unique inasmuch as they do not depict the
typical stylised Olmec forms but rather make every attempt to
portray their subjects as lifelike as possible. In other words, it seems
as if they represent real people - possibly the rulers of La Venta.
Each of these heads wears a skull cap style of headdress, quite
unlike the elaborate tiered headdresses found on other stone
sculptures or depicted in jade carvings and cave paintings. Each one
is different, possessing a unique emblem which may have identified
the name or status of the individual concerned. Whatever the reality
of Olmec politics, and whatever the nature of their official art, these
individualised monuments clearly had a different purpose - to
identify political and sacred power with recognisable individuals.
Given the sacred nature of Amerindian politics, and the clear need
for accurate physical likeness and technical perfection in the produc¬
tion of these monumental heads, it is probably significant that when
La Venta went into decline between 450 and 300 BC, some of these
monuments were laboriously defaced with surface pitting.
Interestingly, unlike modern vandalism, the defacing of the Olmec
heads left their identity untouched; what it did achieve was to
destroy the perfection of the monument. Perhaps it was the Olmec
themselves who defaced their own monuments in some now long
forgotten ritual of royal succession.

Beyond the heartland

San Lorenzo and La Venta are the best-known Olmec centres but
there are other and usually less well-known sites beyond the Gulf
Coast heartland. The Olmec journeyed, traded and exchanged with
other peoples who inhabited regions rich in the raw materials the
Olmec needed to define and maintain their society and produce their
startling works of art. While the Olmec region had clay for pottery
and plentiful animal and food resources, and fortuitously a source of
basalt in the nearby Tuxtla highlands, other raw materials were not
locally available. The black volcanic glass obsidian, the ‘steel of
prehistory’, jade, serpentine and magnetite belonged to different
geologies and to different peoples.
Originally it was thought that the Olmec had conquered the
resource-rich highland areas, spreading their idea of civilisation far
and wide and thus becoming the ‘Mother Culture’ of Mesoamerican
civilisation. Today, the picture is less clear and it seems that complex
30 Ancient Americas

Chalcatzingo, the ‘El Rey’ carving. (© Pauline Stringfellow, after D. Grove.

Chalcatzingo, Thames and Hudson, London, 1984, Fig. 5)

interactions with different peoples took place, with Olmec influence

adopted and adapted to local cultural conditions - in other words, a
mosaic of interaction is emerging, one not amenable to a single or
simple explanation.
Of the many places in highland Mesoamerica that show evidence
of Olmec influence none has been so well investigated as
Chalcatzingo. Situated south of the valley of Mexico in the modern
state of Morelos, Chalcatzingo existed before the arrival of Olmec
influence. It has been called a Gateway Community, strategically
placed between the lowland Olmec area and the highlands of
Central Mexico. It was located to take advantage of different veg¬
etation zones and mineral sources, perhaps for the collection of obsi¬
dian, greenstones and kaolin clay (used to make the white ceramic
baby figures) from its hinterland and, with the help of Olmec
 Mesoamerican Beginnings and the Olmec 31

intermediaries, funnelling them into the Olmec area in exchange for

Olmec prestige-by-association reflected in Olmec influence in its
monumental art.
By c. 700 BC this trade was in full flow - the dating and style of art
at Chalcatzingo suggest that the relationship was mainly with La
Venta. The evidence for Olmec presence or at least influence around
this time are the large bas-reliefs carved on to the rock face of
Chalcatzingo’s prominent twin hills. Monument 1, known as El Rey
(the King), depicts an elaborately dressed figure seated on a throne
inside what has variously been called a cave or stylised jaguar mouth
(the two being synonymous by later Aztec times). From rainclouds
hovering above, jade droplets fall, and curling smoke billows from
the cave entrance. Other simpler carvings show humans reeling under
the attack of rampant felines, warriors with weapons standing over a
naked and bound prisoner, and a feline curiously licking a plant.
Deeper into the mountain country of central Mexico are other
sites which reveal Olmec presence. In the cave shelter of Oxtotitlan
in the modern state of Guerrero are the weathered remains of
colourful paintings, the most impressive showing an Olmec figure
with an eagle-shaped headdress sitting on a throne shaped like a
stylised jaguar-monster. Nearby and standing behind a large jaguar
is a startling image of an Olmec figure painted in black with a
prominent penis. Some 30km away, almost 0.6km inside the cave of
Juxtlahuaca is the painting of an Olmec figure wearing a feathered
headdress and jaguar skin. The reason for these Olmec images in
remote mountain locations is unknown other than that their
creators were possibly here seeking the precious greenstones needed
back in La Venta.
In 1983, in eastern Guerrero an Olmec-period city was found
which is now known as Teopantecuanitlan (Temple of the Jaguar
Gods). As with the better-known centres in the Olmec heartland,
Teopantecuanitlan had monumental architecture and was located
near the confluence of several rivers. It covered an area of 160ha
and flourished between c. 1400 and 600 BC. The ceremonial heart of
the site had a series of platforms as well as large stone sculptures
including a lm tall human head. Dominating the area was a huge
sunken court whose staircases led to a sculpture of a stylised feline
head. The enclosure itself revealed four great T-shaped stone sculp¬
tures, each decorated with an Olmec-style anthropomorphic feline
face, and apparently associated with the cardinal directions. Some
32 Ancient Americas

experts believe it served as a ballcourt and/or a place where the

natural and supernatural worlds met. Elaborate water conduits
drained the enclosure and another hydraulic system directed water
to irrigate nearby fields.
It seems clear that Teopantecuanitlan served as a large regional
centre far from the Olmec heartland - a place of sacred rituals but
also of economic power. The excavation of various house remains
indicates local diet (mainly dogs), and items from everyday life,
including ceramics and ceramic figurines, iron-ore mirrors and
jewellery fragments of onyx, serpentine and Pacific-coast seashells
including Spondylus. Obsidian, too, was found. Clearly the city was
at the hub of an extensive interregional trade network though the
exact nature of its relationship with far distant Gulf Coast Olmec
centres to the east is unknown.
In such a wild and inaccessible area as Guerrero many other
Olmec-period sites probably await discovery, whether impressive
centres like Teopantecuanitlan or small cave sites such as
Juxtlahuaca. In recent years other sites have been found, large ones
such as the huge but heavily looted Xochipala, or the accidental
discoveries such as burials in the town of Chilpancingo - the latter’s
construction, dating to c. 600 BC, suggesting that the architectural
development of the corbelled vault may have been developed here
rather than, as traditionally believed, by the Maya.

Art, politics and religion

The Olmec did not invent the pan-Amerindian worldview, or even

those elements of Mesoamerican worldview that were an integral
part of it. What they did achieve was to give systematic physical
expression to age-old ideas and beliefs in a unique and distinctive
repertoire of large- and small-scale art in what has come to be called
the Olmec style. The content of most Olmec art deals with ideas,
beliefs and issues that are typically Amerindian: ideas of transform¬
ation, sacred landscapes, and the power of ancestors - and through
this a concept of the spiritual nature of political power. This was a
natural philosophy built on analogy and symbolic reasoning not
amenable to Western scientific ideas of cause and event. How could
it have been otherwise?
Olmec art deals head on with indigenous notions of a world
infused with spirituality, where people and animals could shape-shift
 Mesoamerican Beginnings and the Olmec 33

into each other, and where shiny minerals could embody ideas of
cosmic energy represented by the sun. It was a supernaturally
animated world, where weather, mountains, animals and plants had
identities, shared spiritual essences between their varied forms, and
could exercise power over the fate of humans.
For the first time in Mesoamerica, ancient beliefs about the nature
of human life (and death) that had been shaped by millennia of a
hunting and gathering existence moved beyond the realm of oral
tradition, an individual’s lifetime and memory, and fragile material
culture. Now, mythology and religious beliefs became tangible and
permanent, carved in durable stone and jade. The pre-eminence of
the Olmec elite was inextricably linked to stone and jade images
whose striking visual appearance combined with the new quality of
‘permanence’ to convey the power of ancestors, the presence in this
world of human-animal beings, and the control of natural forces
and cosmic myth - all of which were exercised by the rulers them¬
selves. It was the rulers’ connections with and influence over omni¬
potent and ambivalent supernatural forces that bestowed on them
their political power.
It is partly for these reasons that so much Olmec art deals with
what we might consider the impossible and fantastic - the extremes
of human imagination - in visualising so clearly and dramatically
creatures and connections for which the modern world finds no
evidence. For the Olmec elite, however, such images manifested their
lineage, status and power as representations that worked - whose
very existence spoke of previously unknown and unimaginable
technologies and abilities that must have seemed as magical and
awe-inspiring to the Olmec farmer as did the arrival of the Spanish
to the Aztec emperor Moctezuma II in AD 1519.
Olmec artists and craftsmen were supported by the elite, their skills
and techniques used to create objects that supported their patrons’
views and desires, that is artworks that represented and justified their
exalted social positions. Given the spiritual nature of political power
in Amerindian societies, it was important that monumental and
miniature art - however novel its shape and presence - integrated and
honoured long-established and widely held concepts that organised
the world. One of the main concepts was that of transformation,
where powerful people, whether shamans, priests, chiefs or kings,
were identified with powerful animals. So intimate were these
associations thought to be that there appears to have been an
34 Ancient Americas

unshakeable belief in the deep cosmological connection between the

souls of high-ranking individuals and those of the (usually fierce and
aggressive) animals with whom they shared an identity.
These relationships are seen most clearly, though by no means
exclusively, in the Olmec fascination with feline imagery, as has been
noted in various descriptions given above. These images are usually
identified with the jaguar (Pantbera onca), America’s largest cat and
most widespread and successful predator (apart from humans). In
the early years of Olmec archaeology, it was thought that most
Olmec art was inspired by the jaguar, though today a more complex
picture has emerged, reflecting the fact that serpents, birds, caymans
and even spiders are also represented in what was evidently a rich
artistic tradition.
In smaller hunter-gatherer societies in Central and South America,
the jaguar is the most common spirit-companion of pre-eminent
individuals, following the logic that as the jaguar is prominent in the
natural world so shamans and chiefs mirror that prominence in the
social world. Some Amazonian chiefs have titles that incorporate the
local name for jaguar, and some even claim to be descended from
jaguar ancestors and to have inherently jaguar features or charac¬
teristics. Looking at much Olmec art, it seems that such ideas may
have been current also in their society. Monument 3 from Potrero
Nuevo at San Lorenzo depicts a scene, albeit damaged, which could
have come directly from Amazonian mythology - a huge jaguar-
monster apparently copulating with a human female. While bio¬
logically barren, in human imagination the result of such a union
would be a race of half-jaguar, half-human creatures - with features
matching those seen in so many Olmec artworks - caught, as it
were, between the human and the animal. Recent investigations
have shown that San Lorenzo possessed the largest number of feline
images of any Olmec site excavated to date.
Such hybrid creatures may have represented the essence of the
Olmec elite - an official origin myth that accorded with widespread
beliefs about transformation but which capitalised on the
psychological effect of seeing imagination become real in permanent
artworks. Monument 52 at San Lorenzo shows another example, a
hybrid feline-human basalt statue with a snarling were-jaguar mouth
and paws resting on its knees. Its association with an elaborate
drainage system has been interpreted as signifying that it represents
a possible Olmec rain deity.
 Mesoamerican Beginnings and the Olmec 35

Similarly stylised feline imagery is also found in the delicately

carved jade and serpentine objects that today are scattered through¬
out the world’s museums. The so-called votive axes such as that in
the British Museum and famous Kunz Axe mentioned above, were-
jaguar figurines in the collection of Dumbarton Oaks in Washing¬
ton, DC, and the greenstone carvings of Olmec figures holding
‘jaguarised babies’ all speak of an Olmec religion and ideology that
materialised ancient beliefs in jaguar-human associations in new and
startling ways.
While most Olmec artworks deal in some way with stylised feline
or human images in which an ideological message is encoded in the
concept of human-animal co-equivalence, the monumental basalt
heads are a clear exception - and an unusual occurrence in Meso¬
american (and pan-Amerindian) art. As we have already seen, these
giant heads were carved as presumably accurate portraits of real
people. The supernatural power of tradition may have been repre¬
sented in the anonymous stylised artworks, but the identity of those
who wielded that power was made plain to all by the psychologic¬
ally disorientating effect of colossal heads that portrayed real people
at many times their natural size.

Olmec legacy

The Olmec have understandably dominated much debate concerning

the origins of Mesoamerican civilisation since Matthew Stirling
began excavating San Lorenzo and La Venta during the 1940s,
debates which became sharper with radiocarbon dating’s confirma¬
tion of the chronological primacy of this ‘new’ culture. However,
while the ‘Mother Culture’ tag has been increasingly disputed if not
ridiculed in recent years, there is a powerful sense in which it still
has something to teach us.
Few would argue today that the Olmec conquered or forced their
cultural ideas and styles on ancient Mesoamerica and therefore
inspired or somehow created Mesoamerican civilisation. Neverthe¬
less, for the most part, the phenomenon of monumental and
iconographically complex artwork set in a sophisticated architec¬
tural framework did begin with the Gulf Coast Olmec. Something
happened in the area of San Lorenzo and La Venta before it occur¬
red elsewhere, at least in terms that are archaeologically visible.
Clearly also, the Olmec’s desire for exotic raw materials, which they
36 Ancient Americas

decided could help define and maintain their social structure,

brought them into contact (directly and indirectly) with other
Mesoamerican groups.
Equally clear is that these other regions of Mesoamerica were not
merely passive recipients of Olmec enlightenment but were actively
engaged in selecting and adapting whatever it was the Olmec offered
according to their own cultural ideas and what they themselves could
offer in return - whether obsidian, kaolin clay, greenstone minerals,
or other less durable or identifiable goods and services such as local
knowledge, food and drink, and acting as porters. So-called Olmec
art at Chalcatzingo, Xochipala, Oxtotitlan, and most spectacularly at
Teopantecuanitlan, indicates not a slavish imitation of Gulf Coast
canons but a locally appropriate interpretation of its style.
It is important to emphasise that while style and material were
distinctively Gulf Coast Olmec, the ideas they expressed were not.
As we have already seen, the content of most Olmec art emanated
from a pan-Mesoamerican, probably pan-Amerindian, worldview,
whose basic assumptions would have been understood by all
Mesoamerican peoples whatever their level of social and political
organisation. What was new, perhaps shockingly so at the time, was
to see these ideas transformed into physical objects, objects that
were visually and psychologically seductive and that embodied such
potential for political manipulation via their adaptation and
integration into local social systems.
In other words, the undeniable Gulf Coast Olmec influence on
Mesoamerica was not achieved by inventing a new worldview or
religious outlook — there were no Old World-style proselytising
movements here, but rather by giving it form and presence in the
physical world. Olmec pottery, jadework, sculpture and painting, as
well as less durable items such as woodwork and textiles, gave
physical expression to age old beliefs in a way which made them
available for ritual and ideological manipulation and elaboration by
existing or emerging elites.
Olmec civilisation began in the Gulf Coast region, but its full¬
blown zenith was a hybrid affair, the result of contact, trade,
compromise and exchange with Mesoamerica’s varied peoples and
the natural resources they possessed. „
 THREE

Zapotec

^ // apotec civilisation was one of Mesoamerica’s most precocious

zZ^/and distinctive cultural achievements. Situated in the rich
Oaxaca Valley region of southern-central Mexico, the Zapotecs
created their political capital of Monte Alban. For over a thousand
years, between 500 BC and AD 750, Zapotec civilisation flourished,
developing an early writing and mathematical system based on
glyphs, building in a distinctive architectural style and maintaining
superpower relations with the great city of Teotihuacan. This
chapter explores the uniqueness of Zapotec civilisation and
illustrates how, at one and the same time, it was culturally distinct
yet also typically Mesoamerican.

BEGINNINGS OF ZAPOTEC CIVILISATION

Between 1400 and 1150 BC, called by archaeologists the Tierras

Largas phase, small rural villages appeared in the Etla Valley in
Oaxaca, probably drawn by the rich agricultural land of the area. At
this time, an unusual development took place at San Jose Mogote - a
site seven times larger than the typical hamlet and with a population
of around two hundred. Unusual burials occur in which middle-aged
men were interred in a seated position, perhaps regarded as venerable
family ancestors. The presence of clay figurines depicting women
may represent female ancestors at this time.
Situated above the floodplain of the Atoyac river, the large com¬
munity of San Jose Mogote was in fact a grouping of nine living
residential units with an apparent ritual focus in a building
interpreted as a ‘Men’s House’, which was rebuilt on the same spot
many times. This was to become a common Mesoamerican practice
suggestive of the sacred nature of particular places in the cultural
landscape. Excavation revealed that floors and walls had been
covered with gleaming white plaster, and floor pits contained
38 Ancient Americas

deposits of powdered lime - a substance known from the later

sixteenth-century Zapotec practice to have been mixed with tobacco
as a ritual intoxicant. The Men’s House building indicates organis¬
ation and co-operation, and the probable presence of a group of
influential, perhaps charismatic men. These individuals were
probably involved with long-distance trade of obsidian, marine
shells and other items.
Sometime around 1150 BC there occurred what the scholars of
Zapotec culture, Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus, refer to as a
turning point in the development of Zapotec civilisation. Dating
from the San Jose phase (1150-850 BC), there appears the first
archaeological evidence for inherited rather than achieved social
status, and thus the social inequalities of what is termed a ranked
society. One of the features of such a society is the claim of com¬
munity leaders to have supernatural ancestors, thereby sanctifying
and justifying their own elite status and tying it to the social and
natural worlds through elaborate ritual events.
In what was probably already a time-honoured Mesoamerican
tradition (and, if not, would soon become so) the supernatural
beings invoked by this emerging elite appear to have been the Earth
and the Sky. In this tectonically active region, Earth manifested his
presence through earthquakes, and Sky by thunder and lightning. It
is no coincidence that as these developments were being assimilated
into their culture, Zapotec symbolic conceptions of Earth and Sky
found their way into art - notably as decorative motifs on the
sophisticated ceramics that appeared around this time. In one view,
Earth was represented as a grimacing feline mouth and cleft skull,
and Lightning as flaming eyebrows on a serpent head. So far, pottery
decorated with these motifs has been found only in burials of males.
Different kinds of burial goods and different burial positions have
been interpreted as further evidence of the inherited social
inequalities of the time. While the majority of burials saw bodies
laid out flat and often with few luxury items such as jade beads or
pottery, a select few seem to have been interred in a kneeling
position, accompanied by more jade jewellery and ceramics bearing
the lightning motif. The evidence is not clearcut, however, and
imported luxury items such as seashells and sheets of gleaming mica
seem to have been less an indication of social status than were the
small polished mirrors made of locally mined iron ores. It may be, as
some authorities have speculated, that these mirrors (some of which
 Zapotec 39

found their way to the Olmec region) were highly restricted symbols
of leadership, albeit they were worn in combination with jade and
seashells.
Burial evidence does seem to support the idea that at this time
social status was ascribed rather than achieved - in other words at
least some degree of inequality was due to the lineage into which an
individual was born. The discovery of fine pottery decorated with
lightning motifs in burials of children who were clearly too young to
have achieved high status through their own actions supports this
idea, as does the presence of skulls which have been artificially
shaped by binding from a very young age. In later Mesoamerican
civilisations, cranial deformation was a sign of noble status.
Other evidence points to increasingly sophisticated and effective
strategies of social control by the emerging elite. The leaders of San
Jose Mogote attracted ever more people and satellite settlements to
their immediate area - there were around two hundred such indi¬
viduals in 1150 BC, but over a thousand by 850 BC. New archi¬
tecture was also being built, monumental and public in conception,
and the result of labour drawn and organised from different
communities, each of which contributed their own building
materials to the construction. These structures were pyramidal
platforms designed to support public buildings and, significantly,
appear to have been decorated with carved-stone images including a
feline and a raptorial bird - the symbolic animals par excellence in
Mesoamerica.
Between 850 and 700 BC, a period called by archaeologists the
Guadalupe phase, social differences in society continued to increase
and rival centres to San Jose Mogote such as Huitzo sprang up.
Nevertheless, San Jose Mogote was still the largest population centre
with some two thousand people occupying an area of about 70ha.
Evidence from elite female burials in nearby hamlets suggests the
possibility that high-ranking San Jose Mogote women were being
married into such satellite communities as a way of building a
network of political alliances, if not outright control. Elite women’s
importance is apparent in the elaborate costume of female figurines
that became common at this time.
In the years that followed, called the Rosario phase (700-500 BC),
social organisation in the valley of Oaxaca becomes sophisticated
enough for archaeologists to refer to it as a complex chiefdom.
High-status grey pottery appears and was possibly used in feasting
40 Ancient Americas

between the leaders of different communities. Population grows -

there are now perhaps as many as eighty-five villages in the valley -
an expansion made possible by increasingly elaborate irrigation
schemes. Public architecture at San Jose Mogote and elsewhere is
ever more prolific, suggesting perhaps chiefly rivalry between com¬
peting communities, an impression reinforced by the evidence for
the deliberate burning of temples, something which may have
occurred during military raids.
Even more graphic is Monument 3 at San Jose Mogote which
depicts an individual with a complex scroll-motif on his chest
suggestive of heart sacrifice, and whose name, derived from the sacred
260-day calendar (see below), appears as 1-Earthquake in the glyphs
carved at his feet. It is considered that the Zapotec glyphic writing
system had its origin in the chaos of war and in the propaganda-
driven desires of the victor to commemorate his triumph.
The Oaxaca Valley’s population had increased dramatically
between 700 and 500 BC, and warfare between paramount chiefs
was commemorated in art and in Oaxaca’s first hieroglyphic
writing. Sometime between 600-500 BC, a crucial political decision
seems to have been made by the leaders of San Jose Mogote and
other communities, which saw their villages and expensive cere¬
monial buildings all but abandoned within a few years. In effect,
there occurred a unique, rapid and spectacular population shift
away from the villages of the Etla Valley and elsewhere to a new
centre of political dominance in the strategic heart of the Oaxaca
Valley. This was the birth of the great Zapotec city of Monte Alban
which would rule the area for a thousand years.

MONTE ALBAN, THE ZAPOTEC CAPITAL

The early city

At this earliest time, called by archaeologists Monte Alban I

(500-150 BC), small communities began establishing themselves on
the hills of Monte Alban. Although we do not know from whence
they came, San Jose Mogote itself and nearby villages such as
Tierras Largas are likely candidates for the reasons given above.
This new strategic position, itself surrounded by rich agricultural
land in the river valleys below, was ideal as a market centre, drawing
in and facilitating the production and exchange of a diversity of
 Zapotec 41

items, from pottery to salt, obsidian to foodstuffs. If market ex¬

change was the engine that drove this development it was
remarkably successful. While there were no inhabitants on Monte
Alban’s dry ridges in 600 BC, there were approximately five
thousand by 400 BC and possibly seventeen thousand by 200 BC.
By this time, perhaps one third of the Oaxaca Valley’s entire
population had moved from their river-valley villages to live in Monte
Alban and within its 3km of defensive walls. The city was now an
urban phenomenon, with dynastic families, palaces and a state
religion in place, and all the trappings of an aggressive militaristic
society. In the valley lowlands below the city the number of small
satellite villages also increased greatly, from around 5 at the beginning
of Period I to perhaps 744 at the end of the period. Archaeologically,
this unprecedented expansion of population is identifiable through
extensive irrigation projects and the appearance of mass-produced
pottery griddles (comales) used to bake maize tortillas in vast
quantities to feed the inhabitants of the city and its environs.
Everything, it seemed, was now revolving around the new city.
There is little doubt that the rulers of Monte Alban had an
aggressive approach to Oaxacan politics, and displayed this in
typical Mesoamerican fashion in their monumental art. Nowhere is
this more gruesomely visible than in the human figures known as the
danzantes (dancers) and nadadores (swimmers). Some three hundred
of these carved-stone figures are known and show men in various
positions - hence their misleading Spanish names. It appears that
they were originally part of a great wall in the south-west part of the
city’s main plaza, though later many were removed and re-used in
other buildings. The surviving section of the Danzante Wall still
stands several metres tall, indicating how visually stunning this
earliest of Mesoamerican war-propaganda monuments must have
been when complete.
The danzantes seem to portray real people rather than stylised
figures, and they wear different kinds of jewellery such as jade
necklaces, ear discs, and also have distinctive individualising hair¬
styles. Some have glyphs in front of their mouths that may be name
glyphs. Others have what is called the ‘genital scroll’, a design
composed of wavy lines and having a quasi-floral appearance. These
intriguing motifs have been interpreted as evidence for ritual
mutilation of male genitals associated perhaps with the imagery of
flowing blood or semen as symbols of fertility.
42 Ancient Americas

It is unclear what these figures represent. While they were

probably not dancers or priests, might they have been honoured
ancestors from the inception of Monte Alban, or perhaps high-
ranking captives who were sacrificed? There is certainly a strong
case for thinking that they may have been slain high-status enemies
subjected to ritual humiliation and disfigurement, portrayed for the
glory of the emerging Zapotec state in typical Mesoamerican
fashion. Even their naked appearance would have been humiliation
for leaders who took so much trouble to depict themselves dressed
in elaborate costumes, and concealed behind dramatic ceremonial
masks. More prosaically, perhaps the larger vertical danzantes
represent the elite and the smaller horizontal nadadores the
commoners. Some believe the figures represent contemporary
individuals, although the widespread appearance of the eyes as shut
suggests otherwise.
It may be that the later re-use of some of these carved-stone
figures as steps in the ceremonial stairway that led to the summit of
the city’s Building L gives a clue to at least one of their meanings.
Anyone ascending the stairway would have stepped on the figures, a
further ritual humiliation and one known as a metaphor for
conquest elsewhere in Mesoamerica. As honoured ancestors would
not have been treated this way, this re-use suggests the danzantes
were indeed representations of sacrificed war prisoners. If so, then
the original Danzante Wall with its 300 grotesquely mutilated
figures was a powerful and intimidating expression of Zapotec
power.
This early period of Monte Alban’s history has also yielded
evidence for the use of what was to become one of the defining
features of Mesoamerican civilisation - the dual calendar system,
tied intimately to the development of glyphs that could be used for
recording mathematical information and for writing. The dual
calendar system is composed of an everyday or solar calendar which
had 365 days, and was divided into 18 months of 20 days each, the
extra 5 days being regarded as particularly unlucky. The smaller
religious calendar had 260 days and was divided into 13 months of
20 days each. These two calendars fitted together like cog-wheels,
and produced a different date every day for 52 years'before starting
again. This is called the calendar round.
While glyphs had already been discovered at San Jose Mogote,
suggesting the presence of the 260-day calendar, it is only now at
 Zapotec 43

Monte Alban that there is glyphic evidence for the 365-day calendar
as well. Almost two thousand years later, during the sixteenth
century, the Spanish recorded that the Zapotec were still using their
two interlocking calendars, the solar one being called yza and the
sacred one the piye.
At Monte Alban, Stelae 12 and 14 are considered some of the
earliest examples of Mesoamerican glyphic texts and incorporate
what is arguably the first reference to a named month in the 365-
day calendar. Other glyphs on these two stelae apparently make
reference to a leader called 10-Jaguar, a year-sign, a day from the
260-day sacred calendar called 8-Water, and a sign indicating ‘first
born’. Although our understanding of Zapotec glyphs is still in its
early stages, the placement of these two stelae next to the Danzante
Wall suggests that its glyphic text and dates are related to the
victorious Zapotec lord who commissioned the monument.
By the end of Period I, c. 150 BC, it appears that most if not all
the valley area was under Monte Alban’s control. The city itself
covered more than 400ha, and the defining features of Classic
Zapotec state-level civilisation were in place.

The classic city

It was during the succeeding periods, known as Monte Alban II (150

BC-AD 100) and Monte Alban III (AD 200-750), that the city finally
became a true state and enjoyed its golden age. By the beginning of
Period II, Monte Alban had spread across some 416ha and had
perhaps as many as nineteen thousand inhabitants. Interestingly, the
population of the valley of Oaxaca as a whole seems to have de¬
clined somewhat, perhaps indicating a deliberate colonisation of
areas further from the political centre.
Nevertheless, this great city was a definitive break with what had
gone before. Strategically sited some 400m above the valley bottom,
Monte Alban’s civic architecture was built of stone and its houses of
adobe brick rather than the fragile wattle and daub construction of
earlier times. A planned ceremonial centre, monumental architecture
and a glyphic writing system accompanying a sophisticated repertoire
of art all heralded a new era of urbanism for the Oaxaca region.
At this time, the great plaza was cleared at the centre of the city
and paved with white stucco. It measured some 300m north to
south, and 200m east to west. Around it would soon be built
 44 Ancient Americas

ceremonial architecture in the form of two-roomed temples which

defined Zapotec civilisation. Interestingly, the previously important
site of San Jose Mogote, which had largely fallen into disuse, was
now reinvigorated and given a central plaza almost identical to that
at Monte Alban. In both places, secret tunnels led to the flanking
temples, allowing priests and functionaries to appear and depart
unseen.
The distinctive twin-roomed temples, known as yohopee (‘house
of the vital force’ known as pee) in the Zapotec language of the later
sixteenth century, had developed out of earlier single-roomed
structures. The extra room may have accommodated the priests who
were becoming ever more specialised and full-time as Zapotec
culture developed. Typical of these temples is Building X, which has
a wide and large entrance room whose roof was supported by two
columns and through which one had to pass in order to ascend to a
much smaller room at the back that was supported by two smaller
columns. It is thought that it was this inner sanctum which received
sacrificial offerings in the swirling smoke of incense burners. These
temples were clearly sacred places, a fact marked by ritual deposits
found beneath their floors and that typically include offerings of
greenstone jewellery, shell mosaics and sometimes human remains,
presumably of sacrificial victims.
According to Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus, Period II temple
rituals were similar to those practised in the area during the
sixteenth century, and so the nature of earlier rituals could be
inferred from these later better-documented examples. With this idea
they examined Period II temples at San Jose Mogote in an attempt
to throw light on Zapotec beliefs concerning temple sanctification,
sacrificial offerings of animals and humans, and the transformation
of high-ranking ancestors into supernatural beings identified with
clouds and lightning.
Investigating three superimposed twin-roomed temples they found
the remains of quail, a favourite sacrificial bird of the Zapotec,
obsidian knives and blades used for heart sacrifice and bloodletting’
and even the smoky stains of incense burners. Several offertory
boxes were uncovered, one containing jade figurines and beads, the
other a remarkable ritual scene composed as a miniature tomb. Here
a kneeling ceramic figure had been placed inside a bowl alongside a
sacrificed quail; on the roof of the miniature tomb was a ‘Flying
Figure’ wearing a lightning mask, two deer-antler drumsticks and
 Zapotec 45

four ceramic female effigies wearing masks of the lightning god

Cocijo. Flannery and Marcus believe this unique ensemble could
represent the transformation of a Zapotec lord into an ancestral
‘Cloud Person’ associated with lightning.
During Period II also, Monte Alban’s first ballcourts were built in
a characteristically standardised ‘I’ shape. The most famous of these
lies on the eastern side of the main plaza and is 41m in length and
flanked by steep-sloping walls, possibly used by the spectators.
Investigations have revealed little information concerning Monte
Alban’s rubber ball-game, though a fragment of a ball-player’s mask
was found. The game may have had political and cosmological
significance as in later Mesoamerican times. Far more insight has
been provided by the site of Dainzu which has preserved forty-seven
carved stone slabs depicting ball-players wearing protective masks
and clothing and handling small solid-rubber balls. Later
ethnohistorical evidence indicates that the Zapotecs called their ball-
game queye, and the ballcourt lachi.
An indication that Zapotec society was becoming ever more
hierarchical at this time is the increasing size and sophistication of the
palaces and their accompanying tombs. Elite burials such as Tomb
118 are large and elaborate - reached by a steep stairway and open¬
ing out into a main chamber some 3m long and over 1.5m high.
Another unusual Period II construction is the so-called Building J,
an arrowhead-shaped structure in the great plaza. Still adorning its
walls are some of the forty original carved-stone images - in fact
Zapotec glyphs which record the names of Monte Alban’s provinces.
These are called the ‘conquest slabs’, and typically consist of three
elements: a central part depicting a ‘hill’ indicating ‘place of’, on top
of which is the specific name element, such as the head of a
jackrabbit - the two elements combined yielding ‘Hill of/place of the
Jackrabbit’. Below is sometimes an upturned human head, usually
with closed eyes, which is thought to represent the dead ruler of the
named place. When considered together, each tripartite glyph may
represent the name of a conquered community.
In later colonial times, local Zapotec lords identified their
territory by using glyphs showing hills rather than towns, as the
former were eternal, the latter ephemeral. This continuity of style in
representing places can sometimes also be correlated with much
later Aztec tribute lists which use similar glyphic designs to identify
the towns they had conquered in this region. By the end of Period II,
46 Ancient Americas

c. AD 100, the Zapotecs probably had a small empire, controlling a

strategic area from the Tehuacan Valley in the north to the Pacific
Coast area beyond the settlement of Ocelotepec in the south.
The succeeding period, known as Monte Alban III, is divided into
two parts, Period Ilia (AD 200-500) and Period Illb (AD 500-750),
and it was during this time that Zapotec civilisation reached its
height. Generally speaking, Period III saw the extremes of social
differentiation, with Zapotec hereditary rulers (called coqui) living in
sophisticated palaces whose sixteenth-century counterparts were
called ydbo quehi or ‘royal houses’. As with other Mesoamerican
elites, Zapotec rulers wore elaborate costumes and seemed
particularly fond of dramatic masks and headdresses. Ceramic
representations of these powerful men are found on the so-designated
funerary urns which accompanied the deceased’s body into the tomb,
itself often built beneath the palace, its walls covered with colourful
murals depicting supernatural beings. The urns may have been
unique masterworks designed to be the physical home of the ruler’s
vital life force or pee. Typically, these urn figures would be sitting
cross-legged, wearing a fantastical mask, adorned with heavy jade
and shell jewellery, and sometimes grasping a decapitated trophy
head. Such images were once thought to represent gods, but are now
considered more likely to have been powerful ancestor figures.
Elite Zapotec burials at this time were often made beneath the
floors of the palaces, many in the northern part of the city. They
differ in design from what are considered the more official, perhaps
administrative, palace buildings ranged around the great plaza.
Typical of these high-class burials is Tomb 104, above whose
entrance is a clay sculpture depicting an elaborately dressed figure
holding a bag of incense, wearing jade ear flares and sporting a
headdress composed of several feline heads. The single body inside
was accompanied by a typically elaborate funerary urn and four
simpler ones. Dazzling murals showing gods or ancestor beings
covered the walls within which niches had been cut to take some of
the pottery vessels. The murals themselves are thought to represent
ancestor figures, their elite status indicated by the presence of the
royal glyph known as the Jaws of the Sky. Glyphs depicting 5-
Turquoise and 1-Lightning appear several times in the tomb and
probably represent especially important ancestral figures.
If elaborate funerary rituals eased the passage of Zapotec royalty
into the afterlife, they were matched by spectacular ceremonies
 Zapotec 47

which saw their coronation in life. The inauguration of a new ruler

was a long-drawn out affair in Mesoamerica, replete with pomp and
splendour, and the Zapotecs were no different than the Maya or
Aztecs in this respect.
One well-documented example of such a ceremony is that of a
Monte Alban ruler known as 12-Jaguar, who commemorated the
event and its associated activities in a series of specially
commissioned carved stone monuments. These monuments show
captives he had taken in battle, high-ranking ambassadors from the
great metropolis of Teotihuacan, and the ruler himself seated on a
jaguar-cushion throne. Around this inaugural scene are glyphs
telling of his divine ancestry and the various ritual activities he had
undertaken to prepare for his assumption of power. While such
propaganda imagery is the norm in Mesoamerica, there is a sense
that 12-Jaguar was overly concerned with establishing and justifying
his new position, giving us the merest glimpse perhaps of the power
politics of the time.
Undoubtedly one of the most intriguing aspects of Zapotec power
politics was the superpower relationship they had with Teotihuacan
to the north. There are several carved stone slabs depicting
Teotihuacan imagery at Monte Alban. The most politically sig¬
nificant appears to be one which shows four high-ranking
Teotihuacan ambassadors who attended 12-Jaguar’s inauguration.
Richly garbed in typical Teotihuacan dress they ceremonially
approach a Zapotec lord. Significantly, they carry small incense
bags, not weapons. They have been identified by their accompany¬
ing glyphs as 9-Monkey, 1-Owl, 13-Knot, and Sacrificed Heart.
It may be that this is a show of Teotihuacan support for 12-Jaguar,
or at least an acknowledgement of his new position. Further
evidence for this little-understood relationship comes from
Teotihuacan itself. Here archaeologists have discovered a Zapotec
enclave on the outskirts of the metropolis, where locally made
Zapotec style pottery has been found.
As Period III progressed, Monte Alban’s population continued to
grow, from perhaps 16,000 during Period Ilia to as much as 25,000
by around AD 600 in Period Illb. The city was now spread over an
area of 22sq. km, and such was the explosion of population that
smaller, quite separate hilltops were also built upon, such as Cerro
Atzompa and El Plumaje. At Monte Alban itself, and most of the
other major towns, defensive walls were built, suggesting serious
 48 Ancient Americas

unrest, though whether the threat was from within or without the
Oaxaca area is unclear. One possibile explanation for increasing
hostilities and defences may have been the spectacular rise of the city of
Jalieza only one day’s walk from Monte Alban, while another may
have been the expansion of the Mixtec peoples to the northwest.

THE ZAPOTEC HERITAGE

By AD 900, in the middle of the period designated Monte Alban IV

(AD 750-1000), the Zapotec state had collapsed and the city, while
not deserted, was no longer the great urban phenomenon it had
once been. The provinces once held by Monte Alban’s power
separated off and became independent political entities centred on
towns such as Lambityeco, Mitla, Zaachila and Cuilapan. The
monopoly on monumental glyphic texts which Monte Alban had
enjoyed at its apogee was now broken, and once junior centres like
Zaachila invented their own smaller version - the so-called
genealogical registers - that emphasised their rulers’ preoccupation
with establishing their legitimacy.
In the period that followed (Monte Alban V, AD 1000-1521), it
seems the whole Oaxaca Valley area underwent a process of
balkanisation. Some archaeologists refer to this period as the City
State Stage. It appears that the Mixtec peoples from the rugged
mountainous region to the north had become the area’s dominant
cultural force, conquering some towns, expelling local Zapotec lords
and establishing a political presence at Cuilapan. The Mixtecs, living
in their major towns of Yanhuitlan, Tilantongo and Coixtlahuaca,
were also concerned to record their genealogies, wars and marriage
alliances, but unlike the Zapotecs they preferred painting them on
deer-hide books known as codices rather than carving them in stone.
Against all odds, some of these codices have survived in European
museums, such as the Codex Bodley, the Codex Zouche-Nuttall and
the Codex Vindobonensis.
Several of these codices record the military exploits of the great
Mixtec warrior-lord known as 8-Deer ‘Tiger Claw’, who had
conquered perhaps a hundred communities during the eleventh
century AD and who is depicted in the Codex Bodley sitting on a
great jaguar-skin throne. In the Codex Zouche-Nuttall he is shown
having his nose pierced to receive a nose ornament as a sign of elite
status. Born in the Mixtec town of Tilantongo, this ruler temporarily
 Zapotec 49

welded together a large area from the Mixtec homeland to the

Pacific coast before being captured and sacrificed by his enemies.
The Mixtecs clearly held Monte Alban as a special place, perhaps
a revered centre for ancestor worship. Mixtec-style tombs are found
in the city, the most famous of which is known as Tomb 7. The
original tomb was Classic Zapotec in design, but it had been
reopened and reused during Mixtec times and yielded an astonishing
quantity of luxury items including a skull with turquoise-mosaic
inlays, silver and gold objects, quartz crystal gems, wafer-thin
obsidian ear plugs, and necklaces of jade, pearl, amber, coral and jet,
as well as beautiful and typically Mixtec polychrome pottery.
Delicately carved jaguar bones depict mythic images of how Mixtec
nobles were born from trees, a theme graphically portrayed also in
the Codex Vindobonensis.
During the late fifteenth century, the Mixtec allied themselves
with their Zapotec neighbours in order to fight off the encroaching
Aztecs who sought a strategic route south to the Pacific coast from
their home in the valley of Mexico. Despite several notable victories
and stand-offs, such as that at the hilltop fortress of Guiengola in
1497, the Aztecs kept coming, deals were negotiated, and the
Mixtec and Zapotec region eventually became the richest tribute
area of the whole Aztec empire. Local rulers were allowed to keep
their thrones by the Aztecs, but there was now no doubt as to who
was in charge.
After Cortes finally defeated the Aztecs in 1521, the Spanish entered
the Oaxaca Valley along with Aztec interpreters. At this time it was
the royal dynasty of Zaachila which produced the most powerful
Zapotec kings. The Aztecs told their new Spanish masters that the
area had two main cultural groups whom they called the Zapotecatl
and Mixtecatl, although in the mutually unintelligible languages of the
natives themselves they were the ‘People of the Clouds’ and the
‘People of the Rain’ respectively. The Aztec names stuck, however, and
changed easily into the modern ones we now use.
During these momentous early decades of the sixteenth century,
local reaction to the Spanish presence was volatile. Some Zapotec
peoples befriended the Spanish, hoping to benefit, while others
isolated themselves for decades. It was not until the 1530s, and in
some areas the 1560s, that Spanish rule was finally consolidated.
The Spanish made detailed written records of their dealings with
the indigenous Zapotec lords of the time that have added
 50 Ancient Americas

immeasurably to our knowledge of Oaxacan culture, some aspects

of which, as we have seen, can be extended by analogy into the pre-
Columbian past. This ethnohistoric record comprises Spanish
accounts of native religious practices, interviews with native leaders,
hybrid Zapotec/Spanish maps and lienzos (i.e., maps painted on
linen) of the region, and dictionaries of the local languages, such as
the Dominican Friar Juan de Cordoba’s study of the Zapotec
language published in the sixteenth century. All these sources
embody insights into indigenous Oaxacan philosophies - ideas of
the world and of life and death that probably emerged from the
earliest times at San Jose Mogote over two millennia earlier.
As with other Mesoamerican cultures that were subjugated by the
Spanish, the new religion of Christianity was interpreted in the
Oaxaca region in terms of older pre-Columbian beliefs. The
Christian San Pedro was identified with the Zapotec deity Cocijo,
and the natives, although claiming to be Christians, often either
continued worshipping the old gods in secret, or quickly reverted
back to them even under the eyes of the Spanish priests in the
numerous churches that were constructed.
The Zapotec masons who, under Spanish pressure and super¬
vision, built the seventeenth-century church at Teotitlan del Valle,
incorporated fragments of ancient Zapotec art into the church walls
— a practice that reportedly continues to the present. This was a sign
of continuity, and of their age-old identity and beliefs. In different
places, and in many ways, Zapotec culture has adapted and remains
vibrantly alive despite five hundred years of European influence and
control.
 Teotihuacan

H[ teotihuacan, whose Aztec name means ‘place of the gods’, was

1 Mesoamerica’s greatest metropolis. A pre-industrial city with a
population of perhaps as many as two hundred thousand spread
over some 20sq. km, Teotihuacan was dominated by 600 pyramids,
of which two - the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon - were
among Mesoamerica’s largest single constructions. Ruled by a
secretive and corporate elite, with its control based on a heady mix
of ideological and religious prestige, economic and military power,
and sheer size, Teotihuacan exercised a still little understood
religious and political influence across Mesoamerica during the
Classic Period, between AD 250 and 750. This chapter describes and
assesses the city’s unique contribution to Mesoamerican civilisation.

THE EARLY CITY

Between 500 and 150 BC, the valley of Mexico was dominated by
the great centre of Cuicuilco, whose ceremonial centre was an
impressive circular pyramid some 27m high and with eleven other
monumental buildings nearby. With a population of some twenty
thousand spread over an area of perhaps 400ha, Cuicuilco was by
far the largest settlement at a time when Teotihuacan was just a
medium-sized agricultural community.
Nevertheless, by c. 100 BC, Teotihuacan had grown to rival
Cuicuilco in size, and when the latter was seriously damaged by an
explosion of the volcano Xitle around 50 BC, the former’s growth
accelerated again to encompass perhaps 90 per cent of the whole of
the valley of Mexico’s inhabitants. The tectonic forces unleashed by
nature in the south played a vital role in the north with the early
expansion of Teotihuacan - a fact probably interpreted symbolically
by the early population, as similar events were to be with other, later
Mesoamerican civilisations.
 52 Ancient Americas

This earliest era of Teotihuacan, between 150 BC and AD 150,

encompasses two phases, the Patlachique and Tzacualli periods. It
was at the beginning of this era that a settlement of the local
Cuanalan culture had moved from its location at the modern town of
San Juan Teotihuacan to a position just 1km away from where the
Pyramid of the Moon would be built. This so-called ‘Old City’ saw
the explosion of population referred to above. The presence of fresh
water sources had clearly been a major factor in the location of the
Cuanalan settlement, and the modest eastward movement would not
have prejudiced access to these supplies. However, other more
spiritual and ideological imperatives may have prompted the move.
Symbolic thinking and religious ideas probably played an equally
vital role in the relocation and subsequent architectural development
of Teotihuacan. Such ideas are often seamlessly woven into physical
realities in ways not always immediately obvious. First was the sheer
physical presence of the mountain in whose shadow the new
settlement was built. In pre-Columbian times it was known as
Tenan, i.e. Mother of Stone or Mother of Waters, though today
more prosaically it is called in Spanish Cerro Gordo (Fat Mountain).
Mountains were sacred places in Mesoamerica and often regarded
as the source of water and fertility. Equally part of this metaphysical
way of looking at the world was the incorporation of the geological
nature of Teotihuacan’s landscape into its subsequent layout.
The dried lava that formed the land was, by virtue of its cooling
process, characterised by natural spaces or caves beneath the
surface. One of these caves is located beneath where the Pyramid of
the Sun now stands - one of the largest structures ever built in the
Americas. It was in 1971 that this ‘cave’ was discovered at the
bottom of a 7m stairway leading down from the surface. Originally
thought to have been a natural formation altered by human action,
recent investigations suggest it may have been completely artificial.
Whatever the truth, it takes the form of a tunnel which snakes its
way about 100m to a petal-shaped central chamber which lies
almost at the central point of the pyramid above. The remains of
stone drains and the lack of a natural spring indicate that water was
brought in as part of rituals based on flowing water — a ceremonial
practice heavily emphasised in Mesoamerican conceptions of caves
as sacred places and sources of water and fertility.
Mud was still in place on the cave walls and there was evidence
that artificial walls had once been built across the tunnel making a
 Teotihuacdn 53

series of chambers. Fragments of pottery and fish bones combined

with this architectural arrangement suggest this was a sacred ritual
place - perhaps the axis mundi of Teotihuacan. At the time this
‘cave’ was being carved out of the subsoil (or having its natural
shape extended and altered), it also had a small shrine built at
ground level over the central chamber, though this appears soon to
have been covered by the Pyramid of the Sun.
This huge structure, larger in prehistory than today thanks to
faulty reconstruction work, was probably originally girded with a
hallmark of Teotihuacan architecture known as talud-tablero. The
tablero is a rectangular segment with recessed inset and which rests
on the talud, an outward-sloping base. This feature appears
throughout the city and in other parts of Mesoamerica where it was
either willingly adopted, or perhaps forcibly imposed through
Teotihuacan military presence. It is thought that originally the
pyramid was faced with a blinding white layer of lime plaster - a
truly sacred place dedicated by the sacrifice of children whose
remains have been found at its four corners.
Although dating is often problematic with monumental archi¬
tecture, it is thought that the Pyramid of the Sun was built during
the Tzacualli phase of this early period of the city. In the plaza in
front of it was originally a platform decorated with carved stone
representations of human skulls, some of which have been found
during archaeological excavations, as have sculptures of jaguars or
pumas. The Pyramid of the Sun itself may yet conceal a major tomb,
though whether it was dedicated to the deity referred to as
Teotihuacan’s Great Goddess (see below) is still debated.
Those who conceived the new city clearly wanted to materialise their
cosmological ideas and beliefs in architectural form, and to this end they
surveyed then built the great ceremonial avenue of Teotihuacan known
today by the much later Aztec name The Street of the Dead’. This
became the central axis of the city, flanked along its 1.5km length by
many temples and palaces in what must be one of Mesoamerica’s single
most impressive sights, at the time as well as today. The position of
Tenan was crucial, as The Street of the Dead was aligned to its summit
where a shrine was built, despite the fact that this meant it was oriented
at an unusual angle, some 15.5 degrees east of north. This apparent
anomaly was in all probability the result of precise mathematical
calculation, perhaps tied to alignments between architecture, the Tenan
mountain and the movements of celestial bodies.
54 Ancient Americas

At the northern end of The Street of the Dead, also in the shadow
of Tenan, was the Pyramid of the Moon, its great ceremonial plaza
surrounded by a suite of smaller temples. Recent excavations have
revealed several extraordinary tombs and a building sequence of
seven stages for the pyramid’s construction. In 1998, a bound and
evidently sacrificed male was found in a burial chamber (designated
Burial 2) along with pyrite mirrors, greenstone figurines, obsidian
blades, nine eagles, one wolf, three rattlesnakes and two felines
(probably pumas). The presence of excrement and soil marks indi¬
cating decayed wooden bars suggests that the wolf and the felines
were buried alive.
By the end of this period, c. AD 150, the city had grown to spread
over 20sq. km, and its inhabitants may have numbered as many as
eighty thousand people - a population explosion caused by inward
migration from many parts of the valley of Mexico.

THE CLASSIC CITY

Teotihuacan’s succeeding period, between AD 150 and 300, spans

the phases known as Miccaotli and Early Tlamimilolpa. It was now
that the city was at its largest, sprawling across some 22.5sq. km of
the valley floor. It was also now that the great rectangular enclosure
known as the Ciudadela was built about 1 km south of the Pyramid
of the Moon set back from The Street of the Dead. At its centre is
the so-called Temple of Quetzalcoatl, at the time the third largest of
the city’s temple-pyramids.
The name Quetzalcoatl has led to many arguments about the
identification and meaning of the carved stone images that adorn the
temple facades. The presence of stunning feathered rattlesnake
images has been interpreted in the light of much later Aztec ideas
and beliefs about their feathered-serpent god called Quetzalcoatl,
although there is no connection between these two civilisations
which are separated in time by at least 600 years.
A second image, appearing in the middle of the feathered-snake
body, depicts a strange creature with two goggles or circles placed
between the eyes and two large but blunt canines and an elaborate
headdress. This figure has been identified as the Teotihuacan version
of the later Aztec rain deity known as Tlaloc. Interpreting this image
has also been problematical - perhaps it is another masked manifest¬
ation of the feathered-serpent creature or maybe a quite different
 Teotihuacan 55

snake-being associated with war. What is striking, however, is the

wavy and flowing image of the feathered-serpent body, the goggles
worn by the second creature, and the various seashells that appear
in the background. All these, in their various ways, are known to be
associated with ideas of running water, fertility and the sea in later
Mesoamerican civilisations.
Set around this ceremonial heart of the Ciudadela’s ambiguous
temple-pyramid are large buildings known as apartment compounds
where the city’s ruling elite may have lived. The distinctive nature of
the Ciudadela complex suggests that perhaps the Temple of
Quetzalcoatl may have served as the cosmic focus of the ancient city.
Such a view may be reinforced by the dramatic discovery of 130
people buried within and nearby the Quetzalcoatl temple and that
seem to have been dedicatory sacrifices made at the time of the
temple’s construction in time-honoured Mesoamerican fashion. From
the ritual regalia with which they were found, it is probable that they
were high-status individuals - perhaps war captives, or even members
of Teotihuacan society. All were bound, though this may be part of
the ritual of humiliation and does not necessarily mean they were
either unwilling victims, or only enemies of the state.
Painstaking excavation revealed three main kinds of sacrificial
victims: teenage women buried with a few obsidian blades, beads
and shell ear-spools; young men (presumably warriors) in their
twenties interred with many more obsidian blades, slate discs
(usually a backing for ritual mirrors made of pyrite mosaic), and
collars made of imitation and sometimes real human jaws and teeth;
and a group who were buried accompanied mainly by greenstone
jewellery and figurines, seashells and long obsidian blades. These
three groups, together with several other individuals buried with
distinctive grave goods, indicate a high level of social stratification
in Teotihuacan society.
Contemporary with the Ciudadela on the other side of The Street
of the Dead is the so-called Great Compound which has been
interpreted as a large marketplace that may have incorporated a mix
of craft activities, storage and possibly also aspects of the city’s
bureaucratic functions.
The ethnic identity of the Teotihuacanos is unknown, as is their
language, though there is evidence in some of the city’s art of contact
with the Totonac peoples from the eastern Gulf Coast region. It may
be that the main language of Teotihuacan was Totonac, though
56 Ancient Americas

some experts champion an early form of Nahuatl, the language of

the later Aztecs. If, as some believe, Teotihuacan’s society was multi¬
ethnic, then it would be reasonable to expect a multilingual pop¬
ulation, with Totonac perhaps as a lingua franca.
The nature of Teotihuacan influence beyond the central valley of
Mexico, whose small-scale societies it so dramatically rearranged
during its height, is ambiguous. So far, it seems unlikely that there
was ever a true empire based on military control and bureaucratic
integration. For the Maya region, it may be more likely that local
leaders and dynasties allied themselves with Teotihuacan for
propaganda purposes rather than being under direct control of the
great city’s rulers.

Life in the city

The latter part of Teotihuacan’s golden age was between AD 300 and
750, during the Late Tlamimilolpa, Xolalpan and Metepec phases. It
was at this time that the city’s population may have grown to a
maximum of two hundred thousand. No new large-scale archi¬
tectural projects were undertaken and it seems as if this era was
characterised by renovation and enlargement, processes that suggest
a large degree of social stability.
This stability manifested itself symbolically in art and icon¬
ography in terms quite different from other contemporary Meso-
american societies, notably the Zapotec and Classic Maya, where
self-aggrandisement in large propagandist monuments and glyphic
inscriptions was the norm. At Teotihuacan there is none of this but
rather a sense of an apparently anonymous collective who took
great pains not to display themselves as individuals. Status was dis¬
played, but by means of impersonal, stylised and elaborate ritual
costumes rather than with individually identifiable regalia. There is
little doubt that this was a deliberate policy on the part of
Teotihuacan’s rulers, though its internal significance and the cultural
and psychological effects it had on contemporary non-Teotihuacan
peoples can only be guessed at.
This period saw the appearance of a distinctive, if standardised
kind of dwelling known as the apartment compound. Perhaps
prompted by overcrowding in the rapidly expanding city, the
previous, presumably randomly spaced dwellings were pulled down
to make room for a more structured and ordered kind of life. Built
 Teotihuacan 57

of stone and adobe brick, apartment compounds had high windowless

walls surrounding an open central patio with plastered floors and an
obviously preplanned underground drainage system. Built in a variety
of sizes across the city, some two thousand of these compounds were
eventually built and almost all Teotihuacan’s inhabitants ended up
living in them, either by choice, or perhaps - given the scale of the
presumably state-sponsored investment - by coercion.
It is thought that those who lived in these compounds were kin
groups, though a wider kind of inclusion perhaps based on occupa¬
tion may also have been operating. The larger units could have
housed as many as a hundred individuals, an intermediate size
perhaps fifty people, and the smaller ones perhaps only several
extended families comprising about twenty individuals. Judging by
the effort expended in this vast process of urban renewal it seems
reasonable to suggest that whatever else they were meant to achieve,
the new apartment compounds could have served to organise
Teotihuacan society into basic administrative units, and thereby
facilitate social and economic control.
This control did not manifest itself in location, however, as, apart
from the immediate vicinity of The Street of the Dead, high-class
and low-class compounds could occur next to each other. Yet, while
there appears to have been no definitive high-class or slum areas, the
quality of apartment compounds varied greatly. Some were well
built and decorated with colourful murals, while others were poorly
constructed and left undecorated - here life must have been
unpleasant and short, as in the Tlajinga compound. Clusters of
compounds could form neighbourhoods or barrios, and some of
these seem to have specialised in various economic activities such as
the making of obsidian tools, pottery production and the fashioning
of mineral jewellery.
At the city’s height there were some four hundred obsidian
workshops in operation, some serving local barrio needs, others
located near the Pyramid of the Moon and the Ciudadela and
possibly making obsidian items for export. Excavation has provided
some insights into everyday life in some of these compounds. While
areas for cooking, sleeping, storage and even burial are found as
basic divisions of a compound, some have yielded more meaningful
clues as to their inhabitants’ lives.
At the compound at Oztoyahualco it would seem that the
inhabitants were specialist stucco workers, at the Xolalpan
58 Ancient Americas

compound that they were mural and pottery painters, and at the
compound of Tlamimilolpa that they engaged in the production of
textiles. To the west of The Street of the Dead a cluster of
compounds were excavated which were decorated with stunning
polychrome murals, suggesting habitation by a relatively well-to-do
segment of the city’s population. These now famous compounds
include Tetitla, Atetelco and Zacuala Palace.
Careful study of these compounds reveals the processes and
nature of mural painting at Teotihuacan. First a thin layer of clay
was applied to the wall and this was then followed by a layer of lime
mixed with quartz sand. A coating of red was then applied and on
to this the figures were outlined in black, and detail filled in with
green and blue. The finished piece was then burnished with a
rubbing stone to give a final lustre. The appearance of the city’s
murals is decidely two-dimensional, with no attempt to show the
depth of the images being painted. The art historian Arthur Miller
considers this a deliberate practice intended to show the entirety of
an image unobscured by such artistic devices as overlapping figures
or perspective. An imperative for clarity of expression seems to have
outweighed any desire to convey the illusion of space in these
artworks.
Many murals depict regularised scenes of gods and/or priests
dressed in elaborate plumed regalia, such as the image of the so-
called Maguey Priest located in a room east of the Pyramid of the
Moon. This shows a flat-profile human figure apparently walking,
wearing a monstrous feline-like helmet from which rich plumes of
quetzal feathers spring. An elaborate speech-scroll seems to emerge
from his mouth, and his right hand is making the typical ‘casting
gesture’ and from it a stream of water or blood falls to the ground.
Six thorny maguey plant motifs give the mural its modern name.
Similar priestly figures appear in other murals, notably the
spectacular set of three elaborately garbed individuals seen advanc¬
ing in profile within a framework of interlaced feathered-rattle¬
snakes at the Tepantitla compound behind the Pyramid of the Sun.
Other animals appear frequently in Teotihuacan mural art, such as
various birds and especially the owl. However, it is the feline which
takes pride of place, either as a tawny-coloured puma or as the so-
called netted-jaguar - a representation in which the jaguar’s body is
covered with net-like designs, as on Mural 2 in the Palace of the
Jaguars near the Pyramid of the Moon.
 Teotihuacan 59

It seems likely that with the felines at least, we see at Teotihuacan

an age-old metaphorical identification of these fierce predators with
warriors - a symbolic association well documented for later Aztec
times. On Mural 1 in the building known as the Zacuala Palace on the
western side of The Street of the Dead there is a brilliantly coloured
‘jaguar warrior’ shown in typically Teotihuacan profile pose, wearing
a fierce jaguar helmet and carrying a feather-fringed shield.
Virtually all of the city’s mural art is religious in nature, but what
gods did they worship? After AD 250, some experts believe the most
visible deity was that identified as the Great Goddess, most vividly
portrayed in a stunning polychrome mural in the Tepantitla com¬
pound, dated to the Metepec phase, between AD 600 and 750.
Wearing an elaborate quetzal-plumed headdress, she emerges from
the watery depths, a tree behind her heavy with dripping moisture
and flowers. A womb-like space in her abdomen appears full of
seeds, and from her outstretched hands water flows. On either side
she is flanked by priests making offerings in the typical ‘hand
scattering’ gesture. Perhaps the Great Goddess was an abstraction,
an embodiment and personification of the natural world, and whose
disembodied eyes so frequently depicted in her murals represent her
all-seeing, ever-present nature.
Nevertheless, however closely associated Mesoamerican deities
were with fertility and abundance, the relationship was usually
framed by ritual events that included blood sacrifice. The Great
Goddess was probably no different, as indicated perhaps by the
structure called the Venus Enclosure which can be seen on various
murals in different compounds. This enclosure has been interpreted
as the site for bloody rituals of heart sacrifice carried out by the
elaborately costumed priests in honour of the Great Goddess.
While such elaborately costumed and stylised kinds of image are
typical of the iconography of Teotihuacan’s murals, among the
masterpieces at the compound of Tepantitla there is one which is
radically different. It depicts a scene in which many miniature
human figures are apparently dancing and singing, while a river
flows along the bottom after having emerged from a hill. Bordering
the river are designs which have been interpreted as representing
fields under cultivation. Many of the figures have speech glyphs
coming from their mouths, and there are flowers, butterflies and fish
interspersed throughout. Perhaps most interesting is the fact that a
rubber ball-game is also shown being played, although no ballcourt
60 Ancient Americas

- so typical among other contemporary Mesoamerican civilisations

- has ever been found at the city. The whole scene has a paradisiacal
feel about it, hence its modern name - the Tlalocan Mural -
referring to the shimmering and fertile realm of the later Aztec rain
god Tlaloc.
While all compounds differed from each other, each tailored to
the needs and status of the group who occupied it, it is clear that
there was also a strong ritual dimension to their construction.
Whether in the densely packed central area or the suburbs,
compound walls were built following the distinctive orientation of
the city itself, signalling perhaps a replication in miniature of the
city’s grander cosmological orientation.
Everyday life was the backdrop to these events. It may have been
the case that many of those who lived in the apartment compounds
spent at least some of their time growing maize (corn), beans,
squash, tomatoes and chillis, with the balance of their lives engaged
in specialist activities. Some food plants, such as amaranth, maize
and various beans, have been found by archaeologists, while others
such as tamales (made from maize kernels) and squash are depicted
on murals. Supplementing these domesticated plants were rabbits,
deer, ducks and dogs, all of whose remains have been discovered.
Whatever trade and exchange system the Classic Teotihuacanos
employed, it brought in exotic species like seashells, cacao beans,
avocado and cotton, the last used to make clothing.
At the city developed, there were also changes in the kinds of
material culture which were used, especially in pottery. Small and
rather basic incense burners called candeleros appear, as does a far
more elaborate composite variety known as the ‘theatre type’. These
are a hallmark of the later period and incorporate removable mould-
made elements of typical Teotihuacan motifs such as miniature
feathered headdresses and plumes, and the diagnostic and stylised
Teotihuacan human face with nose ornament and ear-flares. An incense
burner workshop was discovered just to the north of the Ciudadela
and yielded defective items, tools and what may have been a kiln.

Foreign relations
\

During this latter part of the city’s life, its relationships with greater
Mesoamerica appears significant but tantalisingly ambiguous. They
were perhaps associated in some way with calendrical reforms
 Teotihuacan 61

instituted by Teotihuacan and which incorporated sacred warfare

and human sacrifice. At the Classic Maya city of Tikal in present-
day lowland Guatemala, it seems that an earlier and purely Maya
ruling dynasty had been ousted in January AD 378 by an armed
incursion of Teotihuacanos under the leadership of a lord called
Siyaj K’ak (‘Fire Born’), who proceeds to destroy the old order’s
monuments and impose his political will on large swathes of the
region. One consequence of this was the installation of new rulers in
many centres, either Teotihuacanos or local Mayas controlled by
Teotihuacan. One indisputable sign of central Mexican influence at
this time is the appearance of the typically Teotihuacan architectural
feature of talud-tablero in buildings and residential areas.
At Tikal in AD 379, Siyaj K’ak appears to have installed a ruler of
his choice, traditionally known as Curl Nose but now called Yax
Nuun Ayiin. On his inaugural stela, he is shown wearing a
Teotihuacan headdress and on a later commemorative monument
erected by his son ‘Stormy Sky’ he was portrayed twice, adorned in
a complete Teotihuacan costume with a feather-fringed shield
decorated with goggle-eyed god motif. His tomb has yielded a
beautiful ceramic vessel whose decoration is a hybrid of Classic
Maya style and Teotihuacan imagery.
The highland Maya city of Kaminaljuyu may have been controlled
directly by Teotihuacan for several generations, perhaps as a way of
accessing such valuable exotic items as quetzal feathers, greenstones
and cacao. Talud-tablero architecture is again present, as are burials
which have preserved Teotihuacan-style mirrors and shell
headdresses. There is also Teotihuacan imagery present at the great
Maya city of Copan associated with its king Yax Kuk Mo, who
became ruler in AD 426 and may well have been an outsider from
central Mexico.
There is little doubt that the sources of certain kinds of obsidian
were controlled by Teotihuacan, and that there was a thriving
industry in making obsidian blades and perhaps exporting them to
other parts of Mesoamerica. Green obsidian is an example of this
and appears at Tikal in due course. Nevertheless, there is little
convincing evidence for a Teotihuacan trade empire. As with many
prehistoric (and modern) civilisations, ideology, prestige and
religious ideas travel with and within objects. In areas beyond the
immediate valley of Mexico, Teotihuacan’s influence must have been
a mix of all these elements.
62 Ancient Americas

More or less contemporary with developments in the Maya region

is the appearance of at least two special building complexes or
barrios at Teotihuacan itself and that provide further insights into
the city’s foreign relations.
One barrio shows evidence of having been inhabited by Zapotec
people from Monte Alban, the other, the so-called Merchants’
Enclave, has yielded pottery from the Gulf Coast. While it is tempt¬
ing to interpret these in a modern light, perhaps as embassies of
contemporary foreign powers, the evidence indicates otherwise. The
Oaxaca barrio, located on Teotihuacan’s western edge, had Zapotec-
style burials but was otherwise a group of typical Teotihuacan
apartment compounds. Also, its Zapotec-style pottery was made
from local clays, and one barrio temple at least was built in the
talud-tablero style. There seems little to suggest that these were
high-ranking foreigners, though their exact status is a mystery.
The Merchants’ barrio on the eastern side of the city is equally
intriguing. Instead of apartment compounds it is a grouping of
typically Gulf Coast round buildings, yet despite this, they appear to
be arranged in north-south rows which follow the Teotihuacan
orientation. Excavation has revealed pottery from the Gulf Coast
region, some from the Maya area, and evidence for the processing of
cinnabar used in mortuary rituals and pottery decoration.

END OF AN ERA

Somewhere between AD 650 and 750, there is evidence for major, if

selective, burning and destruction of the city’s main temples,
compounds and sculptures. While it is impossible to know whether
these events were perpetrated by outsiders or Teotihuacan’s own
population, it is probably true that only some breakdown in the
political system would have allowed such previously sacreligious
acts to have been committed. A valuable insight into who the
perpetrators might have been is gained by looking at the pattern of
destruction.
This was not a wholesale sacking of a city as might be expected if
it had been carried out by an invading army. In fact, it has all the
hallmarks of an inside job. Temple after temple of The Street of the
Dead was not only burnt but smashed into rubble and the Ciudadela
treated similarly. Given the nature of Mesoamerican temples, which
saw them as the physical embodiment of sacred power, there is a
 Teotihuacan 63

sense that they had become so identified with the presumably

increasingly malfunctioning city administration that only their total
destruction would achieve change. What was being destroyed was
not the city as a physical place, but the emblems and structures of its
divine ruling dynasty, however corporate they may have been.
Across the city, civic and religious buildings went up in smoke. This
was the end of a Mesoamerican era.
In the wake of this seismic upheaval, it may be that the city was
totally or mainly abandoned, perhaps for a generation or two.
However, people soon returned, and during the so-called Xometla
phase, as many as forty thousand people may have inhabited parts
of the old city. It is possible that in the fall and rise of Teotihuacan
there was also a population transfusion inasmuch as the partly
reoccupied city was initially repopulated by between 10,000 and
20,000 people belonging to a different (perhaps Nahuatl-speaking)
ethnic group. This view is supported by the changing nature of
material culture which saw typically Classic-period Teotihuacan
features such as architecture and pottery disappear along with
figurines and even cooking utensils. The new repertoire of everyday
objects was a feature of the following Mazapan phase during which
the undamaged apartment compounds were never re-used, and
smaller new kinds of house were built.
As the political and economic force of Classic-period Teotihuacan
failed, other regional cities arose to take its place. To the south,
centres like Xochicalco and Cacaxtla rose to prominence, the latter
featuring spectacular polychrome murals in typical Maya style and
depicting bloody human sacrifice and the Maya God L dressed as a
merchant. Although currently difficult to date or accurately
interpret, Cacaxtla seems to be an example of a post-Teotihuacan
balkanised political landscape in which trade and warfare are both
equally prominent. The city of Cholula is also problematical in
terms of its exact role in the post-Teotihuacan world, though may
well span the period of the great city’s demise.
The main beneficiary of Teotihuacan’s collapse is the postclassic
city of Tula, dealt with in more detail in Chapter Six. While different
in size, layout and material culture such as pottery types to
Teotihuacan, Tula nevertheless does preserve some similar features
in its artistic portrayals of felines and coyotes. It is still a moot point
to what extent the rise of Tula was due to the fall of Teotihuacan,
either built directly by refugees (or their descendants) who left the
64 Ancient Americas

former city, or perhaps by those who had moved into the Tula area
once the political control exercised by Teotihuacan on local peoples
had faded.
The final act for Teotihuacan in pre-Columbian times was its role
as a cosmic stage for the creation of the Aztec universe. While the
Aztecs had no knowledge of what Teotihuacan was, or who had
built it and when, they nevertheless had to account for its physical
presence on the landscape - an immense backdrop to scenes of
cosmogonic splendour.
Aztec views of Teotihuacan have shaped our appreciation of the
site today. Their erroneous belief that the two largest pyramids were
dedicated to the sun and moon have led to the popular names we
now use for these impressive structures. Similarly, The Street of the
Dead is so-called because the Aztecs considered this ceremonial
avenue to be a huge necropolis in which the great lords of
Teotihuacan were buried.
These Aztec identifications served to integrate the ruins of
Teotihuacan into the Aztec worldview or cosmovision as a sacred
place, and the ritual focus of cult and pilgrimage in the years leading
up to the arrival of the Spanish in 1519. Such was the power of
Teotihuacan in the Aztec imagination that they dug up its objects
and placed them in the offerings of their own Great Temple in their
island capital of Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City). Aztec artisans
were clearly inspired by Teotihuacan forms in mural painting,
carved-stone sculpture, and even aspects of the distinctive talud-
tablero architectural style.
This was not simply copying or imitating in the modern sense, but
rather recycling the sacredness of objects emanating from this
mythical city. Even fragments of Teotihuacan objects were infused
with magical force and thus ritually buried in the Aztec capital.
Hundred of years after Teotihuacan’s final demise, and in typical
Mesoamerican fashion, the Aztecs were symbolically acquiring their
own imagined past and recycling it for their greater imperial and
cosmic glory.
 FIVE

Maya

v ]f '''he Classic Maya were arguably Mesoamerica’s most sophisti-

1 cated civilisation. Between AD 250 and 900, they created a
society with complex mathematics, hieroglyphics and dozens of city-
states whose imposing pyramid-temples rose majestically out of the
tropical rainforests. Living under god-like dynastic rulers, they
possessed peerless architectural skills, and a rich and elaborate
artistic and ceremonial life which focused on bloody rituals of
sacrifice. This chapter charts the high points of Maya culture and
explains how their civilisation was based on a sophisticated
manipulation of landscape and natural resources, and cast their
politics in a cosmological setting.

ORIGIN MYTHS

Maya myths of origin, like most Mesoamerican accounts of cos¬

mogony, were concerned mainly with sacrifice, fertility and the
establishment of a sacred charter for a hierarchical social system
dominated by the ruling elite. Yet, our knowledge of these epochal
events comes less from direct investigations of the Classic Maya, and
more from written evidence of much later Maya cultures. Usually, it
is filtered through the Spanish colonial period during which hybrid -
part Maya, part Spanish - documents were produced. A careful
reading of these accounts has allowed some of the events described
to be identified in earlier Maya civilisation, especially in scenes
depicted in Classic Maya art on beautifully painted pottery.
Without doubt, the single most important and influential of these
hybrid written sources for Maya origins is the Popol Vuh, or council
book, a unique masterpiece of Maya literature in its own right. It was
discovered during the eighteenth century among the Quiche Maya of
highland Guatemala and translated into Spanish. It is considered by
experts to be a colonial-period copy of a now lost hieroglyphic
 66 Ancient Americas

original. Its three main themes are the world’s creation, the epic tale
of the Hero Twins, and the origins of the Quiche dynasties.
The Popol Vuh tells of previous unsuccessful creations - in this
case three, involving animals, people of mud, and people of wood -
all of which ended in destruction. It then relates the adventures of
the Hero Twins called Hunaphu and Xbalanque. These are trickster
figures who defeat the underworld Lords of Xibalba in a cosmic
ball-game and rise to become the sun and moon. This in turn leads
to the fourth and final creation, where the gods fashion humans
from maize - these are the four founders of the Quiche lineages.
To begin at the beginning, the Quiche Maya account of the
world’s first dawn describes the appearance of the sun, moon and
stars in terms of mythology and astronomy. In their view, the first-
made people were the founders of the four Quiche lineages. They
were overjoyed when they observed the planet Venus rise before the
sun in the eastern sky. They unwrapped three kinds of precious
copal incense which they had brought, and burned it towards the
east. As the smoke curled into the sky they wept with joy and
anticipation at the imminent dawn. As the sun climbed, all the
animals of the world gathered on the mountain peaks and fixed
their stare to the east.
All were happy as the sun rose into the sky. The first to cry out
was the parrot, then the eagle, the vulture, the jaguar and the puma.
As the sun’s heat grew, it dried the surface of the earth and turned
the original animals to stone. It is said that if the first jaguar, puma
and rattlesnake had not been baked hard by the sun, humans would
have no relief from these dangerous beasts today. The sun left only
his cosmic reflection after the first dawn, and so today’s visible sun
is but this shiny disc - a remembrance of that glorious first dawn.
Although much of the Popol Vuh is concerned with telling the
details of various attempts at world creation, it also recounts the
adventures of two sets of twins. It is these twins, and their cosmic
adventures that seem to be represented on so many Classic Maya
artworks. The story begins when twins named Hun Hunahpu (‘1-
Hunter ) and Vucub Hunahpu (‘7-Hunter’), are summoned to the
underworld of Xibalba — ‘the place of fear’ — by its gruesome rulers
with such suitably blood-chilling names as ‘1-Death’, ‘Pus Master’,
‘Bone Sceptre’ and ‘Bloody Claws’. On arrival, the brothers fail one
tortuous test after another until finally they are defeated in a ball-
game by the underworld gods, and are decapitated. Their remains
 Maya 67

are buried in the ballcourt, with the exception of Hun Hunahpu’s

head, which is suspended from a calabash tree.
A young underworld goddess named Xquic visits the tree and its
strange fruit, whereupon the head spits into her hand and she
becomes pregnant with the Hero Twins, Hunahpu (‘Hunter’) and
Xbalanque (‘Jaguar Deer’). Her father is outraged and attempts to
sacrifice her, whereupon she escapes to the upper world of the
earth’s surface and lives with Hun Hunahpu’s mother until she
finally gives birth. Throughout childhood, the twins exhibit great
wit and cleverness, finally becoming skilful ballplayers, blowgunners
and tricksters. They confront and defeat not only the terrible
anthropomorphic macaw Vucub Caquix, whose jewelled teeth shone
so brightly that he considered himself the sun, but also two half-
brothers whom they turn into monkeys.
Their constant ball-playing, however, disturbs the lords of the
underworld and, as their fathers before them, Hunahpu and
Xbalanque are commanded to journey to Xibalba. Their mother and
grandmother are worried that the same fate will befall them as did
their father and uncle. In a typically Mesoamerican gesture, full of
symbolic resonances, the twins plant maize seeds in the earthen floor
of their house, telling their worried relatives that if they survive the
maize will flourish, if they perish it will die.
The twins arrive in Xibalba where every night they play the ball-
game with the lords of the underworld, and after which the gods try
unsuccessfully to sacrifice the two boys but are constantly outwitted.
Each night, the Hero Twins are set a new task which they complete
against all odds. When told to keep their cigars alight all night they
attach fireflies to the ends; in the Jaguar House they avoid being
eaten when they offer the jaguars the flesh of other animals; and in
the Cold House they keep themselves warm by shutting out the
wind and rain. However, one night, in the Bat House, Hunahpu has
his head sliced off by a vampire bat, and although Xbalanque
replaces it with a realistically painted pumpkin, the gods use the
decapitated head as a substitute for the rubber ball in the next ball-
game. Xbalanque concocts a ruse whereby a rabbit impersonates the
ball and bounds away, leading the gods astray long enough for him
to retrieve his brother’s head and restore him to life.
Eventually, the twins permit themselves to be killed by jumping
into a great fire, and reappear in Xibalba disguised as sorcerers.
They hoodwink the. gods with feats of magic, by killing then
 68 Ancient Americas

restoring to life a dog, a human, then Hunahpu himself. The

underworld gods 1-Death and 7-Death are so impressed they
demand to be sacrificed themselves. The Hero Twins oblige but do
not revive the hated deities, and punish the surviving Death Gods by
telling them that from now on they can only devour guilty and
violent humans. The twins return to the ballcourt and partly re¬
assemble their father, promising he will be remembered and con¬
sulted in religious rituals, before they ascend to the sky as the sun
and moon.
Although the Popol Vuh is an early colonial-period document,
most experts consider that it embodies far older Maya beliefs, per¬
haps going back as far as the Early Classic Period. The events
surrounding the Hero Twins’ encounters with the lords of the under¬
world have been interpreted as representing the search for maize at

Bowl from the Maya city of Altar de Sacrificios, showing Maya burial ritual. (© Pauline
Stringfellow, after J. Henderson, The World of the Ancient Maya. Orbis, London, 1981, Fig. 50)
 Maya 69

the beginning of mythic time - maize being the plant from which
humanity is finally created. On Late Classic Maya painted ceramics,
there are beautifully rendered scenes that have been interpreted as
portraying Hun Hunahpu as the Maize God rising out of the earth,
resurrected by his Hero Twin sons after their cosmic defeat of the
underworld lords - a ritual image symbolising the annual appearance
of the maize crop growing up from the earth’s interior.
Pottery and incised bones buried in high-status tombs also depict
scenes which appear to show the journey of the deceased’s soul after
death. The burial of the Tikal king Hasaw Ka’an K’awil included
bones carved with images of the dead ruler being paddled to the
underworld in a canoe, recalling the underworld journeys of the
Hero Twins. Stunningly painted funerary ceramics portray episodes
which seem to come from the Popol Vuh, and include scenes
showing Hun Hunaphu’s severed head coming to life, the impending
decapitation of Hunahpu by the killer-bat monster Camazotz, and
meetings between the Hero Twins and Itzamna - an episode lost, or
at least not transmitted in the later Popol Vuh.

RELIGION AND WORLDVIEW

Mythology was brought into everyday Maya life as part of world¬

view and religion. Perhaps more than any other Mesoamerican
civilisation, the sheer number and sophistication of temple-pyramid
buildings, and the art and glyphic inscriptions which decorated
them, were religious in nature. Maya religion was not imperialistic
as was, in part, that of the later Aztecs or the Inka of South
America. Rather, it served the royal dynasties that controlled the
numerous Maya city-states that flourished during the Classic Period.
The Mesoamerican dual-calendar system which the Maya
developed to its most sophisticated form, and the many gods who
were deemed to control time and the universe, lay at the heart of
Maya religion. The Maya may have acquired the dual-calendar
system from the Zapotec where it makes its earliest appearance. (It
comprised two separate but interlocking calendars which expressed
a uniquely cyclical view of time, integrating the parallel spheres of
everyday and sacred life.)
The solar calendar was the Haab, which had 18 months each of
20 days which gave a total of 360 days, known as a tun. To this
were added 5 unlucky days, the uayeb, to make a total of 365.
70 Ancient Americas

Running in parallel, and intercalated with the solar year, was the
sacred calendar, or Tzolkin, made up of 260 days divided into 20
‘weeks’ of 13 days. Each of these ‘weeks’ was presided over by a
particular deity or deities, and every day also had its own god or
goddess. For the Maya, the intermeshing of the two calendars
produced a ‘Calendar Round’ of 52 years. Thus time and the fate of
individuals and society were conceived as cyclical - a continuum
along which events of myth and reality were fused together.
Associated with the calendar was the mathematical system which
made it work. This is known as the bar-and-dot notation system,
and probably also first appears among the Zapotec of Oaxaca.
Unlike our modern base-10 (decimal) system, the Maya used a base-
20 (vigesimal) system, in which a dot = 1, a bar = 5, and a stylised
shell = 0. The stroke of genius was to make a number’s value
dependent on its position, not as elsewhere by having to invent ever
larger ways of writing numbers, such 100, 1,000 or 1,000,000. In
the Maya positional-notation system, an infinite number of values
could be expressed merely by combining dots, bars and shells in
different positions.
Whereas the modern Western mathematical system increases in
value from left to right by a factor of 10, in the Maya system, values
increase from the bottom to the top by a factor of 20, beginning
with the lowest level with a value of 1, the next level a value of 20,
then 400, 8,000 and so on. In this way, a single dot placed at each of
the first three levels would signify 421, and a single bar placed at
each of the first three levels would represent 2,105.
Despite this sophistication, the Maya shared with all other
Mesoamerican peoples a worldview that saw spiritual force and the
power of ancestors in every feature of the natural world, from trees
to water, clouds to caves, to the sinuous slithering of serpents and the
dappled body of the jaguar as it moved stealthily through the jungle.
This worldview was but one (albeit distinctively Mayan) variation of
pan-Amerindian philosophies of life, death and the natural world.
For the Maya, as for all Mesoamerica’s peoples, geographical
landscapes were sacred places, with natural features interpreted as
culturally significant locations. As at Teotihuacan, caves were
especially sacred, regarded as entrances to the underworld, dangerous
thresholds between the physical and spiritual, and thus prime
locations for rituals concerned with death, the afterlife and fertility.
These ideas persist today among modern Maya communities,
 Maya 71

albeit shorn of the baroque splendour of the Classic Period. The most
famous ancient Maya cave site is Naj Tunich in the Peten region of
Guatemala, and has pottery and burials from late Preclassic to late
Classic times. It has also preserved glyphic inscriptions and scenes
from the eighth century AD that include depictions of the ball-game,
Maya gods and the ever-popular Hero Twins Hunahpu and
Xbalanque.
Equally eloquent of Maya conceptions of the world is their
spiritual view of water and its dazzling reflections, perhaps the place
beneath its shiny surface being seen as a symbolic entrance to the
spirit world. It may be that the common practice of building great
reservoirs in the centre of Maya cities was associated with such
beliefs. While Maya rulers would have emphasised their control of
water for such practical life-giving purposes as drinking and irriga¬
tion, it seems they were also concerned to control its metaphysical
dimensions. Water’s magical qualities were accessed by ritual
bathing and the placing of reservoirs near to temple-pyramids in
order to reflect these grand buildings and the ancestral royal burials
they often contained.
Access to the supernatural was restricted to the Maya elite in
rituals that stressed the multi-sensual experience of the world.
Smoking cigars rolled from powerfully narcotic wild tobacco was
one way of accessing the numinous, and is shown in Classic Maya
art. Another was the ritual ingestion of hallucinogenic plants and
intoxicating drinks. These included balcbe, an alcoholic beverage
made from honey and tree bark, various kinds of hallucinogenic
mushrooms such as the one called xibalbaj okox or ‘underworld
mushroom’, and perhaps also secretions of the poisonous Bufo
marinus toad. The use of enemas to insert powerful narcotic sub¬
stances into the body and thereby induce trance is found across
Mesoamerica and South America. The Classic Maya seem to have
shared this practice, as bone tubes interpreted as the remains of
enema syringes have been discovered in royal tombs.
This visionary aspect of Maya religion was embodied in later
Maya times in the figure of the shaman-priest known as Chilam,
who interpreted the words of the spirits and presented them as
prophecies to his colleagues and rulers. Late Postclassic Maya
examples of these sayings have survived, translated into Spanish,
then English, as The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel, and The
Book of Chilam Balam of Mam, where Chilam Balam means
72 Ancient Americas

‘Jaguar Priest’. For the Classic Maya, however, nothing was as

potent as human blood in binding humans to the supernatural realm
(see below).
Using insights from the Popol Vuh, other fragmentary Maya
codices, recent studies in iconography, and the advances in
deciphering hieroglyphs, our understanding of Maya worldview and
religion has been transformed over the past twenty years. The Maya
evidently conceived the earth as flat, with four sacred directions
each associated with a colour: white for north, yellow for south, red
for east, and black for west. In characteristic Mesoamerican fashion,
the centre was also a sacred direction and was coloured green. In
one tradition, the sky was supported by four supernaturals known
as Bacabs, and in another, different kinds of trees supported the
corners with a great cosmic Ceiba tree holding up the centre.
Moving upwards, there were thirteen levels to the sky, each having
its own deity, while moving downwards, the underworld had nine
levels controlled by nine gods of darkness. Trees in general, and the
Ceiba in particular, were seen as penetrating all three cosmic levels -
with roots in the underworld, trunk in the earthly world, and
topmost branches scraping the sky.
In Maya art, parts of the world, and multi-layered philosophical
ideas about them, were often represented as animals, with the sky
appearing as a double-headed serpent decorated with motifs signi¬
fying the heavenly bodies, and the earth depicted as a huge croc¬
odile floating in water surrounded by water lilies. In the Classic
Maya mind, complex ideas of genealogy, astronomy, rulership and
the natural world were combined to produce monstrous super¬
natural creatures, symbols that spoke to the educated elite of their
royal lineage and otherworldy powers.
The Celestial Monster was one such composite being, with two
heads and a crocodile body. The front head featured a long nose,
prominent fangs and a beard, and bore a glyph of the planet Venus.
The rear head had fleshy eyes and a skeletal lower jaw, and was
decorated with the kin glyph signifying the Sun. This fantastical
being has been interpreted as a zoomorphic representation of Venus
and the sun, with the planet announcing sunrise in its heliacal rising
at dawn, and signalling the descent of the sun as it followed it below
the horizon at sunset.
Equally grotesque in its appearance is the so-called Cauac
Monster, seen by Maya specialists Linda Scheie and Mary Ellen
 Maya 73

Miller as representing the essence of stone, associated with rock-

built structures, boulders and natural rock fissures. It, too, is
zoomorphic, with half-closed eyes and a cleft forehead out of which
maize sometimes emerges. It seems to be connected with lightning,
its chthonic associations reinforced by the Maya belief that flint and
obsidian are created when lightning strikes the earth. Also typically
Mayan are the ‘Water-Lily Monster’, symbol of watery places such
as lakes and swamps, and the ‘Vision Serpent’, a snake-like personi¬
fication of hallucinatory visions, and closely associated with blood
(see below).

The gods

In this grand cosmic scheme, the Maya placed a seemingly endless

number of gods, though as with the later Aztec, it is probable that a
smaller number of core deities had an almost infinite number of
different guises and manifestations. As the Maya scholar Michael
Coe has noted, some deities had four versions according to colour,
others appeared in old and young forms, some had a male and female
essence and many incorporated different aspects of animal appear¬
ance in a kaleidoscope of fantastical and sometimes monstrous
images. Western ideas of straightforward gods, each with but one set
of qualities and responsibilities, do not fit the Maya pattern.
Apart from painted ceramics and carved stone sculptures, the
most important images of Maya deities come from three Postclassic-
period, but nevertheless still pre-conquest codices that have
survived: the Codex Dresden, Codex Paris and Codex Madrid. All
are painted on bark paper, with the Dresden codex presenting pre¬
cise information on deity names and attributes, the Paris seemingly
associated with the late Maya city of Mayapan, and the Madrid
being the largest survivor, extending over fifty-six leaves, and con¬
cerned with the gods of northern Yucatan. Such are the complexities
of identifying gods and their variable attributes that differences
between Maya scholars as to subtleties of interpretation certainly
exist. Nevertheless, a general appreciation of the Maya pantheon is
as follows.
The two main Maya gods were a cosmic pair, from whom all
other deities were descended. The most important (male) god was
Itzamna (‘Lizard House’), shown in art as an old man and described
as the patron deity of writing and learning. During the Classic
74 Ancient Americas

Period, he is shown on painted ceramics as a scribe with the glyphic

title ah dzih (‘He of the Writing’). He commonly wears a beaded
disc on his forehead which is thought to denote blackness and may
represent an obsidian mirror, a magical divinatory device across
Mesoamerica.
In his role as creator of the world, Itzamna was called Hunab Ku,
but this was a vague and remote aspect of his being, and no images
of the god in this guise are known. Nevertheless, this creator role,
together with the reptilian nature of earth and sky in Maya cos¬
mology, combined to make Itzamna associated with the Milky Way
which was understood and represented artistically as a double¬
headed serpent. Itzamna appears also to have been a patron of
Maya royalty, especially in another of his guises, that of Kinich
Ahau, the Sun God.
In some interpretations, Itzamna’s consort was lx Chel (‘Lady
Rainbow’). During Classic Maya times, she was associated with the
moon, and sometimes also with destruction through her connections to
God L, the deity of war. At this time, she is shown as an old woman
with snakes for hair and adept at sorcery. However, in later, Postclassic
times, she presided over weaving and medicine and was responsible for
pregnancy and childbirth. In this more benevolent guise she became the
focus of pilgrimage and a ritual cult at her island sanctuaries on
Cozumel and Isla Mujeres off the east coast of Yucatan.
Kinich Ahau, the Sun God, was either a deity in his own right or
perhaps one of Itzamna’s many guises. He is often identified by
wearing the Maya kin (sun) glyph on his body. As such, he seems
have enjoyed a close relationship with Classic Maya rulers who
identify with him. The Maya (and wider Amerindian) passion for
transformation is revealed by Kinich Ahau’s shapeshifting into the
Jaguar God of the underworld when he disappeared from view in
the west and travelled through the nether regions to rise again in the
east at dawn.
The important rain god was known as Chac, and he also may
have been a distinct deity or perhaps a manifestation of Itzamna,
whose reptilian nature and appearance identified him with water.
Known as Chac throughout the Classic and Postclassic Periods, he
himself had four transformational aspects, each vof whom was
associated with a different colour and appeared to humans as
thunder and lightning. During the Classic Period, Chac is sometimes
shown fishing, and wears catfish whiskers and body scales as
 Maya 75

identifiers of his watery nature. He may also carry an axe or

lightning bolt as his supernatural weapons.
Another important deity is Bolon Tza’cab, also known as God K.
He shares with Itzamna a reptilian aspect, and has an axe or
smoking cigar attached to his forehead. He first appears associated
with the manikin sceptre (an instrument associated with the
inauguration of a ruler) at Tikal in the wake of Teotihuacan influ¬
ence at the site. It may be that the manikin sceptre itself evolved
from the Central Mexican weapon called the atl-atl (spear-thrower).
There are a host of other lesser gods that were prominent in Maya
religious thought and manifested various qualities that, while
characteristically Maya, were nevertheless also typically Meso-
american. Ek Chuah, whose name means Black Scorpion, was the
black-faced god of traders and cacao growers; Ah Chicum Ek or
‘Guiding Star’ has a glyph which denotes ‘North’ and has been
identified as a consequence with the North Star. Yum Kaax is a maize
god and appears as a virile youth associated with agricultural fertility.
In the underworld, there appear three main deities: ‘God L’ is
represented smoking a large cigar and wearing an owl headdress,
and is associated with death and war; ‘God N’ presided over the
year’s ending and is associated with the four supernaturals who
support the world; and ‘God D’ is identified as Itzamna in another
of his guises, here associated with the earth. The Jaguar god of the
underworld is also present, as is the deity labelled ‘Gl’ identified as
the Rain God and here, in the nether regions, associated with ritual
decapitation.

EARLY MAYA CULTURE

The earliest era of Maya civilisation is known as the Preclassic and

dates to between 2000 BC and AD 250. One of the earliest examples
of settled village life in the Maya tradition comes from the site of
Cuello in Belize whose Swasey phase has been dated to 1200-900
BC. Several typical Maya cultural features were in place here by the
end of the period: houses clustered around a central patio; the dead
buried beneath the floors of houses; maize a staple food; chert used
to make stone tools; and distinctive red pottery, usually in the form
of dishes and bowls. From now on, other features that characterised
later Maya civilisation also begin appearing, such as obsidian and
jade - both brought to the area by long-distance traders.
 76 Ancient Americas

Major changes in the Maya region took place between about 600
and 400 BC during the so-called Mamom phase. It is at this point
that from the northern Yucatan to the southern Peten region, pottery
types assume a uniformity in their raw material and shapes, indi¬
cating a degree of common culture throughout the region, regardless
of diverse local geography. At this time, unlike elsewhere in
Mesoamerica, there were no large public buildings. However,
between the end of the Mamom phase in c. 400 BC and the begin¬
ning of the Classic Maya era in c. AD 250, the Maya world was
transformed.
A pan-Maya approach to art and iconography based on widely
shared religious ideas lies at the metaphysical heart of what
happened during this era, called by archaeologists the Late Preclassic
Period. The distinctive traits of the subsequent Classic Maya
civilisation are evident for the first time: huge public architecture;
ceremonial precincts adorned with symbols of divine rulership;
glyphic writing; bar-and-dot notation system; and carved stone
stelae as royal propaganda monuments. Many of these develop¬
ments required intellectual skills and practical organisational
abilities, not least in the expansion of hydraulic agriculture that was
to be the economic base of expanding Maya cities. For example,
between 200 BC and AD 100, inhabitants of the Maya city of Edzna
built a 12km long canal, associated with seven smaller canals and
several reservoirs. Altogether it may have taken 1.7 million work¬
days to create.
The sheer scale of Maya imagination, and its subsequent realis¬
ation in large and small material culture, is astonishing. The large
cities drew in population from surrounding areas, attracted partly
by the prospect of work, food and protection offered by the
emerging elite who employed them to construct the monumental
pyramid-temples and associated buildings at the ceremonial heart of
the new communities. These massive new undertakings are typified
by such sites as Seibal, Nohmul, Calakmul and Tikal. By far the
largest Preclassic city, however, was El Mirador whose huge
pyramids of Monos and El Tigre were raised around 150 BC to a
height of 55m, and the Danta pyramid which may be the tallest-ever
Maya construction. These and other contemporary ( buildings were
adorned with great stucco masks of supernatural beings flanked by
jaguar imagery, and oriented so as to take advantage of the
movements of celestial bodies and thereby appear to link the
 Maya 77

heavens with the earth in rituals designed to extol the divine nature
of their rulers.
The political dimension of this emerging Maya ideology and
worldview also manifests itself at this time, visible on large stone
slabs (called stelae) carved with representations of rulers and
accompanied by glyphic inscriptions and calendrical calculations in
the typically Mesoamerican bar-and-dot mathematical system. Stela
2 at El Mirador, and Stelae 2 and 5 at Abaj Takalik, are early
examples of what would soon become a common practice. It now
seems clear that throughout the Maya region many Preclassic Maya
centres continued into the Early Classic Period without any dramatic
social or political changes.

CLASSIC MAYA CIVILISATION

AD 250 is the commonly accepted starting date for the Classic

Period and it is at this time that Maya civilisation, building on its
Preclassic developments, accelerates ever faster. There is now an
explosion of dated stelae especially in the area around the city of
Tikal in the central Maya lowland region of the Peten. Several
hundred inscribed stelae now appear, the majority bearing dates in
the so-called Initial Series system and which equate with the period
between AD 238 and 593. So-called Emblem Glyphs are also
evident, which are believed to identify the rapidly rising number of
autonomous city-states, the average size of which, according to
some calculations, may have been some 2,000sq. km.
Archaeologists often face serious problems in attempting to
identify and investigate Early Classic Maya buildings as many were
subsequently demolished or built over in later times as the cities
became ever larger and temple-pyramids grander in design and size.
Illustrating this process is the Mundo Perdido (‘Lost World’) group
of buildings at Tikal, where the Preclassic pyramid designated
5C-54 was constantly enlarged and the whole area finally re¬
modelled c. AD 250. Royal burials were then inserted into these
structures and, in the opinion of some experts, may belong to the
dynasty known as ‘Jaguar Paw’. Not long after, in AD 378-9, a new
cultural force can be identified at Tikal, bringing with it
architectural forms from central Mexico. This political, and
presumably also military, incursion seems to have been from the
great metropolis of Teotihuacan (see Chapter Four).
78 Ancient Americas

The influence of a new Teotihuacan-backed regime at Tikal also

manifests itself in other parts of the central Maya region with new
rulers coming to power, probably in alliance with the Tikal dynasty
headed by the king traditionally called ‘Curl Nose’ but now called
Yax Nuun Ayiin. There are images of this ruler in which he is shown
wearing typically Teotihuacan regalia, and in his tomb hybrid
Teotihuacan-Maya iconography adorns the ceramics which accom¬
panied the deceased ruler into the afterlife.
Only 60km away from Tikal, the Maya city of Rio Azul became a
dominant force between AD 400 and 550, and evidence points to its
rulers being imposed by, or allied to, Teotihiuacan or its Tikal
satellite. At the beginning of this period a number of painted tombs
were constructed, one of which - Tomb 19 - has yielded dramatic
insights into high-ranking Maya burials by virtue of being unlooted
when archaeologists discovered it. In this tomb and others nearby
there is evidence of Teotihuacan influence in iconography and pottery
although these are accompanied by typically Maya glyphic inscrip¬
tions telling of the royal identity of the deceased. Some pottery was in
Teotihuacan style but made on the spot of local materials, a practice
also found in other contemporary sites such as Nohmul.
There was evidently a cultural break in this heartland of Classic
Maya civilisation between AD 534 and 593. Called by archaeologists
the Hiatus, it was clearly a period of political intrigue and man-
oeuvrings, most probably dominated by the attempts of the city of
Calakmul to forge a series of alliances and thereby surround and
subdue Tikal. For the next two hundred years, from c. AD 600 until
AD 800, a resurgence of Maya culture takes place leading most
experts to agree that this so-called Late Classic Period represented
the apogee of Maya civilisation. It was during these years that some
of the greatest architecture was raised and population density
reached, and probably exceeded, the capacity of the land to support
it. At this time, the great Maya cities took their final form - vast and
imposing ceremonial centres surrounded by densely packed suburbs
of craftsmen and farmers.
Ceremonial roads, called sacbe (plural, sacbeob), linked the
different temple-pyramid neighbourhoods of cities and also
stretched out beyond the suburbs to link with other cities. Smaller
Maya settlements appear dotted throughout the region as miniature
versions of the great cities, with perhaps a simple central patio, or in
some cases small pyramids. Feeding this burgeoning population was
 Maya 79

probably accomplished by a variety of agricultural measures, includ¬

ing draining some swampy areas, building reservoirs and canal
systems, implementing localised slash-and-burn practices, and
trading in quantities of foodstuffs from outside the city areas - all
supplemented by fishing and hunting, particularly of deer.

War, blood, politics and sacrifice

All Mesoamerican civilisations waged war and celebrated victory

with public ceremonial incorporating rituals of human sacrifice. The
Classic Maya were no different in this respect. They undoubtedly
undertook military campaigns against neighbouring cities in order to
expand their territory, to impose political control (and possibly
exact tribute), and gain prestige for their royal dynasties. One of the
most successful of Maya conquerors was the king known as Ruler 3
of the Maya city of Dos Pilas, who expanded his control over many
lesser cities and created a short-lived superstate until he in turn was
captured by one of the rebellious cities.
Nevertheless, during the Classic Period at least, artistic and hiero¬
glyphic evidence suggest that Maya raiding and warfare were
undertaken primarily to capture high-ranking warriors, preferably
of royal blood, and ideally (if rarely), the enemy ruler himself. These
individuals would then be sacrificed, their blood offered to the gods
in acts of worship made possible by the valour and strategic compet¬
ence of the victor. For this reason, Maya warfare, unlike its Old
World counterpart, was not designed to kill men on the battlefield,
but rather to defeat them in hand-to-hand combat and capture them
alive - in many ways a far more difficult undertaking.
One interpretation of this kind of warfare is that, for the Maya,
blood was the mortar that cemented the universe together, keeping
its innumerable parts from falling away into cosmic, political and
social chaos. The gods desired blood, and it was the duty of Maya
dynasties to supply it in a number of highly ritualised ways. Most of
all perhaps, the symbolic power of blood sanctified and legitimated
the byzantine complexities of Classic Maya power politics. As a
sacred liquid, the blood of high-ranking individuals was spilt on
special occasions - to dedicate a new temple-pyramid, to designate a
new heir, and to inaugurate a new king.
The Classic Maya imagination, or at least that of their constantly
bickering and competing royal families, knew no bounds when it
 80 Ancient Americas

came to inventing ways of humiliating, torturing and finally

despatching their victims. A special fate awaited a ruler should he be
captured. In AD 738, just such an event occurred when K’ak Tiliw
(also known as ‘Cauac Sky’), the ruler of the small centre of
Quirigua, ambushed the mighty Waxaklajun Ub’ah K’awil (also
called ‘18-Rabbit’) of Copan. Amid what must have been ecstatic
scenes, the unfortunate captive was decapitated as the finale to a
ball-game which celebrated the military victory and set the whole
event in a mythic and cosmological framework by re-enacting the
ball-game defeat of the underworld gods by the Hero Twins.
How this unlikely event happened we will never know, though it
seems that despite its small size Quirigua had the shadowy backing
of the large and powerful city of Calakmul. What followed this
victory, however, was typical of Maya warfare and politics. To
celebrate his sacrificing of Waxaklajun Ub’ah K’awil, K’ak Tiliw
commissioned a stunning range of propaganda monuments at
Quirigua and in its surrounding territory. Extraordinary sculptures
were carved with consummate skill and covered with eloquent
glyphic texts extolling the cosmic virtues of Quirigua’s king.
After the state execution, and throughout his life, K’ak Tiliw
erected tall stone stelae and great boulders carved with strange
zoomorphic beings such as the monument known as Zoomorph B,
dedicated on 2 December AD 780, some forty-two years after the
event. This represents K’ak Tiliw emerging from the mouth of a
great crocodilian who carries the sun and floats in the watery under¬
world. The whole elaborate scene has been interpreted as represent¬
ing a doorway connecting the living world to the spirit realm, and
thereby associating the ruler with ideas of transform-ation, death
and rebirth. For the Maya, such monuments were images of the
numinous accessed through art and ritual.
Such commemorative monuments, at Quirigua and elsewhere, give
us insights into the bizarre world of Maya politics, where warfare,
sacrifice, blood, urban renewal and elaborate art forms were
intertwined with mythology and religion. Myth and history were seen
as one, and thus quite different from the way we regard them today.
A different, and so far uniquely intimate and detailed view of the
causes, course and aftermath of Classic Maya warfare has been
preserved in a set of colourful murals at the city of Bonampak. On a
terrace in the central acropolis of the site is a three-roomed building
on whose walls is set out a sequence of rituals celebrating the
 Maya 81

Classic Maya ruler known as Dark Sun at Tikal wearing an elaborate jaguar
costume. (© Pauline Stringfellow, after R.J. Sharer, S.G. Morley and G.W. Brainerd,
The Ancient Maya (5th edition), Standford University Press, Stanford, Fig. 11, 20)
82 Ancient Americas

designation of a new heir to the city’s throne that took place

between AD 790 and 792, and seems to have been associated with
Venus as the Maya symbol of sacred war.
The sequence of events begins in Room 1 in AD 790. This first
scene takes place in an unidentified palace, with the parents of the
heir apparent, King Chaan Muan and his wife, watching events
from a great throne. The scene then shifts to almost a year later to
show Chaan Muan and two companions getting ready for the cere¬
mony, and the final image depicts a procession of richly attired
lords, the three previous figures now dancing, and all accompanied
by musicians playing percussion instruments.
In Room 2, a dramatic battle scene is masterfully painted, giving a
unique insight into the fury and savagery of Maya warfare. Warriors
grapple with each other, spears are thrown, and prisoners are pulled
by the hair. At the centre of these bloody events stand two figures
dressed in the jaguar pelts worn by royalty, and which identify them
as Chaan Muan and probably his ally, King Shield Jaguar II from
the city of Yaxchilan.
The second scene in this room focuses on the presentation of the
war captives. Chaan Muan is once again the central figure, wearing
a plumed headdress and carrying his jaguar-pelted war-spear. Behind
him are his similarly jaguar-pelted allies, while sprawling at his feet
are his prisoners, stripped of clothing, bleeding from the fingernails,
with one already decapitated. These are the presumably royal
captives whose ritual death will purify and sanctify the official
naming of Chaan Muan’s son as his heir.
Although heavily damaged, Room 3 appears to show the
culmination of events, with richly attired members of the royal family
accompanied by musicians and dancers, and what appears to be a
view of Chaan Muan and his followers standing above his seated
family, members of whom are practising autosacrificial bloodletting
rites. From the evidence of the associated glyphs, it seems that while
the battle and its bloody aftermath were necessary to legitimise
Chaan Muan’s son as named heir, timing was also crucial, to tie in
earthly events with celestial and supernatural influences. The battle
took place on 2 August AD 792 when Venus, the planet of war and
destruction, passed in front of the sun and disappeared from the sky;
the scene displaying the humiliation of the captives and their
imminent sacrifice took place several days later on the day when
Venus first reappeared and rose before the sun at dawn.
 Maya 83

This association of Venus with warfare appears widespread, and is

indicated by what Maya scholars have called the shell/star glyph.
Apart from Bonampak, another famous example of shell/star, or
Venus-regulated warfare, was the two-day battle between the cities
of Seibal and Dos Pilas in December AD 735. On the commemor¬
ative Stela 16 at Dos Pilas, Ruler 3, the victor, had recorded how he
led Jaguar Paw, the captured king of Seibal, back to his city where
he was stripped of his finery, tortured and bound. The stela depicts
Ruler 3 in profile to show off every symbolic detail of his finery; in
his clawed-jaguar boots, he stands over the squashed image of
Jaguar Paw.
The sacred nature of war and blood sacrifice led to their being a
constant theme in all kinds of Maya art, though monumental sculp¬
ture, originally brightly painted, takes precedence. Examples of this
elaborate kind of conflict are endless, though the city of Yaxchilan
may have produced the most richly informative Classic Period art to
commemorate such events. Two of the city’s rulers, ‘Shield Jaguar’
and his son ‘Bird Jaguar’, built temples and had glyphic inscriptions
carved on lintels which portrayed the various stages of Maya
warfare, including bloodletting, the vision quest and prisoner
capture. One of the most famous of all Maya images is that carved
on to Yaxchilan’s Lintel 26. Dated to 12 February AD 724, it shows
Shield Jaguar receiving his water-lily jaguar war helmet from his
wife; around her mouth are traces of blood which may indicate that
she has recently completed the painful autosacrificial bloodletting
rites that are shown on another masterpiece of Maya sculpture
known as Lintel 24.
What is clear is that for the Preclassic, Classic and Postclassic
Maya, bloodletting rituals were linked to rites of passage and royal
accession, as well as to the humiliation of high-ranking war captives.
For the Maya, blood was identity and legitimacy, and was associated
with fertility as shown by depictions of high-ranking men piercing
their penis. Human blood was a precious liquid that bound the
universe together and linked living kings with the cosmos.

THE LATER MAYA

Classic Maya civilisation began to collapse in the early ninth century

AD, during the period called by archaeologists the Terminal Classic.
A late flourish came at Seibal in c. AD 830, but ten years later the
 84 Ancient Americas

ruler known as Aj B’olon Haabtal erected five stelae on which he is

portrayed in typical Classic Maya style, but so are others with
characteristically central Mexican features. The end of the Classic
Period was clearly a complex and confused affair, perhaps a combin¬
ation of overpopulation and malnutrition, drought, disease and
outside interference. Whatever the exact cause or causes, the last
dated Maya stela was erected on 15 January AD 909, at the city of
Tonina; thereafter the finely crafted ritual speech of once divine
Classic Maya kings was never heard again.
What followed was an era during which the great cities were
abandoned, or had little more than squatter populations shelter¬
ing in them. There was a population collapse in the central Peten
region; the millions who had lived there a century earlier now
abandoned their homes. Some moved to the highlands of
Guatemala, while others, identified today as the Putun Maya (and
who called themselves the Itza), moved down from the north and
inland from their coastal homelands of Campeche and Tabasco,
to form independent political groups and settle around lakes in
the heart of the Peten, most notably at the island town of Tayasal.
One consequence of the movements into highland Guatemala was
that the Quiche Maya became the pre-eminent group, dominating
their contemporaries the Tzutujil, Kekchi and Cakchiquel, from
their capital at Gumarcaaj (usually known by its Aztec name,
Utatlan).
In the northern Yucatan, the most famous yet mysterious event of
the late Terminal Classic and early Postclassic Periods was the
apparent revitalisation and redevelopment of the city of Chichen
Itza, whose name means ‘at the mouth of the well of the Itza’. The
site itself is an enigma as parts of it seem typically to belong to the
Postclassic Toltec culture of Central Mexico (see Chapter Six). The
Chac Mool sculptures, the presence of a carved tzompantli (skull-
rack), feathered-serpent imagery, and the great four-sided pyramid
known as El Castillo are all Central Mexican rather than Mayan,
yet their masterful workmanship and visual flourish speak of Maya
craftsmen working for outsiders.
Nevertheless, there is also evidence in some parts of the city of the
earlier Terminal Classic architectural style kpown as Puuc.
Archaeologists disagree on how to interpret this hybrid site.
Traditionally, it has been thought that there was a Toltec invasion of
the Yucatan that brought with it the cult of heart sacrifice and the
 Maya 85

Toltec-Maya carving from Chichen-Itza showing a jaguar eating a human heart.

(© Pauline Stringfellow)

imagery of Quetzalcoatl - the feathered-serpent - called Kukulkan

by the local Maya. Golden discs retrieved from the great natural
well known as the ‘Cenote of Sacrifice’ portray typically Toltec
warriors cutting out a victim’s heart. Recent thinking, however, has
suggested that the Putun (Itza) Maya , perhaps with central Mexican
and possibly Toltec groups, built Chichen Itza completely as one city
in a deliberately hybrid style.
Whatever the true nature of Chichen Itza, it collapsed around AD
1221, after several hundred years of dominating the northern
Yucatan. In its wake, the fortified city of Mayapan became the
dominant force under the Kokoom lineage, from whose ranks the
ruler was chosen. However, much of the city’s architecture seems
86 Ancient Americas

just a pale imitation of its more sophisticated predecessor. The

Kokoom kept control until about AD 1441 when they were
massacred by the rival lineage known as Xiu. Mayapan collapsed as
did its wide tribute-based network of towns, and before long the
whole region had become balkanised, with an endless array of
towns and small cities vying for power and influence - a process still
under way when Europeans arrived.
During the late Postclassic Period, there was a move towards sea¬
borne trading, probably at the behest of the Putun. Extensive trade
networks were interlaced around the Yucatan coast, north to eastern
Mexico, and south to Honduras and beyond. The greatest settle¬
ment at this time was Tulum on the east coast of the Yucatan, which
flourished as a trading port and cult centre between AD 1200 and
1519. Although a shadow of the great Classic Maya cities, both
temple and town were strategically located for maritime trade and
the pilgrimage cult of the Maya moon goddess lx Chel.
Nearby was another trading port called Tancah, famous now for
its pre-Columbian murals depicting maritime warfare. It is possible
that the whole eastern coast of the Yucatan had come under the
control of the sea-trading Putun. Tancah and Tulum appear to have
been at the heart of this phenomenon, perhaps associated with the
religious and astronomical beliefs concerning the planet Venus,
whose glyph has been found carved on the wall of Tancah’s cenote.
The island of Cozumel, some 16km off Yucatan’s north-eastern
coast, also seems to have been an important trading and ritual
centre, probably part of the commercial network that included
Tulum, Tancah and the Isla de Mujeres. It was on Cozumel that the
Putun Maya blended spiritual, commercial and defensive issues in
the small coastal shrines that may also have served as watchtowers.
The Spanish priest Fray Diego de Landa later commented that the
Maya regarded Cozumel as a centre of pilgrimage akin to Christian
Jerusalem.
The trading Maya of the Postclassic Period entered European
history during Christopher Columbus’s fourth voyage between AD
1502 and 1504. Offshore of Honduras, near the Bay Islands,
Columbus’s expedition encountered a large sea-going Maya trading
canoe. From its size, its thirty passengers, and itsvcargo of cacao,
copper bells, axes and metalworking equipment, it was obvious to
the Spanish that these were by far the most sophisticated people they
had hitherto encountered in the Americas.
 Maya 87

SPANISH CONQUEST

In AD 1511, a shipwrecked crew of Europeans were cast ashore in

eastern Yucatan. Only two Spaniards survived their ensuing capture
by Maya lords - Geronimo de Aguilar ended up serving a local Maya
ruler, and Gonzalo de Guerrero married a local ruler’s daughter. In
1517, another expedition led by Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba
landed at Isla de Mujeres and later at Champoton, where he died of
wounds fighting the local Maya. The next year, Juan de Grijalva’s
expedition landed on Cozumel island, from where he travelled south
and saw first-hand the coastal trading centre of Tulum.
Grijalva retraced his route, and sailed around the Yucatan penin¬
sula and up the eastern coast of Mexico where he was the first Euro¬
pean to hear of the great Aztec civilisation. In the wake of the stories
told by Grijalva back in Cuba, Hernan Cortes was put in charge of a
further expedition in 1519. Cortes’s first port of call was Cozumel
where he spent several days destroying the pagan idols of lx Chel
and replacing them with Christian crosses. Cortes then marched into
history with his subsequent conquest of the Aztec empire, leaving
behind the Yucatan and gold-poor Maya culture.
In the year’s following the Spanish conquest of central Mexico,
the Yucatan Maya were subdued by Francisco de Montejo who had
been a member of the Grijalva and Cortes expeditions. In 1526,
Montejo was given royal permission to conquer and colonise the
Yucatan, a process that was not completed until 1546. The initial in¬
vasion made good progress, encountering little resistance until in
1528 at Chauaca the Spanish killed over one thousand Maya
warriors, the resulting psychological effect being so traumatic that
all Maya resistance in the area collapsed.
The second phase of conquest lasted from 1531 until 1535,
during which time Montejo was based at Champoton. In 1531, the
Maya ruler Ah Canul surrendered, and Montejo sent his son
(Montejo the Younger) to the old Maya centre of Chichen Itza
where he established a ‘royal city’ but was forced to abandon it
when the local Maya rose against him. Father and son were reunited
at Dzibikal but soon afterwards news arrived of Francisco Pizarro’s
conquest of the fabulously wealthy Inka empire in Peru. In seven
years of fighting, Yucatan had yielded little gold and many soldiers
now left for South America. With the army depleted, the conquest
was put on hold.
88 Ancient Americas

In 1541, Montejo the Elder formally handed over the pursuit of

conquest to his son who promptly established his base of operations
at Campeche. The powerful Xiu Maya submitted, but those of Ah
Canul refused. In a campaign conducted against them, Montejo’s
cousin established the city of Merida in central northern Yucatan
where he received the submission of Tutul Xiu, the ruler of Mani,
the most powerful independent Maya kingdom. The conversion of
Tutul Xiu to Christianity led to further submissions in western
Yucatan but in the east, Maya towns either held out, or submitted
then rebelled. The largest of these rebellions came in 1546 and
involved an alliance of many different Maya groups, and was only
supressed by an expedition led by Montejo himself.
After twenty years, the Spanish had finally ended over two
millennia of Maya civilisation in the Yucatan. Further south, how¬
ever, events took a different turn. In 1524/5, Hernan Cortes himself
had led an expedition, called an entrada, into the central Maya
lowlands where he finally met the Itza ruler Canek and was invited
to visit the capital of Tayasal. Canek announced that he would
consider becoming a Christian, and it was his guides who enabled
the Spanish expedition to soldier on and avoid disaster in the jungle.
Meanwhile, further south in the highlands, the Quiche and
Cakchiquel Maya were raiding towns that had declared themselves
allies to the Spanish despite having sent official word that they too
would submit to the Spanish. Cortes responded by sending his
trusted lieutenant Pedro de Alvarado to conquer these southern
Maya whose territory lay in what is today Guatemala.
Alvarado’s campaign swept into the Maya domain, defeating a
Quiche force in battle then terrorising the area. The shock value of
his cavalry was used to good effect against another Quiche attack
after which the Spanish and their central Mexican Indian allies
entered the abandoned town of Xelahu (now called Quetzaltenango).
After a third cataclysmic defeat a few days later, during which many
leading Quiche were killed, the Maya sued for peace, and invited the
Spanish to their capital Utatlan. Alvarado captured and killed many
of the Quiche leaders and burnt the town, then turned his attention
to the Cakchiquel Maya at their capital of Iximche.
Initially, the Cakchiquel became allies of the Spanish, sending
some four thousand warriors to help Alavarado finish off the
remains of Quiche resistance. They also persuaded the Spanish to
help them defeat their other traditional enemies the Tzutujil.
 Maya 89

The alliance worked well, and soon the Tzutujil had offered their
allegiance to the Spanish Crown. However, Alvarado’s demands for
gold soon alienated the Cakchiquel and they rebelled. A bitter and
cruel war followed until finally the Cakchiquel admitted defeat.
The end of any truly independent Maya nation came with the
Spanish defeat of the Itza, whose base was on their island capital of
Tayasal in Lake Peten Itza. In 1618, Spanish missionaries spent time
at Tayasal, during which they smashed an idol called Tzimin Chac -
a stone sculpture of a horse left there by Cortes almost a century
before. Subsequently, a Spanish force sent against the Itza was
caught by surprise and massacred, and for almost a century the Itza
were left to their own devices, with nearby Maya villages renounc¬
ing their previous conversion and returning to the old gods. In 1696,
a small group of Franciscan missionaries arrived at Tayasal to
convert the Itza, only to be told that according to their sacred books
the time was not quite right, but if they returned several months
later the Maya would indeed convert.
When finally a Spanish force was despatched to take over the Itza
it was attacked and defeated once again, and it became apparent
that only a crushing military defeat would subjugate this last Maya
kingdom. By early 1697, a Spanish army was at the shore of Lake
Peten Itza, and having built a galley to navigate the lake, attacked
Tayasal on the morning of 13 March. The Spanish fired their
arquebus whereupon panic set in among the defenders, who took to
the lake in their efforts to swim away from danger. The town was
stormed and soon the Spanish flag stood on Tayasal’s highest
temple. It was here that over two thousand years of independent
pre-Columbian Maya civilisation came to an end.

LEGACY

Despite the end of their political sovereignty, Maya peoples did not
disappear from history, and their ethnic and linguistic diversity
survive to the present. In the Yucatan, during the years and centuries
following their pacification, Maya slaves escaped their masters and
took refuge in the countryside. Uprisings were inspired by shaman-
priests who claimed to have received divine revelations from the
gods, some of which were written down in hybrid Maya-Spanish
documents known as the The Books of Chilam Balam. Throughout
the colonial period, the Yucatan Maya resisted their Spanish
90 Ancient Americas

masters, making idols of their gods to be distributed throughout the

region, creating underground religious movements, talking of
prophecies of the end of Spanish rule, and sometimes killing
Spaniards and their supporters.
As late as 1848, the so-called Maya Caste War saw thousands of
Mayas and Whites perish in fighting provoked by agrarian reform.
Yet there was also a strong religious dimension to this conflict which
did not formally end until 1901. In 1850, a Maya cult of the Talking
Cross emerged in which the Maya peoples were exhorted to liberate
their lands from the Spanish. Perhaps using native ventriloquists,
those Maya who sponsored the Talking Cross would make it appear
to decide on military strategy as well as religious affairs. The Talking
Cross gave a voice to the emotions and desires of its Maya fol¬
lowers, the Cruzob, speaking and even writing letters through the
agency of the individual known as the scribe or Secretary to the
Cross. The position of the scribe seems to have continued down to
at least 1957.
Today, in various parts of the Maya realm, native festivals out¬
wardly shaped by Christianity but with an ancient pre-Columbian
philosophy at their heart continue to be celebrated. One such event
is a pre-Lent carnival at the highland Maya town of Chamula,
where the sponsor of the celebrations is called a ‘Passion’ and is a
Maya impersonator of Christ through whom God returns to walk
the earth during Easter. Here, and elsewhere, the Christian Passion
has been Indianised, made relevant to the people, and thus has
become a part of their own history.
 SIX

Aztec

Hf ^he Aztec (AD 1350-1521) were Mesoamerica’s last great pre-

1 Columbian culture - seen, confronted and described by their
Spanish conquerors from 1519, and ultimately destroyed in 1521.
For this reason, we have more information of more varied kinds on
Aztec civilisation than on any of its predecessors.
The Aztecs belong to the so-called Postclassic Period of Meso-
america, an era which begins between AD 900 and 1000, lasts until
the arrival of the Spanish in 1519, and was a time of unprecedented
political and cultural upheaval. With the demise of Teotihuacan, the
Zapotecs and the Classic Maya, Mesoamerica experienced profound
changes that reconfigured the cultural map of the region. Maya
peoples, having left their great dynastic cities, forged new trading
routes around the Yucatan’s Caribbean coast and moved up into the
Maya highlands of Guatemala. At the same time, groups from
central Mexico evidently moved into the Yucatan, where the old
Maya city of Chichen Itza was rebuilt and extended by Maya work¬
men but in central Mexican style between c. AD 900 and 1200.
In central Mexico there was a similar mixing of cultures and styles
at places such as Xochicalco and Cacaxtla, the latter of whose extra¬
ordinary polychrome murals invoke typically central Mexican
themes but are executed in peerless Maya style. Of all the pre-Aztec
cultures to flourish during the Postclassic Period, it was the Toltecs
at their capital of Tula who appear to have been most influential.
The are two versions of Toltec history - that which has been inter¬
preted from the archaeological excavations at the site of Tula, and
another which comes mainly from central Mexican mythology and
oral tradition. In the former, archaeological sense, Toltec culture at
Tula lasted between c. AD 900 and 1200; in the latter, the Aztecs and
their contemporaries viewed the Toltecs as revered warrior ancestors
who created a golden age of civilisation to which they attached
themselves through a mix of real and spurious genealogical connec-
92 Ancient Americas

tions. During Aztec times, Toltec heritage was the much sought after
gold standard of cultural and political legitimacy.
One problem with discerning an accurate picture of who the
Toltecs really were lies in the fact that the name Tula - more accu¬
rately Tollan - refers to ‘a place of reeds’, the name given to any
large civilised community. Similarly, the term Toltec was applied to
anyone who lived in such a sophisticated cosmopolitan city. Thus, at
the time of the Spanish arrival, the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan was
one of several places to which the term Tollan could be applied.
Archaeologically, Tula was a major city during its brief life, covering
some 14sq. km and lying about 70km north of modern Mexico City.
At its height, it may have controlled an area whose population
reached three hundred thousand. At the city itself, there may have
been as many as forty thousand people living in single-storey houses
in a densely packed residential area surrounding the ceremonial centre
known today at Tula Grande. The main architectural features here
were large open plazas, ball-courts, temple-pyramids and palaces. The
most famous and best-preserved temple is Pyramid B, which has
impressive (if reconstructed) cyclindrical statues of so-called Atlantean
Warriors on its summit. Around the base of the pyramid are the
remains of once more extensive decorative panels depicting felines
(possibly pumas), coyotes and eagles; some of these are shown in what
has been taken to be the act of devouring hearts, and it is thought they
may in fact be symbolic representations of elite Toltec warriors
engaged in human sacrifice - an early forerunner of later Aztec Jaguar
and Eagle Warrior societies.
Historically, the picture is more complex, a result of the often
contradictory and semi-mythologised accounts that have come down
to us from Aztec times. According to these accounts, a leader of the
Tolteca-Chichimeca peoples known as Mixcoatl (‘Cloud Serpent’)
led his people to the valley of Mexico in AD 908 where they settled
at Culhuacan. Mixcoatl’s son, Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, moved the
Toltec capital north to Tula, where he reigned as a benign king.
Internal political strife was stirred up by the followers of the god
Tezcatlipoca, perhaps a more militant faction within Toltec society.
Eventually, Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl and his followers left Tula and
made their arduous way to the Gulf of Mexico. For what now
transpired, two different versions are given.
One is that he set himself aflame, dressed in a magnificent regalia
of bird plumes and became transformed into a god of the Morning
 Aztec 93

Star. The other account says he set off on a great raft made of ser¬
pents, heading east, and with a prediction that one day he would
return. Perhaps significantly, there are Maya accounts of a highland
Mexican conqueror who arrived in the Yucatan in about AD 987
whose name in the Maya language was Kukulkan or Feathered
Serpent. Back at Tula, Toltec civilisation reached its height, and
generated all kinds of fabulous stories about its inhabitants: they
caused giant maize to grow, cotton to appear already coloured, and
built palaces of jade, gold and quetzal feathers. This was clearly a
place of legend, the manifestation of a golden age at which all who
came later looked back with envy and longing.
Riven by factionalism and perhaps affected by droughts, Tula was
abandoned in AD 1156 or 1168 (sources differ) during the reign of
the ruler Huemac. The Toltec population dispersed across Meso-
america, some ending up in the various city-states of the valley of
Mexico, where their Toltec heritage stood them in good stead with
local peoples.
The aura surrounding Tula and the Toltecs was such that not only
did many ruling families in highland Mexico claim Toltec descent, but
the later Aztecs appear to have looted the site. They dug up sculptures,
friezes and semi-precious offerings and took them back to their own
city of Tenochtitlan, where they were re-used and presumably drew
attention to the Aztecs as in some senses the new Toltecs.

ORIGIN MYTHS

For the Aztecs, as for all pre-Columbian peoples of the Americas,

mythology was an alternative reality, a way of making sense of the
world as they saw it. In Mesoamerica, mythology would seem to
have been concerned mainly with cosmology and creation, and
sacrifice and fertility, albeit in many different guises. The relation¬
ships between deities, rulers, and ruled, were enshrined in myths
that told of great cosmic battles between gods, and epic sacrifices in
supernatural landscapes.
In the beginning there was one god, Ometeotl, the self-created
Lord of Duality. In characteristic Mesoamerican fashion, he had a
male and female aspect, Ometecuhtli (‘Two Lord’), and Omecihuatl
(‘Two Lady’). Born of these two cosmic figures were the great gods
of the Aztecs, often called the four Tezcatlipocas: the Red
Tezcatlipoca known as Xipe Totec, the Blue Tezcatlipoca called
94 Ancient Americas

Huitzilopochtli, the White Tezcatlipoca identified as Quetzalcoatl,

and the Black Tezcatlipoca known simply as Tezcatlipoca, the
supreme Aztec god. It was the duty of these four deities to create
and manage the world, and it was disagreements and confrontations
between them that led to a never-ending cycle of creation and
destruction epic accounts of which are the basis of Aztec myths con¬
cerning the origins of the universe. These myths take many forms
and appear in alternative versions. As with all mythology, there is no
single true account; each version reflects the circumstances at the
time it was created, and later written down by the Spanish who, of
course, had their own agenda. The cosmic struggle for supremacy
between these major gods led to the five successive world eras or
‘suns’, each identified by the cataclysm which engulfed it.
On the great circular slab of stone known as the Sun Stone,
discovered in downtown Mexico City in 1790, are carved images of
Aztec cosmology, including the five eras. In the centre is the face of
either the Sun God Tonatiuh, or the earth monster Tlaltecuhtli, with
a sacrificial flint knife for a tongue. This central image represents the
fifth and current era of creation and is known as 4-Movement.
Around this four boxes appear, each containing the glyphic date of
the destruction of the previous four eras. These are 4-Jaguar,
presided over by Tezcatlipoca and destroyed by jaguars; 4-Wind,
controlled by Quetzalcoatl and brought to an end by hurricanes; 4-
Rain, dominated by Tlaloc and destroyed by fiery rain; and 4-Water
ruled by Chalchiuhtlicue and destroyed by floods. According to
Aztec calculations, the fifth era, our own, will end in 2027.
Apart from this elaborate cosmic scheme, other myths recount the
creation of gods, people and the earth. One of these tells how the
gods gathered at the ancient city of Teotihuacan in order to set the
world in motion by creating the sun. Two gods, Nanahuatzin and
Tecciztecatl, accompanied by the jaguar and the eagle threw them¬
selves into a huge fire and were consumed by the flames. Tecciztecatl
became the moon when the gods threw a rabbit at him, and
Nanahuatzin turned into the sun (Tonatiuh), but failed to advance
across the sky. When asked why he refused to move, Nanahuatzin
replied that he was waiting for divine nourishment in the form of
blood, whereupon Quetzalcoatl cut out and offered up the hearts of
the assembled deities. This act of self-sacrifice by the gods to create
the world was a sacred charter and mythic justification for Aztec
human sacrifice which was regarded both as repaying the debt to the
 Aztec 95

gods, and as a way of strengthening the sun in his daily journey

through the underworld.
As for the origins of the Aztecs themselves, this was accounted for
in several overlapping ways, and tied them closely to their tribal war
god Huitzilopochtli. One myth recounts how the Aztecs left the
mythical land of Aztlan in northwest Mexico, probably during the
early twelfth century AD. They were guided on their wanderings by
a speaking idol of Huitzilopochtli, who persuaded them to change
their name to Mexica and predicted their future greatness. They
arrived first at the Seven Caves known as Chicomoztoc, a traditional
place of departure for many Mexican peoples. When they reached
the Serpent Mountain known as Coatepec, Huitzilopochtli was
symbolically reborn after a cosmic battle with his sister the moon
goddess Coyolxauhqui and her brothers the 400 stars, known as the
Centzon Huitznahua.
This battle came about because the earth goddess Coatlicue,
Coyolxauhqui’s mother, had become pregnant with Huitzilopochtli
through the intervention of magical feathers. Coatlicue’s jealous
children planned to kill her before the powerful Huitzilopochtli could
be born, but in a pre-emptive strike he emerged fully formed and
wielding his flaming fire-serpent or xiubcoatl. Huitzilopochtli cut off
Coyolxauhqui’s head and threw her dismembered body to the base of
Coatepec before routing his brothers. Now established as the most
powerful of all gods, he eventually led his people to the old Toltec city
of Tula, and from there to the valley of Mexico where they founded
their island capital of Tenochtitlan in the middle of Lake Texcoco.
Aztec creation myths established the nature of the universe, justified
royal prerogatives and the social order, and sanctified the age-old
Mesoamerican practice of human sacrifice, but on a grander scale.
Ancestor worship, fertility rites and sacred warfare were all part of the
mythology which gave structure and meaning to Aztec civilisation.

RELIGION AND WORLDVIEW

It was religion which brought the meanings of mythology into

everyday life, and fleshed out its ideological framework in rituals
and ceremonies. Aztec religion became suitably imperial in its aims,
and featured a sophisticated calendar of ritual festivals during which
the powerful and complex gods were venerated alongside the
reigning emperor.
96 Ancient Americas

In Aztec belief, the land was full of spiritual force and animated
by the power of ancestors. This was the concept known in Nahuatl,
the Aztec language, as teotl. This wide-ranging and nebulous idea of
sacred power characterises Aztec gods and flows between them,
their ritual costumes, those who impersonated them during sacrifices
and rituals, and their statues and images. It was also a feature of the
natural world, resident in mountains, lakes, clouds and the animals
and plants of the Aztec world. From the smallest mineral fragment
to the largest snow-capped volcano and the most dangerous animal
predators, such as the jaguar, crocodile, eagle and serpent, the myst¬
erious power of teotl was ever present. Jade was seen as a glistening
precious stone whose greenness engendered growth in nearby plants;
turquoise was equally precious and beloved of the gods to whom it
belonged, while the milkiness of quartz crystal made it the ideal tool
for sorcerers who could see the past and divine the future in its lucid
depths.
The same power manifested itself in the jaguar which was con¬
sidered noble, wise and proud and the lord of the animal kingdom.
Those born under the calendrical sign of the jaguar shared this
power and thus the animal’s characteristics. Teotl was thus the Aztec
term given to a spiritually animated universe which was a funda¬
mental quality of the indigenous worldview throughout the
Americas. The pervasiveness of teotl linked the physical world with
the sacred, endowing geographical places with numinous power.
This was particularly evident in Aztec views of the celestial sphere.
In Aztec worldview (sometimes called cosmovision), celestial
phenomena were seen as inseparable from earthly events, the two
being expressed through the ceremonies of the Aztec calendar.
As with all Mesoamerican societies, Aztec astronomers were also
priests. They saw the sun, moon, planets and stars as divine and as
exercising power over human lives on earth. They measured the move¬
ments of the celestial bodies to maintain the accuracy of their two
calendars, one secular, the other sacred. Their interest in astronomy
was essentially astrological, using their knowledge to predict the future
and discover the will of the gods. They observed the Milky Way,
invented their own constellations, and tracked the movements of the
planet Venus. They measured the rising and setting of sun, moon and
stars on the horizon and calculated their positions in relation to nearby
mountains. They also predicted eclipses, and feared the unexpected and
unpredictable arrival of comets and meteors.
 Aztec 97

The purpose of Aztec astronomy was to regulate their version of

the ancient Mesoamerican two-calendar system. The everyday
calendar (xiuhpohualli) had 365 days, and was divided into 18
months of 20 days each, the extra 5 days, known as the nemonteni,
being regarded as particularly unlucky. The smaller religious
calendar (tonalpohualli) had 260 days, and was divided into 13
months of 20 days each. The two calendars fitted together like cog¬
wheels, and produced a different date every day for 52 years before
starting again - the so-called ‘calendar round’.
The end of a 52-year calendar period was a time of danger and
uncertainty. People kept silent, refused to eat and extinguished their
fires. The new 52-year period was celebrated by the New Fire cere¬
mony, whose timing was calculated by the astronomer-priests. As
the star group known as the Pleiades passed overhead, the sun rose,
and fire was sparked in the chest of a sacrificial victim. Warriors lit
their torches in the fire and carried them to Tenochtitlan to rekindle
the temple fires, and begin the world anew.
Time itself was sacred. It was divided into hours, days, weeks,
months and ultimately the 52-year calendar round. Each unit of
time had a patron deity whose influence determined whether it was
good or bad for different kinds of activity. Some dates were good for
childbirth, others for planting and harvesting, while other times
were avoided in trade and warfare. In the religious calendar
(tonalpohualli), Aztec ‘weeks’ lasted 13 days, with each week
controlled by a different god. Each of the 20 days that made up a
month was also identified with a god. Days named after the rabbit
(tochtli) were controlled by Mayahuel the goddess of the alcoholic
drink made from the maguey plant. Those born on Rabbit days
were doomed to live a miserable drunken life.
Astronomical knowledge and mythological beliefs determined the
shape, size and artistic decoration of Aztec material culture. Temples
were built to align with prominent mountains, and positioned to
take advantage of sunrise and sunset. Tenochtitlan’s Great Temple
was designed so that on the spring equinox (21 March) the sun
could be seen to rise between the two shrines of Huitzilopochtli and
Tlaloc. In this way, the celestial bodies in the sky merged with
earthly landscapes and architecture through ritual and ceremony to
produce an integrated and holistic view of life and death. Perhaps
nowhere is Aztec cosmovision seen to better effect than in the Great
Temple at Tenochtitlan.
98 Ancient Americas

Discovered in 1978 in downtown Mexico City, a great stone disc

carved came to light. Its decoration portrayed an image of the Aztec
moon goddess Coyolxauhqui. Subsequent archaeological excavations
discovered the remains of seven Great Temples, whose imposing stair¬
ways were stacked one inside the other. The earliest temple had two
shrines, one to Tlaloc the other to Huitzilopochtli, and a painted
sculpture of a reclining figure (Chac Mool) holding a dish for sacrificed
hearts. Altogether, the temple precinct had seventy-eight buildings,
including a skull-rack (tzompantli), a temple of the Eagle Warriors, and
almost a hundred burials of human skulls, animal bones, sculptures
and pottery effigies sacrificed to the gods, especially Tlaloc.
The Great Temple was a stepped pyramid, known as a teocalli
(god house) to the Aztecs. It was begun in AD 1325, was aligned
with two sacred volcanoes nearby, and regarded as the great cosmic
water-mountain (altepetl) at the centre of the universe. On its sum¬
mit, as we have seen, were shrines to the rain god Tlaloc and the
war god Huitzilopochtli. It was here that human sacrifices took
place, re-enacting the epic events of the Aztec myth of the birth of
Huitzilophochtli at the Serpent Mountain of Coatepec.

The Gods

The Aztec pantheon was full of dazzling gods, both male and
female, some of whom appeared as supernatural characters in the
creation myths. Although it can look as though the Aztecs have an
endless number of deities, each with different costumes and powers,
in fact they are closely related. Aztec gods wore many disguises but
shared a common divinity through teotl. They were concerned with
different aspects of life, though the main gods represented the
powerful forces of nature. There were gods of wind, fire and water,
of childbirth, disease and misfortune, as well as of the sun, moon
and stars. There were, however, four main deities, Huitzilopochtli,
Tlaloc, Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca.
Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc were special gods for the Aztecs, and
each was worshipped in his own shrine on the summit of the Great
Temple. Huitzilopochtli’s shrine was painted blood red, Tlaloc’s
green - the two cosmic colours that represented the symbolic con¬
nections between blood and water in Mesoamerica.
Huitzilopochtli was the Aztec tribal war god, a cosmic warrior
armed with his magical ‘fire serpent’ (xiuhcoatl). It was he who had
 Aztec 99

guided the Aztecs to Lake Texcoco in the valley of Mexico, where

they founded their city of Tenochtitlan, and honoured him as the sun
through war and human sacrifice. Huitzilopochtli’s name means
Hummingbird of the South and refers to the souls of fallen warriors
that were transformed into hummingbirds. A uniquely Aztec god, in
the codices he is seen wearing the hummingbird’s feathers on his left
leg. He was identified with sacred warfare and death, and as a hero
figure reborn as a god during the migrations to the valley of Mexico.
Alongside Huitzilopochtli on the summit of the Great Temple was
Tlaloc, an ancient Mesoamerican deity who represented water and
fertility. Tlaloc sent the rains that made the crops and flowers grow.
His cosmic dwelling place was Tlalocan, conceived by the Aztecs as
a paradise which shimmered with sunlight, jewels and rich vegeta¬
tion, and which was the final resting place of the disabled, those
killed by lightning and those who had drowned. In his rain-bringing
activities, Tlaloc was aided by his supernatural assistants, the
tlaloques.
Quetzalcoatl, whose name means the Feathered Serpent, was also
an ancient deity, assimilated and reinvigorated by the Aztecs. He
was a benevolent god of learning, the patron of twins and the priest¬
hood, and inventor of the calendar. He often appears disguised as
Ehecatl the wind god.
Tezcatlipoca, Lord of the Smoking Mirror, was the most powerful
Aztec god. He was the Master of Sorcerers, patron of Aztec royalty
and inventor of human sacrifice. An omnipotent deity, he saw every¬
thing that happened in the world by wielding his magic obsidian
mirror. Invisible but ever-present, he inspired such fear that the
Aztecs described themselves as his slaves.
Other Aztec gods were more directly associated with specific
aspects of sacrifice and agricultural fertility. Xipe Totec, Our Lord
the Flayed One, was the god of springtime, who wore the skin of a
victim sacrificed in his honour. As the skin dried and fell away, the
Aztecs believed it encouraged the newborn maize cob to burst forth
from its crinkled leaves. The urge to grow was itself characterised as
the goddess Chicomecoatl, who is shown wearing maize cobs, and
the youngest sweetest corn was represented by Xilonen, a young and
tender woman. Also associated with growth and regeneration was
Xochipilli (Prince of Flowers) and Xochiquetzal (Flower Quetzal),
the eternally young and desirable goddess of pregnancy and mother¬
hood and of weaving. Chalchiuhtlicue (She of the Jade Skirt) was
100 Ancient Americas

the consort of Tlaloc, a female deity of lakes and streams and, by

analogy, the goddess of human fertility and the breaking waters of
childbirth.

SOCIETY

Aztec society was class-based and characterised by the rights, privil¬

eges, costumes and insignia of each class. At the top was the sacred
emperor, known as the Huey Tlatoani, or First Speaker. The most
powerful person in Aztec society, he ruled as the divine represent¬
ative of the supreme god Tezcatlipoca. In customary Aztec fashion,
the emperor’s position was not inherited but achieved through
election by a council of nobles from the most able men in the royal
family.
Once chosen, each new emperor underwent a long series of colour¬
ful rituals which included a Coronation War to prove his military
abilities, and a final confirmation ceremony. The Florentine Codex
describes these events, especially the emperor making ritualised
speeches to Tezcatlipoca in which he asked for strength and guidance.
Once crowned, the new emperor was carried on the jaguar-and-eagle
throne to the Great Temple where he pierced his body with a jaguar
claw in a blood offering that tied him forever to the gods.
Aztec rulers had an intimate if ambiguous relationship with their
patron deity Tezcatlipoca who was also the inventor of human
blood sacrifice. Emperors, like nobles and commoners, were
expected to shed their blood in honour of the gods. The famous
stone monument known as the Dedication Stone, dating to AD
1487, shows the emperor Ahuitzotl and his predecessor, the emperor
Tizoc, bleeding from their legs and piercing their ears with spikes
that sends blood flowing into the earth. This scene appears to be one
way in which Ahuitzotl’s ascension to the throne was legitimated.
Although emperors lived in great luxury in palaces that resembled
small towns, they had to prove themselves on the battlefield to
protect and extend the empire. The emperor was, ultimately, the
commander-in-chief of the Aztec armies, and the most successful
rulers were all great military leaders, such as Itzcoatl, Moctezuma I
(Ilhuicamina), and Ahuitzotl. v
Beneath the emperor came the nobility, who constituted the top
10 per cent of Aztec society. Their position was acquired less
through inheritance than by achieving high status through individual
 Aztec 101

actions. Aztec lords were known as tecuhtli and included the

empire’s pre-eminent administrators and the royal families of con¬
quered cities. They are often shown, as in the Codex Mendoza,
wearing their distinctive cloaks and seated on reed thrones, the
traditional seat of authority in ancient Mesoamerica.
The nobility were given official residences from whose lands they
drew their livelihood. The sons of Aztec lords were born into a junior
class of nobles known as the pipiltin, from the ranks of which the
emperor selected many of his high officials. Belonging to the pipiltin
class was no guarantee of achieving wealth or honour, however. The
children of nobles attended exclusive schools known as calmecac.
The aim was to educate the next generation of leaders in government,
the priesthood and the army. It was in the calmecac that the Aztec
virtues of self-discipline and obedience were instilled. Students learnt
about the gods, ceremonial life, astronomy and warfare. By the time
they left they had become fully trained warriors.
Beneath the nobility were the commoners, or macehualtin, who
made up the majority of society. They could achieve noble status if
they acted with distinction, especially by performing acts of bravery
in war. The macehualtin were divided into hereditary clans known
as calpulli which themselves were organised into units of 20 families
arranged in groups of 100 households. Each calpulli had its own
school and temple and was controlled by a leader elected for life.
The children of the macehualtin attended schools called telpochcalli,
where girls and boys were taught separately and discipline was
strict. They learnt how to dance, sing and play music for the many
religious rituals in which they would participate as adults. Boys
learned how to build roads and repair temples but mainly were
instructed in the skills of war. A special and perhaps distinctively
Aztec class were the long distance merchants known as Pochteca.
They undertook trade beyond the empire’s borders and also served
as government spies. They were organised into guilds, lived
communally and worshipped their own god called Yacatecuhtli.
Their trading caravans travelled widely across Mesoamerica, ex¬
changing gold, obsidian and crystal for exotic local items such as
jaguar skins, seashells, bird plumage and cacao beans. Sometimes, a
pochteca trading venture was a prelude to war, and because of this it
was a dangerous occupation.
At the bottom of society were the slaves, or tlacotin, though Aztec
civilisation was not based on their labour. Nobody was born into
102 Ancient Americas

slavery, and estimates derived from historical sources suggest they

comprised perhaps only 2 per cent of the population. Their work
was unpaid, but they enjoyed free food and shelter. The main slave
market was at the old Tepanec capital of Azcapotzalco, and here
men and women from all over Mexico could be bought and sold.
While some slaves were convicted criminals, others sold themselves
into slavery for limited periods to clear their debts. There was no
stigma attached to being a slave and some were able to achieve high
status, own land and even acquire slaves of their own. It was even
possible for a male slave to marry his master’s wife if she became
widowed. The mother of the great emperor Itzcoatl was a slave.
Everyday life in Aztec society is best described in the hybrid
Aztec-Spanish book known as the Codex Mendoza which was writ¬
ten some twenty years after the Spanish conquest. Its vivid paintings
in Aztec style have accompanying Spanish captions and take us on
an intimate journey through life in Tenochtitlan.
Childbirth was a time of joy and danger, both physically and
spiritually. Babies were delivered by professional midwives who
prayed to Chalchiuhtlicue, the goddess of fertility and motherhood.
If the baby was a boy, the umbilical cord was given to warriors to
bury on a battlefield, and if a girl, it was placed beneath the hearth
in the parents’ home, symbolising her future domestic duties. A
newborn baby’s name was chosen after parental consultation with
priests who determined the supernatural influences associated with
the time and date of birth. If the birthdate was judged lucky, the
baby was named the following day, if unlucky, another, more auspic¬
ious date was chosen. Soon after birth, babies were given miniature
symbols of their future adult life. Some boys were presented with a
warrior’s shield, others a goldsmith’s tool, while girls had a broom
or a spindle full of cotton thread. Boys and girls were welcomed
equally into Aztec families and were described in loving terms as
‘precious necklaces’ or ‘beautiful feathers’.
Children stayed at home until they started school at fifteen. Parents
taught sons to ferry canoes full of reeds around the capital’s canals,
while girls learned to spin cotton and prepare meals. Family discipline
was harsh. If caught lying, boys could be beaten or have their bodies
pierced by thorns, while girls were forced to inhale chilli smoke.
Most Aztec men were married by their early twenties, though girls
usually before they were fifteen. Long negotiations with a pros¬
pective partner’s parents and priests were carried on by elderly
 Aztec 103

women serving as matchmakers. Once a favourable date had been

calculated, the marriage ceremony began with feasting in the bride’s
house, after which the bride was carried in a torch-lit procession to
her husband’s house, where she sat on a reed mat with her husband
and they tied their robes together.
Aztec men could have more than one wife, though they had to be
able to support them. Commoners could usually only afford one
wife, but nobles often had more. Nevertheless, there could only ever
be one principal wife who controlled all the others. Political mar¬
riages between the emperor and the ruling families of other cities
were one way of forging strategic diplomatic alliances. Adultery was
punished with death by stoning or strangulation, though divorce
was possible for men and women if the marriage failed.
Aztec society was primarily agricultural, though many people also
engaged in informal exchange of goods and services and in making
pottery, textiles and sometimes paper from tree bark. The basis of
much agriculture in the valley of Mexico was the chinampa system,
often erroneously called ‘floating gardens’. This ancient method of
hydraulic agriculture produced fertile garden plots by dredging up
mud and plants from the lake floor to create artificial islands separ¬
ated by canals. Kept in place by willow trees, the rich soil that devel¬
oped was used to grow flowers, chillis, tomatoes, maize and many
other plants. All agricultural activity was done by hand as there
were neither horses nor cattle in Mesoamerica until the Spanish
arrived.
The staple food was maize (Zea mays), ground into flour and
baked as the flat bread known as tortillas, or steamed then stuffed
with vegetables and meat, and known as tamales. Tomatoes, chillis,
rabbit, deer and turkey were eaten, as was a hairless breed of dog.
Insect eggs and water fly larvae were considered delicacies, and
chocolate was drunk by the higher classes. The main alcoholic drink
was pulque made from the ubiquitous maguey plant. Although most
of our information comes from the great urban metropolis of
Tenochtitlan and its lake environment, recent investigations have
shed light on life in rural areas.
Examination of the sites of the two small farming villages of
Capilco and Cuexcomate indicate that in late Aztec times popu¬
lation was increasing and more land was being irrigated to grow
more food. Surplus food was traded for salt, obsidian and expen¬
sive, beautifully painted pottery. Somewhat larger was the local city
104 Ancient Americas

of Yautepec which grew to around 2.1sq. km in the years before the

Spanish arrival. Although individual houses were not much larger
than those at Cuexcomate, arts and crafts were more developed.
Yautepec’s population included specialist obsidian workers making
blades and tools, potters making clay figurines and others manu¬
facturing cotton textiles and jewellery.

WAR AND EMPIRE

Warfare

Ancient Mexican warfare was different in several fundamental

respects from its European equivalent. The Aztecs, like their contem¬
poraries in Mesoamerica, did not wage war primarily to conquer
and integrate territory, or convert the defeated to their own religion.
Their motivation was rather to defeat their enemies then impose
tribute on them, and to capture prisoners for later sacrifice to the
gods. Administering conquered areas was expensive and impractical
so the Aztecs ruled indirectly through local chiefs and by political
marriage alliances. The reward for this approach was the fabulous
wealth which poured into Tenochtitlan. Battlefield killing, laying
waste to the land, and destroying towns was self-defeating to this
end. Exceptions occurred, however. Death in war was frequent and
towns were sometimes destroyed and their populations slaughtered
to serve as a warning to others.
The common motif for victory was a glyph which showed a
temple with its straw roof tilted upward and burning - symbolising
Aztec conquest. This was also a visual statement of the superiority
of Aztec gods over those of the conquered, the statues and images of
which were taken to Tenochtitlan and kept as symbolic hostages.
Dressed in elaborate and often impractical costumes and head¬
dresses, Aztec warriors fought vicious hand-to-hand battles, with
superior numbers often deciding the outcome. Brave and esteemed
warriors were those who captured rather than killed the most
opponents. For those who did die in battle, the Aztecs believed that
their souls transformed into shimmering butterflies and humming¬
birds. Aztec warriors had no advantage in weapon^ or tactics over
their enemies. The nobility wore body armour of quilted cotton and
carried round shields decorated with feather mosaic or inlaid with
gold and turquoise. Weapons were basic but effective and included
 Aztec 105

the javelin, bow, sling, and a lm long wooden sword inset with
sharp obsidian barbs known as maquahuitl.
Aztec warfare was a sacred act, halfway between combat and
sacrifice. Always at the forefront of battle were the elite cadres
known as the Jaguar Warriors and the Eagle Warriors. They wore
costumes designed to mimic their animal patrons and to intimidate
their enemies. The hearts and bodies of their victims were offered up
to the war god Huitzilopochtli. These warriors also played an
important role in sacrifical rituals, some of which took the form of
gladiatorial combat. Here, a fully armed Jaguar Warrior fought a
captive bound to a great stone and armed with a sword decorated
with feathers. The role of the Jaguar and Eagle Warriors is com¬
memorated at the rock-cut temple of Malinalco high in the moun¬
tains southwest of Tenochtitlan. The shrine’s entrance is carved
in the shape of a giant serpent, and at the base of the stairway
stand two stone jaguar statues. Inside, there is a semi-circular stone
bench from which emerges the sculpted head of a jaguar, its paws
flanked by two eagles with a third eagle sculpture in the centre of
the floor.
War was a defining reality to the Aztecs. As we have seen, Aztec
boys were trained in the martial arts from the age of fifteen, and
dedicated themselves to the god Tezcatlipoca, the master of a
warrior’s fate. The symbolism of war pervaded many aspects of
Aztec society: the rubber-ball game mixed symbols of war and death
with cosmic themes, indicating that even this public game could end
in death as a kind of ritual warfare. Carved stone monuments, such
as the Stone of Tizoc, also commemorated warfare. This example
records the emperor Tizoc’s imperial victories and shows him taking
captive the rulers of fifteen regions whose names are engraved in
glyphs. In typical Aztec fashion, Tizoc grasps the hair of his
opponents as a sign of victory.
The distinctiveness of Aztec warfare is illustrated by the special
kind of conflict known as the ‘War of Flowers’ or xochiyaoyotl. This
name refers to the colourful costumes of the warriors, and is a meta¬
phorical analogy for their fall in battle - like a shower of blossoms.
These battles took place not for conquest but in order to capture
prisoners for sacrifice to the gods. Flower wars were regularly
fought with the cities of Tlaxcala and Cholula, as their inhabitants
spoke the Aztec language Nahuatl, and consequently their war
captives were considered especially valuable as sacrifices. Priests
106 Ancient Americas

watched these battles, and once they decided enough prisoners had
been taken hostilities were ended.

Empire

When the Aztecs arrived in the valley of Mexico during the thirteenth
century AD they were only one of several migrant groups. They had left
their homeland of Aztlan during the early years of the twelfth century
and arrived on the western shores of Lake Texcoco at the place known
then, and today, as Chapultepec, famed for its fresh-water springs.
After a confused period, for which our sources are a mix of myth,
history and propaganda, the Aztecs confronted an alliance of Tepanecs
led by the cities of Azcapotzalco and Culhuacan. Although they
suffered a disastrous defeat, some survivors eventually asked for help
from the ruler at Culhuacan and were granted inhospitable volcanic
land at nearby Tizaapan. The Aztecs served their Culhua masters well
in a war against the people of Xochimilco and began calling themselves
Culhua-Mexica as they became acculturated to the sophisticated city¬
dwelling lifestyle of the area, and the ancestral prestige of the Toltec
civilisation began to attach itself to them.
Despite the apparent success of the Culhua-Mexica integration,
the Aztec priests of Huitzilopochtli then caused a sensation. They
prompted their leaders to ask Achitometl, one of the Culhua leaders,
for his daughter to be the ritual ‘wife of Huitzilopochtli’. Unware of
the nature of the honour, Achitometl granted the request whereupon
his daughter was sacrificed to the god and her skin worn by one of
his priests. Achitometl was outraged and the Aztecs banished once
again, making their way by canoe to a group of small islands in
Lake Texcoco. In all probability this event is a stylised account of
Aztec beliefs concerning ceremonial marriages with female earth
deities as a way of becoming a settled agricultural people.
One of Huitzilopochtli’s priests then had a vision in which he saw
an eagle perched on a nopal cactus and which he interpreted as a
divine sign from the god that this would be the place where the
Aztecs should build their city. Perhaps not surprisingly, the eagle was
soon spotted, and the Aztecs built a simple reed temple, the first of
the many Great Temples. In this way, in the Aztea year 2-House
(either AD 1325 or 1345 in the Western calendar), Tenochtitlan was
founded. This event is graphically commemorated on the carved
stone monument known as the Teocalli Stone.
 Aztec 107

The Aztecs set about establishing their position in the valley of

Mexico, especially through trading relationships with their
neighbours. They approached the rulers of Culhuacan and, in AD
1375, the mixed-blood Mexica/Culhua lord Acamapichtli was
invited and became the new Aztec ruler. In the years that followed,
the Aztec leaders intermarried with the nobility of neighbouring
cities, and forged increasingly close ties with the Tepanec city of
Azcapotzalco, especially during the fifty-year rule of the great
Tepanec ruler Tezozomoc.
Although the Aztecs paid tribute to the Tepanecs, they also
learned much that would help them in their own rise to power.
Tezozomoc allowed the Aztecs to participate in military conquests as
a form of tribute payment and later also to make conquests in their
own right. Alone, or with the Tepanecs, the Aztecs conquered the
rich agricultural chinampa-based towns in the south-eastern part of
the valley of Mexico, as well as Xaltocan, and the valley of Puebla.
In AD 1417, the newly installed Aztec ruler Chimalpopoca remained
loyal to the Tepanecs when they were attacked by Ixtlilxochitl, the
new ruler of the city of Texcoco, despite being his father in law. In a
series of hard-fought battles the Aztec-Tepanec coalition prevailed,
Ixtlilxochitl was killed, and the Aztecs received Texcoco as a tribute
city. In just a few years, the Aztecs had transformed themselves from
tribute-payers to the Tepanecs to equal partners, and tribute
collectors in their own right.
Tezozomoc died soon after, and was succeeded by his less astute
son Maxtla. Political intrigues followed, during which Chimalpopoca
was killed, and a new tlatoani elected. Yet this was no ordinary
change of ruler. While Itzcoatl became the new Aztec tlatoani, he was
but part of a powerful triumvirate which included the future emperor
Moctezuma I (Ihuilcamina) and his brother the extraordinary
Tlacaelel who would serve as cibuacoatl (‘Snake Woman’) for sixty
years as advisor to five successive emperors. Between them, these
three devised a strategy to break free of their Tepanec masters,
though struggled to convince Tenochtitlan’s commoners that they
could win a battle with their powerful overlords.
It was Tlacaelel who precipitated events by declaring war during a
diplomatic embassy to Maxtla. In Tenochtitlan, it seems that the
three leaders made a bargain with the still understandably edgy
population. If the war was won, the people would serve their leaders
in every conceivable way, but if lost then the leaders would offer
108 Ancient Americas

themselves up for retribution. As this bargain was being struck,

Nezahualcoyotl, the son of the murdered Ixtlilxochitl of Texcoco,
and ItzcoatPs nephew, appeared. He had fled Texcoco and taken
refuge in the city of Huexotzingo after Maxtla had unsuccessfully
tried to have him killed. Itzcoatl meanwhile had sent an embassy to
Huexotzingo asking for military help against Maxtla.
Nezahualcoyotl saw his chance. Together with the Aztecs and the
former Tepanec town of Tlacopan/Tacuba, he led a mixed force of his
own Texcocan warriors and Huexotzingan allies in an attack on the
Tepanec capital of Azcapotzalco. After a long siege, the armies of the
newly formed Triple Alliance of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco and Tlacopan
broke through the city’s defences and Maxtla was captured by
Nezahualcoyotl. In typical Mexican fashion, Maxtla was sacrificed in
front of the richly arrayed allied armies by having his heart cut out by
Nezahualcoyotl, the blood scattered to the four cardinal points, and
then the body treated to the funeral rites due to a ruler.
Maxtla’s ritual sacrifice achieved many ends: it signalled the
collapse of Tepanec rule over central Mexico; claimed Tepanec lands
for the Triple Alliance; and symbolically fertilised the earth
and regenerated society through the shedding of royal blood.
Tenochtitlan and Texcoco became autonomous city-states, domin¬
ating the junior ally of Tlacopan in the Triple Alliance. It was, how¬
ever, the redistribution of formerly Tepanec lands among the allies
and within Aztec society that brought the greatest changes. At this
critical juncture, social hierarchy was embodied in the differential
ownership of land, with the tlatoani and nobility owning the largest
share, and the smallest portions being awarded to the calplulli and
which were in turn worked by individual families. Land could be
given to warriors as a reward for outstanding service, and royal
palaces and temples also owned their own lands.
The defeat of Azcapotzalco was thus a turning point for the
Aztecs, politically, economically and also symbolically. Tenochtitlan
was the dominant member of the Triple Alliance, and soon their
ideas of conquest and tribute spread out beyond the valley of
Mexico. As the Aztecs became more overtly imperial, they developed
an accompanying ideology which saw an explosion of spectacular
public ceremonies, systems of alliance, tribute, grand mythologies,
and sophisticated art and architecture welded together.
The Triple Alliance’s first major conquest beyond the valley of
Mexico was the agriculturally rich lowland area controlled by the
 Aztec 109

town of Cuahnahuac (modern Cuernavaca) to the south. After this

successful venture, a complex tribute system was devised whereby
participating allies could receive tribute from towns located within
another ruler’s area. When Moctezuma Ilhuicamina succeeded
Itzcoatl in 1440, a period of political consolidation began before
new military conquests were undertaken. When military action was
resumed, it was against the people of Chaleo and then, in 1458,
against the Mixtecs and their town of Coixtlahuaca which barred
the way to the rich lands of Oaxaca further south. The Codex
Mendoza records the tribute imposed on Coixtlahuaca after the
Aztec victory - it includes greenstone jewellery, gold dust, cochineal
dye, green feathers and woven blankets. This practice was followed
in subsequent conquests by Moctezuma in the humid tropics of
eastern Mexico and by 1469, when Moctezuma died, vast quantities
of tribute wealth were pouring into the Aztec capital.
Moctezuma was succeeded by Axayacatl. During his thirteen-year
reign, Tenochtitlan’s sister city of Tlatelolco rebelled but was
mercilessly defeated, its lands taken and tribute levied. Axayacatl led
victorious campaigns to the west of the valley of Mexico between
1475 and 1478, but then suffered a disastrous defeat at the hands of
the Tarascans whose lands lay further west in what today is the state
of Michoacan. Of an invasion force of some thirty-two thousand
Triple Alliance warriors only about two thousand returned home.
Axayacatl died in 1481 and was replaced by his brother Tizoc
who proved to be a less than successful military commander. After
an inconclusive battle against the town of Metztitlan and the putting
down of rebellions, there was a sense that the empire and the tribute
upon which it depended were at a critical impasse. In 1486, Tizoc
was assassinated and replaced by his brother Ahuitzotl, a fearless
and brilliant warrior who soon stamped his authority on the army
and empire, ruthlessly suppressing rebellious towns and reimposing
tribute. In 1487, after a punitive expedition against the towns of
Mexico’s Gulf Coast, Ahuitzotl devised a propaganda coup to
coincide with the rededication of the Great Temple in Tenochtitlan.
Tens of thousands of prisoners of war lined the streets of the
capital and in front of an invited audience of foreign rulers and
ambassadors they were sacrificed one by one in a bloody ceremony
that lasted four days. Heart sacrifice had become a political tool for
intimidation and control, and Ahuitzotl identified himself ever more
closely with Huitzilopochtli the Aztec tribal war god seen as a
110 Ancient Americas

cosmic warrior. In the wake of this defining event, the empire

expanded at an increasing pace, with civic and religious architecture
now built in newly conquered areas, such as Malinalco to the west
and Tepoztlan to the south. Such buildings were a statement of
Aztec imperial presence. However, unlike the Inkas in Peru, the
Aztecs’ lack of a sophisticated and specialist bureaucracy meant that
stable political integration of conquered regions into a true state-
level empire never really occurred.
In 1502, the last true Aztec emperor came to power. Moctezuma
II (Xocoyotzin) was clearly not the inspirational and ferocious
military figure that his predecessor had been, though he was a highly
accomplished warrior-leader. He made sweeping reforms to keep the
support of the nobility - an indication perhaps of his less than sure
grip on political power within Tenochtitlan. Sumptuary laws were
instituted that marked out the nobles by virtue of the costumes and
jewellery only they were allowed to wear. Elaborate ritual behaviour
in court ceremonial was enforced, and he replaced Ahuitzotl’s
faction with his own. Under this second Moctezuma, the empire was
consolidated and expanded, though bitter conflicts with the cities of
Tlaxcala and Huexotzingo were a military stalemate and led to
deep-rooted rivalries that saw these two communities flock to the
Spanish banner when Cortes invaded.

THE SPANISH CONQUEST

The Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes arrived on Mexico’s

eastern shore on Good Friday 1519. He had sailed from Cuba with
500 soldiers and headed first for the Maya island of Cozumel off the
Yucatan peninsula. Here he had rescued Geronimo de Aguilar, a
Spaniard who had been stranded several years before and who now
spoke fluent Yucatec Maya. This providential event was reinforced a
little later when local leaders at Potonchan gave him a noblewoman
called Malintzin (known to history as Malinche), who spoke Maya
and the Aztec language Nahuatl. Malintzin subsequently became
Cortes’s mistress and had a son by him.
When the Spanish landed near to modern-day Veracruz they were
met by ambassadors sent by the Aztec emperor Moctezuma II who
presented Cortes with gifts of gold, feathers and semi-precious
minerals such as greenstones. The ambassadors were forced to
witness what to them must have appeared the magical effects of
 Aztec 111

Spanish arquebus and cannon before being allowed to report back

to Moctezuma.
Over the coming months, which he spent exploring the region and
impressing the local Totonac peoples, Cortes gathered intelligence
about the Aztecs and their imperial capital of Tenochtitlan. He
quickly realised that Aztec demands for tribute made their subject
peoples bitterly resentful, and that here was a ready-made army of
Indian allies. The Spanish set off for the Aztec realm, picking up
several thousand more supporters from the city of Tlaxcala, a tradi¬
tional enemy of the Aztecs. From here he went to the sacred city of
Cholula and, despite receiving more gift-bearing embassies from
Moctezuma en route, pressed on toward Tenochtitlan.
When this impressive force of Europeans and Indians finally
crossed over into the valley of Mexico, the Spanish were astonished
by what they saw. Hardly able to believe they were not dreaming,
they gazed with incredulity at a vast lake system around whose
shores were dotted many large towns, and in whose centre lay the
great island metropolis of Tenochtitlan connected to the mainland by
great causeways. The lake was full of canoes and Tenochtitlan’s
temples shimmered in the sunlight. Moctezuma welcomed Cortes on
the great southern causeway and placed a glittering necklace of gold
and semi-precious stones around the Spaniard’s neck. He led the
Spanish back into the city whose streets and roofs were crowded with
people eager for a view of these strangers and their even stranger
animals. Moctezuma housed Cortes and his men in the palace of his
father Axayacatl surrounded by the shrines and statues of his gods.
Although both men were initially polite and reverential to each
other they were clearly testing each other’s nature and resolve.
Cortes acted first, taking Moctezuma prisoner, but giving the
impression to the populace that the emperor still ruled the city. In
April 1520, news arrived that a new Spanish fleet now lay off the
coast with orders from Cuba’s governor Diego de Velasquez to
arrest Cortes for disobeying an earlier order to return and not
invade Mexico. Cortes wasted no time, and took half his force back
to the coast where he defeated the newcomers and persuaded the
soldiers to join his cause.
While Cortes was thus engaged, his lieutenant Pedro de Alvardo
who had been left in charge of Tenochtitlan, had provoked an Aztec
rebellion by massacring those who were preparing human sacrifices
in honour of their god Huitzilopochtli. Events moved quickly.
112 Ancient Americas

Cortes was able to fight his way back into the palace where his
comrades were beseiged, but Moctezuma had by now lost the trust
of his people. He was replaced as emperor by his brother Cuitlahuac
and soon afterwards killed, though by whom is not known.
Cortes organised his men for a breakout, and on the night of 30
June 1520 the Spanish made their move. Many were laden down
with stolen treasure and perished, and much gold was lost to the
lake as they retreated along the causeway - harried mercilessly by
Aztec warriors. This disastrous escape was called the noche triste
(‘night of sorrows’) by the Spanish.
After reorganising his troops at the friendly city of Tlaxcala,
Cortes and some seventy thousand Indian allies attacked
Tenochtitlan again in 1521. Disease carried by their European
enemy had meanwhile broken out in the city and, combined with
famine, served to undermine the strength of the Aztecs. After several
months of seige, during which Cuitlahuac died of smallpox and a
new emperor Cuauhtemoc was appointed, the Aztec capital fell, its
inhabitants slaughtered by Cortes’s Tlaxcallan allies. The effects of
European disease, against which native Mexicans had no immunity,
together with the desire of other Indian nations to throw off the
shackles of Aztec tribute combined to make the ultimate fate of the
Aztecs all but inevitable. This was reinforced by Cortes’s political
astuteness in taking advantage of disaffected Indian peoples, and by
Moctezuma’s hesitation at confronting the Spanish before they had
advanced into the valley of Mexico.
This strategic mistake by Moctezuma was subsequently explained
in post-conquest accounts that sought to justify his otherwise
inexplicable actions. In versions written down by the Spanish during
interviews with the surviving nobility and priests, it was said that
Moctezuma believed Cortes to be the returning god Quetzalcoatl in
their year called 1-Reed (i.e. 1519). A series of prophecies was also
elaborated after the event, explaining how strange portents such as
temples burning and the finding of a bird in Lake Texcoco with a
mirror inset into its head all predicted the end of the Aztec era.

LEGACY OF CONQUEST
\

The Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan and its sprawling tribute-empire

collapsed in 1521. However, the Aztecs themselves and the other
indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica did not just fade from history.
 Aztec 113

The Aztec state may have collapsed, but indigenous ideas and beliefs
continued to flourish in a bewildering mosaic of native accommo¬
dations to the new economic and religious order imposed by the
Spanish during the colonial period.
In the years following 1521, the Spanish conversion of Meso-
america’s native peoples proceeded apace, but was often more
apparent than real. Trial records for 1536 to 1540 reveal that such
pre-Columbian customs as concubinage, idolatry and human
sacrifice were still being practised. In 1565, the Spanish bishops of
Mexico City were complaining how easily the natives reverted back
to their pre-conquest rituals, hiding idols behind altars in newly
built churches, partaking of hallucinogens, and invoking ancient
colour symbolism. Franciscan fathers regarded Tezcatlipoca not only
as the chief Aztec deity, but also as Lucifer whose malign influence
they saw everywhere at work among the indigenous peoples.
During the post-conquest years, native Mesoamerican and
Christian ideas mingled, producing a syncretic worldview that
borrowed equally from both. Christianity was being changed -
reconfigured, revitalised and re-presented by indigenous peoples.
These complex developments were often invisible to contemporary
Spanish eyes, at least in the subtleties of their symbolism. The
unusually perceptive priest Diego Duran was an exception, admit¬
ting that the Spanish understood nothing of what was going on all
around them, not even when the Indians worshipped idols in their
presence.
Between 1526 and 1600, over four hundred conventos
(monasteries) were built and decorated by native artisans in styles
which drew equally on pre-Columbian and European ideas. Were
these natives forced to adopt the styles of the European Renaissance,
or did they incorporate pre-Columbian motifs and meanings into
otherwise Christian murals and sculpture as a form of native
resistance to Spanish conversion strategies?
A fascinating but complex example illustrating these cultural
cross-currents are the dazzling murals at the Augustinian convento
church of San Miguel at Ixmiquilpan north of Mexico City. Built in
the 1550s, its nave was decorated with life-sized images of battling
human warriors and mythical centaur-like creatures. Although
rendered in an awkward European style, the protagonists are
wearing only pre-Columbian dress, notably jaguar and coyote
costumes that recall the elite Aztec warrior societies. Not only is
114 Ancient Americas

there a complete absence of Christian symbolism, but severed heads,

streams of blue-coloured blood and speech scrolls are all present.
Many different explanations have been offered for these enigmatic
murals which were whitewashed and forgotten for four hundred
years before being accidentally rediscovered in 1960.
Spanish friars travelled the countryside destroying pre-Christian
shrines and temples, and then erected large crosses in the centre of
what would become the church forecourt. But these crosses were
carved, decorated and put up by the natives under Spanish direction.
Their size and vivid sculptural style were proof that ancient
traditions and beliefs were thriving. On carved stone crosses, Christ
became the cosmic tree of life, spilling his fertilising blood on to the
sacred earth in the same way as the Aztecs and their predecessors
had done. His wounds were represented by the Aztec sign for
cbalcbihuitl, the precious liquid which can be both water and blood.
Magical powers were attributed to crosses placed where idols had
previously stood. More overt, but apparently still not recognised by
the Spanish, was the incorporation of obsidian discs at the inter¬
section of these large crosses, such as the one at the Franciscan
convent at Taximaroa (modern Ciudad Hidalgo). While the Spanish
priests admired the beauty of this decorative black stone, they
appear to have been unaware that obsidian was the sacred substance
of Tezcatlipoca - the very Satan they so feared.
Today, similarly, although five hundred years have passed, there
are many cultural traditions and religious rituals which seem to
speak in two tongues - that of Roman Catholicism, and that of
ancient pre-Columbian ideas. High in the mountains of south-west
Mexico is the remote village of Acatlan, founded in Aztec times,
whose inhabitants still speak Nahuatl. Every year, a springtime
ritual is enacted which echoes the bloody sacrifices by the Aztec
Jaguar Warriors at Tenochtitlan. Young men of the village dress in
jaguar costumes and fight each other in pairs on the summit of a
local mountain. As the men prepare to fight, the women chant
prayers to Catholic Santa Cruz, and light candles at the base of
rocky shrines. The fiesta takes place in early May at the end of the
dry season. The villagers believe that if they shed the potent blood of
young men then the Jaguar God will be pleased and send the rains
to fertilise the maize crop.
More openly syncretic and better known is Mexico’s Day of the
Dead or All Saints’ Day celebrations that take place every year in
 Aztec 115

early November. The frightening skulls and skeletons of Aztec

sculpture are transformed today into miniatures made of sugar and
chocolate as sweets for children. Across the country, from high
sierra to tropical jungle, whole families spend the night at the graves
of their loved ones which they adorn with brightly coloured flowers,
a typically native gesture. Many modern Mexicans believe, as did
their ancestors, that if the dead are not honoured in this way they
will return to haunt the living.
The most famous and distinctive of all these hybrid Mexican-
European cultural phenomena is undoubtedly the mix of Roman
Catholicism and old Aztec religion in the cult of the Virgin of
Guadeloupe at Tepeyac in Mexico City. This area was originally
sacred to the Aztec goddess Tonantzin who was ritually addressed in
prayers as Our Mother. Some believe that she was transformed into
Our Lady of Guadeloupe when she appeared miraculously to a
recently converted shepherd whom she asked to build her a church
on that spot. Miracles followed, a chapel was built in 1555, and now
hundreds of thousands make their own pilgrimages to the shrine.
 COLOMBIA

£srr)oayegue
BpTSipan
® Cajamarca
Chan Chan
©y, Moche La Galgada

Chavin de Huantai
®Kotosh
®
Huanuco Pampa

LIMA
Pachacamac
, Wari Machu Picchu
®A CUZCO
Conchapata
® Pikillakta
Paracas
Nazca Pukara

Titicaca

Cerro Baul Tiwanaku

A Modern Cities

Ancient Sites

Capital Cities

300 km

South America
 PART THREE

South America -
Kingdoms and Empires
'
 SEVEN

Andean Origins and Chavin

^ j[Nhe origins of civilisation in South America, especially in the

A Andean region of modern-day Peru, encompass three periods of
prehistory which together span some three thousand years of
cultural development. These are the Preceramic Period (3000-1800
BC), the Initial Period (1800-900 BC), and the Early Horizon
(900-200 BC).

Early times: the Freceramic Period

During this comparatively short-lived period, the basic foundations

of ancient Andean civilisation were laid. By this time most of the
domesticated plants and animals that were to be so important to
ancient Peruvian societies had appeared - the result of the long and
developing relationships between people and environment during
the preceding Lithic Period (12000-3000 BC). The Preceramic
Period can be seen as giving rise to two kinds of cultural traditions,
that of the Andean highlands and that which belonged to the desert
coasts. Nevertheless, as has probably always been the case, objects,
beliefs and religious and artistic influences always moved back and
forth between the highlands and the coast.
The site of La Galgada is particularly significant in this respect, as
it is strategically located mid-way between the coast and the tropical
rainforest in the corridor route of the Tablachaca Valley in northern
Peru. Here, by about 2300 BC, a ceremonial centre of two large plat¬
forms and associated smaller buildings had been constructed, and
continued in use into the Early Ceramic Period c. 1200 BC. The
ceremonial platforms were enlarged several times and their mud-
and-stone summit temples were faced with white-painted plaster.
One was clad in stone with a sunken circular court in front. A
peculiar feature of both temple-sanctuaries was a central hearth fed
by an underground ventilation shaft in which the burning of chillis
120 Ancient Americas

appears to have been part of some religious ritual. The subsequent

use of these chambers as crypts for the dead is an early mani¬
festation of a later widespread practice - the dual function of such
locations for ritual and as sacred tombs for the ancestors.
Archaeological investigations indicate that La Galgada depended
partly on local irrigation agriculture - remains of domesticated
chillis, cotton, beans and gourds have been found - and partly on
exotic goods obtained through trade with peoples from other
environmental areas. In several well-preserved human burials, these
items included plumage of tropical forest birds, deer bone, tur¬
quoise, Spondylus shells and salt crystals. At this early time, the
inhabitants of La Galgada appear not have used llama or alpaca
either as pack animals or as a source of wool. The later period at the
site crossed the boundary into the ceramic era and, together with
pottery, the diagnostic feature of the incipient Initial Period is
evident in the ceremonial U-shaped structures.
Although La Galgada was half-way between coast and mountains,
it was part of the so-called Kotosh Religious Tradition which is best
known from the highland sites of Shillacoto, Huaricoto, Waira-jirca
and the type-site of Kotosh. These ceremonial centres are character¬
ised by small private rooms, more suitable for limited numbers
of devotees than for the large public ceremonies so typical of coastal
sites. Built by local farming communities, these early centres would
seem to have focused their ritual on what have been called ‘fire
pits’ - centrally located stone-lined depressions where burnt
offerings were made. These features were regularly and carefully
‘buried’, thereby raising the level of the new but identical structures
built on top, and leading to mounds much like the tells of the
Middle East.
At Kotosh, where religious activity can be detected from about
2800 BC, the most famous structure is the ‘Temple of the Crossed
Hands’ which features two low-relief clay friezes of crossed hands
belonging to the late preceramic era known as the Mito Phase.
Offerings of guinea pigs and llamas have also been found in niches
during excavations. Nearby is the site of Shillacoto, and further
down towards the tropical rainforest is Waira-jirca which also seems
to have Mito Phase buildings. Despite partaking of the same general
cult beliefs and activities, the sites of the Kotosh Religious Tradition
also show local variation. At Huaricoto, for example, building was
not of stone and gives the impression of a less sophisticated version
Amerindian petroglyph from Trinidad. (© Author’s collection)

Carib church at Salybia, Dominica, with mural depicting Columbus’s arrival. (Author’s
collection)
 __

Olmec crying baby ceramic figurine. (Werner Forman and Dr Kurt Stavenhagen Collection,
Mexico City)
La Venta female figurine wearing polished iron ore mirror. (© 'Werner Forman and National
Museum of Anthropology, Mexico).
Danzante figure at Monte Alban. (© Author’s collection)
Teotihuacan funerary urn. (© Author’s collection)
The ball court at Monte Alban. (© Author’s collection)

Teotihuacan mural figure. (Werner Forman and Private Collection, New York)
Teotihuacan, Quetzalcoatl head at the Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl. (© Author’s collection)

The Aztec Calendar Stone. (Werner Forman and National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City).
Jade burial mask of Pacal from Palenque. (Werner Forman and National Museum of
Anthropology, Mexico City)
Above: A carved-stone
jaguar heart container.
(© Author’s collection)

Right: Statue of the god Xipe

Totec, ‘Our Lord the Flayed
One’. (Werner Forman and
Museum fur Volkerkunde,
Basel)
Above: Jaguar men fighting at
Acatlan. (© Author’s collection)

Left: Chavin-style pottery vessel

with stirrup spout and profile face
showing fangs and eye.
(© Author’s collection)

\
Above: Moche Sacrifice Scene
depicted on a mural from
Panamarca, showing a
priestess, helpers and victims.
(© Author’s collection)

Right: Nasca ceramic effigy of

a trophy head. (© Author’s
collection)
Above: Nasca desert drawing of a
hummingbird. (© Author’s
collection)

Left: Wari polychrome ceramic

with modeled human head and
feline decoration. (© Author’s
collection)
 \

Gateway of the Sun at Tiwanaku. (© Author’s collection)

General view of adobe-brick pyramid at El Purgatorio (Tucume) (Sican-Chimu-Inka;

AD 1375-1533): (© Author’s collection)
The Ponce Stela at Tiwanaku. (© Author’s collection)
 10" It? vis V w
tf^jPIP||P)0(9P Igp!||g|||

Adobe frieze at Huaca del Dragon in the Moche Valley, showing figures beneath a double¬
headed serpent. (© Author’s collection)

The Coricancha temple to the Sun God Inti in Cuzco with the colonial monastery of Santo
Domingo built on top. (© Author’s collection)
Above: Inka agricultural terraces above
the town of Pisac near Cuzco.
(© Author’s collection)

Left: Inka effigy ceramic showing man

carrying an aryballus on his back.
(©Werner Forman and Museum fur
Volkerkunde, Berlin).

\
 Andean Origins and Chavin 121

Fragment of a textile from Huaca Prieta (c. 2500-2000 BC) showing a condor with
a serpent in its stomach. (Roxanne Saunders, after M.E. Moseley, The Maritime
Foundations of Andean Civilization, Menlo Park, 1975)

of the other sites mentioned. Nevertheless, burnt offerings were

made, including that of shells and quartz crystals.
Away from the mountains, down on the dry desert coast, an
equally precocious preceramic site was that of Huaca Prieta, located
at the mouth of the Chicama river. The inhabitants depended on a
mix of locally grown domesticated food plants such as beans,
squash and peppers, and also maritime resources obtained by
collecting molluscs and fishing with nets. It was at Huaca Prieta that
the tradition of incising gourds with artistic motifs first appears in
Peru, though they had been made somewhat earlier in Ecuador by
people of the Valdivia culture. Their decoration included abstract
designs and anthropomorphic/zoomorphic faces and figures.
Huaca Prieta and La Galgada shared many aspects of material
culture at this time - reed baskets and bags, gourd containers, and the
basic but effective twining of cotton textiles. Here, the technical
process of production highlighted geometrical shapes, and it is perhaps
not surprising that abstract designs incorporating squares, straight
122 Ancient Americas

lines, chevrons and diamonds were a characteristic of early textile art.

Despite this, clearly representational designs were also made - Huaca
Prieta textiles show condors, fish and double-headed serpents.
Apart from these developments, the Andean practice of construct¬
ing huge ceremonial architecture also began during the Preceramic
Period. On the coast, the sites of Rio Seco, Salinas de Chao,
Bandurria and Aspero all belong to what archaeologists call the
Aspero Tradition - ceremonial architecture that emphasises flat-
topped mounds whose rituals could be observed by large numbers of
people, and thus possessed a very public function. Archaeological
evidence suggests that some of these sites were probably built by
people from several valleys coming together to construct what in
effect were corporate monuments.
Aspero itself is situated at the mouth of the Supe Valley on Peru’s
north coast and seems to have been thriving by about 3000 BC. Its
12ha area includes six major platforms and eleven smaller ones. Two
of Aspero’s monuments have been investigated archaeologically, those
of Huaca de los Idolos and Huaca de los Sacrificios. Several burials
have been excavated, but perhaps the most unusual discovery was a
cache of thirteen figurines of unbaked clay found on the summit of
Huaca de los Idolos (which takes its name from these ‘idols’). All were
broken, perhaps ritually smashed, and most represented women,
several of whom may have been pregnant. Whether these symbolically

An early example of a
Staff God with feline face
engraved on a gourd
from the Pativilca Valley
around 2230 BC.
(© Rozanne Saunders,
after J. Seagard, in J.
Haas and W. Creamer
‘Cultural Transform¬
ations in the Central
Andean Late Archaic’ in
H. Silverman (ed.),
Andean Archaeology,
Blackwell, Oxford, 2004
pp. 35-50, Fig. 3.2)
 Andean Origins and Cbavin 123

represented sacrifices, ancestors, or had been used in shamanic rituals

(as is attested for later periods) is unknown.
The largest of these Preceramic Period monuments does not
belong to the Aspero Cultural Tradition. El Paraiso, located just
2km from the ocean in the Chillon valley of central Peru, dates to
about 2000 BC. As with other similar sites, El Paraiso extends into
the early ceramic times of the Initial Period. The site covers some
58ha of the valley floor and is composed of nine main buildings all
constructed of stone blocks, some 100,000 tons in total. The
building technique employed collections of stones placed into fibre-
net bags called sbicras and used as fill. One estimate is that it took
about 2 million labour days to erect all of El Paraiso’s structures.
The U-shape appears in El Paraiso’s monumental architecture.
Inside some of the structures were found circular depressions whose
concentration of charcoal has led to the interpretion that these were
‘fire pits’ used in some form of religious ritual. Other evidence
includes the remains of domesticated plant foods and fish, though
not in sufficient quantities to suggest that the builders were living on
the site. The late preceramic date of El Paraiso - so close to the
beginning of the Initial Period - suggests to some experts that it may
be a site in transition, its U-shaped structures helping to usher in the
new ceramic era.
By the late Preceramic Period, the coastal valleys of Peru had seen
the development of large-scale architecture in huge centres with
populations of between a thousand and three thousand people. These
centres supported themselves on a mixed economy of agriculture and
maritime resources, and clearly were co-operating across valley (and
perhaps political and ethnic) boundaries in order to build such
massive corporate structures as El Paraiso, as well as lesser known
but equally monumental sites such as Caral in the Supe Valley.
Caral is a vast site covering llOha of ceremonial and residential
architecture and includes a nearby grouping of mounds and plazas
known as Chupacigarro. It appears that the site was occupied by
2450 BC, at which time the earliest of the subsequently widespread
sunken circular plazas was built. There are eight other large sites
with monumental architecture in the Supe Valley (in addition to
Aspero), and, together with similarly early sites from the adjacent
valleys of Pativilica, Fortaleza and Huaura, are so precocious that
they have been designated the Norte Chico (‘Little Northern’)
group.
 124 Ancient Americas

It is possible that when future investigations have cast more light

on these monumental sites the early prehistory of Peru may have to
be significantly reassessed. In the meantime, many experts believe
that it is the high degree of social co-operation that marks out this
period and that stamps itself firmly as a unique feature of early
Andean civilisation that was further developed on a regional basis in
later times down to the Inka period.

The Initial Period

Given a distinctive shape during the Preceramic Period, ancient

Peruvian civilisation accelerated at an ever-increasing pace during
the Initial Period (1800-900 BC). By just after 2000 BC, pottery
appears for the first time in prehistoric Peru, though there is archae¬
ological evidence that it had already been made for a thousand years
further north in Ecuador.
Apart from the appearance of ceramics, the defining feature of the
Initial Period was the erection of monumental buildings, usually of
mud-brick (adobe) construction, on the Pacific coast of Peru, and
clearly developing out of the tradition of huge architecture at the
end of the preceding Preceramic Period. At La Florida in the Rimac
Valley, a large U-shaped platform dates to c. 2000-1800 BC. Its con¬
struction took about 7 million labour days and clearly employed a
workforce drawn from the nearby Chillon and Lurin Valleys as well
as the Rimac Valley itself. There are many such monuments between
the Lurin and Chancay Valleys, such as Mina Perdida and San
Jacinto, with characteristically steep stairways leading up to the
summit of pyramids from a central plaza.
Some 8km inland from the coast in the Rimac Valley, the site of
Garagay seems first to have been inhabited after the demise of La
Florida, perhaps in about 1500 BC, and survived until about 900 BC.
It too was a U-shaped structure and was the largest site in the valley at
the time. One unusual find suggests an overlap with the ritual centre
of Chavin de Huantar in the highlands (see below); it is a piece of
stone wrapped in cotton thread, covered with shiny hematite and then
painted with a supernatural fanged deity similar to the one at the
oldest part of Chavin. Where the Chavin deity holds a staff in each
hand, this miniature has two cactus spines bound to its sides and also
contains a bead made from the ritually important Spondylus shell
which must originally have come from the warm waters of coastal
 Andean Origins and Chavin 125

Ecuador. Suggestively, the spines come from the powerfully hallucino¬

genic San Pedro cactus (Trichocereus pachanoi), whose image also
appears at Chavin, and which was (and still is) used by shamans
during their curing seances. Inducing powerful visions, perhaps seen
as making contact with the supernatural spirit realm, was clearly an
age-old practice in Peru.
Garagay is famous for the colourful, sculpted and unbaked clay
friezes which adorn the atrium of one of its temples. Originally
painted in yellow, blue, red and white, this frieze is known especially
for a profile monster-head shown with prominent fangs and associ¬
ated with spider imagery, suggesting perhaps a typically shamanic
mixing of animal imagery. After careful excavation and restoration
it was discovered that some of these images had been repainted up
to ten times, preserving the original colour scheme. The temple area
of the site was clearly a sacred place as votive offerings have been
found - small clay figurines swaddled in textile and displaying a
fanged and grimacing face. Contemporary with Garagay is the
southernmost U-shaped site of Cardal, located in the Lurin Valley.
Recently investigated by archaeologist Richard Burger during the
1980s, Cardal revealed sunken circular courts, the remains of friezes
similar to those at Garagay, as well as evidence of burnt offerings
around altar-like structures. It was clear also that the inhabitants of
Cardal were growing cotton and making textiles. There is evidence
of human burials, notably a male who was interred wearing a
necklace of sea lion teeth and bone earrings.
Also built during this period was what is probably the single
largest construction in the Americas at this time, the main U-shaped
pyramid at Sechin Alto in the Casma Valley. Dated to c. 1700 BC,
this building was twice the size of La Florida, its adobe core clad at
a later stage by huge stones, some weighing over 2 tons. It is 40m
high, and some fifteen times larger than the main temple at the more
famous site of Chavin de Huantar. The platform was part of the so-
called Sechin Alto Complex which sprawled over lOsq. km -
perhaps the accumulation of a thousand years of building activity.
Only a few kilometers away is Cerro Sechin with its famously
gruesome display of some four hundred stone carvings dated to
about 1500 BC. The carved stone images depict scenes of humans
who have been mutilated, presumably either in warfare or sacrificial
rites, their faces contorted in agony and their bowels spilling out on
to the earth. Human heads, dismembered body parts, rows of eyes
126 Ancient Americas

and vertebrae are everywhere, and seem to be the result of military

action as there are also a number of stone images representing
elaborately garbed (and presumably victorious) warriors. Whether
these grisly scenes show war victims, sacrificed prisoners of war, or
both, is not known. However, in typically Andean fashion, it may be
that these images do not record a single historical event, but a
mythological scene repeated over centuries and part of its society’s
claim to physical and spiritual ownership of the land.
Also situated in the Casma Valley is Moxeke, a huge sprawling site
of some 220ha that dates to the early part of the Initial Period,
between c. 1800 and 1400 BC. The architectural focus of the site is
formed by two large pyramids that face each other across a great
rectangular plaza. Early investigations of the largest structure brought
to light stunning and colourful clay sculptures arranged either side of
a monumental stairway. Originally some 3m tall, they depicted richly
dressed human figures and serpent symbols. The other main structure,
known as Huaca A, was divided into many small rooms and may
have been used for storage, perhaps of food or tribute.
Only 20km away is yet another huge site, that of Las Haldas
whose multi-stepped terraced platform has been dated to between
1600 and 1400 BC and is surrounded by seventeen smaller
pyramids, rectangular plazas and sunken circular courts. The whole
site extends over some 8ha, and archaeological evidence of subsist¬
ence illustrates that apart form the normal foods of potato, manioc
and squash, maritime resources were also exploited - fishing
weights, nets, and spine fish-hooks have all been found. However,
there is little evidence for full-time craftwork here.

The Early Horizon and Chavin de Huantar

The period from 900 to 200 BC is called the Early Horizon and is
known mainly from the highland site Chavin de Huantar and the
influence its art had on far-flung parts of the Andes and adjacent coast.
Chavin de Huantar is located in the northern Peruvian Andes, at
the confluence of two small rivers, the Mosna and the Huachecsa. It
is strategically sited to receive and distribute cultural influences
north-south along intermontane Valleys, and east-west between the
humid rainforests of the Amazonian rainforest slopes of the Andes
to the east and the desert valleys of the Pacific Coast to the west.
Significantly, it is also situated only a few hours’ walk away from
 Andean Origins and Chavin 127

three key environmental zones - irrigated valley floor, the potato

fields of the upper valley slopes, and the high puna grassland used
for grazing llamas and alpacas.
As with many other pre-Columbian culture sites, notably of the
Olmec and Classic Maya of Mesoamerica, the early investigators of
Chavin considered it a small ceremonial centre, mainly empty of
permanent occupation, but the focus perhaps of religious pilgrim¬
age. Today, the population evidence points in a different direction.
The Mosna and Huachecsa rivers show evidence of having been
canalised, there are traces of a Chavin-period stone bridge and also
of large areas of contemporary terracing nearby, all suggestive of a
larger site and a more permanent occupation of the area than
hitherto realised.
To this can now be added the results of archaeological investi¬
gations at the site itself and beneath the colonial-period town which
have revealed evidence of prehistoric houses and specialist craft
production. It is now clear that while Chavin de Huantar was
indeed an important religious centre with sophisticated monumental
architecture decorated with startling imagery, it also had a sizeable
resident population. These recent excavations have identified three
main phases for the prehistory of Chavin, beginning in about 1000
BC and lasting until 200 BC.
The earliest period is called the Urabarriu Phase (1000-500 BC),
and it was during this time that Chavin civilisation really took root.
Chavin was a relatively small religious centre at this time, with
perhaps a resident population of just a few hundred people. It may
already have been divided into two parts - an upper sacred area which
included the temple, and a lower secular part serving as a living area,
and which also featured a massive wall, parts of which can still be
seen today. It seems as if these two parts of the site were separated by
about half a kilometre of (perhaps ritually) unoccupied land.
It may be, too, that the impressive wall of the lower area served
partly to regulate access to the site from the lower Mosna river
valley and the eastern jungles beyond. The everyday pottery, stone
and bone tools found here indicate this was an occupation area, and
suggest that its gallery-like buildings might have been used for
storage of tribute or offerings brought to the site.
In the upper section of the site it was the religious architecture
which dominated the view. The so-called ‘Old Temple’ is widely
believed to be the oldest major construction here. It was clearly the
 128 Ancient Americas

focus of religious rituals and was built in a U shape enclosing a

circular sunken court whose walls were adorned with a procession of
Chavin-style jaguars and half-jaguar/half-human supernatural beings.
The temple building itself was riddled with cleverly made galleries
that may have been designed for their acoustic properties, and that
focused on the great knife-like slab of stone called the Lanzon which
seems to represent the great deity of Chavm (see below).
Despite the clear division of the site into two parts separated by
the strip of unoccupied land, there is evidence of Chavm as a func¬
tioning pan-regional pilgrimage centre at this time. Discovered
spread across both the upper and lower sections of the site are
marine shells and pottery from outside the area, suggesting not only
a close interaction between the two parts of the site, but also a wide¬
spread network of contacts throughout prehistoric Peru and perhaps
beyond.
The following period is known as the Chakinani Phase (500-400
BC), and during this time people moved from the northernmost part
of the site to gather around the temple area on both sides of the
Huachecsa river. This area now grows to cover an estimated 15ha,
and the site in general continues to suck in exotic goods from far-
flung regions, including now the first appearance of the black
volcaninc glass obsidian. During the short-lived Chakinani Period,
Chavfn’s reputation as a pilgrimage centre continued to grow.
The final occupation period at Chavm is known as the Janabarriu
Phase (400-200 BC), during which time the site grew at a phenomenal
speed to cover more than 42ha. The main structure was the New
Temple, built in two parts: first as an extension of the southern part of
the Old Temple, then a platform mound with a rectangular sunken
court immediately to the east. The entrance to the New Temple was
via a megalithic stairway, one half of which was carved of white stone,
the other half of black. At the top of the stairway was an impressive
portico entrance flanked by one black and one white column carved
with mythological creatures (see below).
In those areas given over to basic housing there is clear evidence
for a cottage-industry arrangement of craft specialisation where jet
mirrors and ear-spools were made and that are found alongside
everyday cooking pottery. For this time also there is evidence that
obsidian working was being carried on in specially designated areas
of the site. Elsewhere, fossils, gold jewellery and several caches of
the ritually important Spondylus shell were discovered.
 Andean Origins and Chavin 129

Population expanded not only at the ceremonial centre itself but

also on the surrounding valley slopes, and may have reached
between two thousand and three thousand people. The local
population were in all probablility joined by those of the surround¬
ing region and together being organised to create large public works,
such as valley-floor terracing and drainage, and the new religious
buildings attached to the Old Temple. This wider support area
included small villages such as Waman Wain and Pojoc that all have
early Chavin levels and thus appear to have been part of the phe¬
nomenon from its inception. Artwork from these rural sites is also in
the Chavin style but of a more rustic variety, such as the Chavin-
style feline little more than etched on to a block of sandstone and
found in the village of Waman Wain, and a more sophisticated
image of a Chavin anthropomorphic supernatural carrying a trophy
head from the small village of Yurayacu some 5km downstream of
Chavin itself.
It seems that these agricultural hamlets contributed food, goods
and labour to the elite who controlled the site of Chavin. This is
clearly an ancient tradition in the Andes, and survived into the
twentieth century when nearby villages sent labourers to the town of
Chavin de Huantar to help build and maintain the church and town
hall, the modern-day equivalent to the high-status temples of
prehistoric times.

Chavin art and religion

Although Chavin de Huantar was a large and clearly prestigious

ceremonial centre during Janabarriu times, it was the monumental
architecture and art which have proved its most enduring legacy. It
was in its art that Chavin most forcefully expressed its complex
metaphorical messages and ideology that so influenced many other
contemporary and later civilisations.
Undoubtedly, Chavin’s strategic location was a key to its success.
Intriguingly, its art reflects this, with a strong sense of the Amazon
rainforest in its sophisticated iconography. The animals so
masterfully depicted by Chavin artists are not the Andean puma,
condor, or llama, but denizens of the jungle, such as the harpy eagle,
jaguar and cayman. Even today, these are the classic animal familiars
of powerful Amazonian shamans - creatures of sorcery and myth,
whose cosmic identity associates them with shamans, priests and
 130 Ancient Americas

chiefs among the living, and the ancestors of the past. In prehistory,
while Chavin was an Andean phenomenon, much of its spiritual
inspiration appears to have come from the tropical rainforests.
More generally, from the archaeological standpoint the imagery of
Chavin art provides one of the most insightful manifestations of
shamanic worldview. Jungle animals (often dangerous predators), in
their entirety and in isolated elements, are deconstructed and rebuilt,
with different parts used to create supernatural beings. In South
America, during prehistory and today, shamans often ritually consume
powerful hallucinogens to connect with the spirit realm. Some of
Chavin’s imagery gives the impression of being drug-induced, but most
convincing are the examples which depict supernatural beings holding
the well-known hallucinogenic San Pedro cactus.
Jungle influences may have reached Chavin via the small site of
Kotosh, the early cult centre on the eastern slopes of the Andes, and
lying only 35km from the edge of the tropical rainforest. Although
Kotosh and other contemporary sites long predate Chavin - with
evidence of religious architecture, pottery and maize - the period
after c. 890 BC yields only typically Chavin designs on pottery, gold
and bone.
Most of Chavin’s art focuses on realistic and fantastical represent¬
ations of felines, most likely the jaguar, though other smaller spotted
cats such as the ocelot (Felis pardalis) may have been included. The
feline image was not only important in its entirety, but also in its
constituent parts, inasmuch as fangs, snouts, claws and the animal’s
rosette markings could stand alone, or be variously incorporated
into anthropomorphic beings - perhaps as a symbol of supernatural
status. For example, we see how the snarling cat-mouth with its
prominent lips and bared fangs often replaces the normal mouth of
humans or other animals and thus seems to be a transferable motif,
either felinising another animal (or human) or lending itself to a
totally fantastical supernatural being.
Closely associated with the feline element, and equally prominent
in art, is the substitution of serpents for body hair - a typically
Chavin metaphor first studied by the scholar John Rowe. Many of
Chavin de Huantar’s great art pieces have snakes instead of hair,
suggesting a widely recognised and deepfelt symbolic connection.
These artistic elements lay at the heart of the Chavin style, a style
which appears to have embodied many concepts that were under¬
stood and attractive to people across ancient Peru at the time, and
 Andean Origins and Chavin 131

thus spread far and wide, either

directly or indirectly by influencing
local art styles.
Chavin’s great artworks were
produced throughout the lifespan of
the site, from the Old Temple begin¬
nings to the New Temple heyday. The
focal point of the Old Temple and its
honeycomb of interior galleries, pas¬
sages and ventilation shafts was and
remains the Lanzon, a lance-like shaft
of white granite some 4.5m tall. The
size and central position of this im¬
posing sculpture suggest it may be the
oldest item here. Perhaps the whole of
the Old Temple was built around the
sculpture, which functioned as a fear¬
some repre-sentation of a deified
ancestor of the Chavin people. The
Lanzon represents a striking anthro¬
pomorphic deity, variously referred to
as the ‘Smiling God’ or the ‘Snarling
God’. It has an upturned cat-like
mouth and projecting fangs, and hair
on eyebrows and head have turned
into long swirling serpents. A girdle
and a long upward-projecting head¬
dress are both made up of small feline
heads with snarling mouths and
crossed fangs. This fearsome super¬
natural being appears male, and its

The El Lanzon figure at Chavin de Huantar

with protruding fangs and feline and serpent
decoration. (© Pauline Stringfellow, after
J.H. Rowe, ‘Form and Meaning in Chavin
Art’, in J.H. Rowe and D. Menzel (eds),
Peruvian Archaeology: Selected Readings,
Peek Publications, Palo Alto, pp. 72-103.
Fig 5.)
132 Ancient Americas

central location in dark echoing galleries would have made it an

intimidating sight.
The fascination with feline imagery is also evident outside the Old
Temple’s galleries, where a spectacular procession of jaguars and
half-human/half-feline supernatural beings adorns the circular
sunken court which is part of the Old Temple layout. Only dis¬
covered in 1972 by the Peruvian archaeologist Luis Lumbreras, two
parallel levels of beautifully rendered low-relief images show jaguars
in profile and anthropomorphic creatures with clawed hands,
serpent hair and snarling cat-mouths. Originally, carved stone
anthropomorphic heads with feline features decorated the exterior
walls of the Old Temple. With a single exception, these startling
faces have long since disappeared, and now lay in museums, the
temple’s interior galleries, or private collections.
Perhaps the most intriguing supernatural creature from the Old
Temple is that represented on the so-called ‘Tello Obelisk’, a
rectangular granite shaft carved on all four sides. Its central mythical
image, identified as being based on South America’s black cayman
(■Melanosucbus niger), has been designated Cayman A and Cayman
B, relating to the watery underworld and the sky respectively. This is
a richly decorated piece of stone sculpture, heavy with motifs,
symbols and allusions - with images of birds, plants, shells and fish
- yet all, it seems, of a piece in the snarling cat-mouth motif that
appears throughout, and which made the sculpture a coherent whole
in the minds of those who created it.
During Janabarriu times at the New Temple, a granite slab known
today as the Raimondi Stela was carved. It features the image of a
standing human grasping a staff in each hand that has been sub¬
sequently referred to as the Staff God. The deity’s hands and feet are
clawed, it has a face (or wears a mask) with bared fangs, has prom¬
inent upward-staring eyes, and snakes emerge from its belt. The
staffs themselves are decorated in characteristic Chavin style, with
feline heads and cat-mouths. Only the lower third of the granite slab
is taken up with this figure, the rest is filled with an elaborate
headdress composed of fanged masks and serpents.
It is likely that the Staff God was not a new deity but a late-
Chavin version of the earlier supreme being represented on the
Lanzon, albeit in a more dazzlingly stylised (and human) form.
Indeed, the Staff God itself seems to be much older than Chavin,
with the earliest known examples coming from two incised gourds
 Andean Origins and Chavin 133

found in the Pativilca Valley on the coast and dated to 2230 BC.
Other representations at Chavin show the Staff God holding the
ritually important Spondylus and strombus shells, perhaps as
symbols representing the female and male principles (values they
certainly possessed in later times). Artistic themes found in the Old
Temple continue into the new era - tenoned heads with their
references to hallucinogenic religious rituals, and the imagery of
felines, caymans, and raptorial birds. Arguably most famous of the
New Temple constructions is the Black and White Portal referred to

Carving of shaman-priest wearing jaguar and serpent regalia at Chavin de Huantar.

(© Pauline Stringfellow, after P. Roe, ‘Recent Discoveries in Chavin Art’. El
Dorado 3 (1), 1978, pp. 1-41. Fig 1)
134 Ancient Americas

above, whose two columns each carry intricate carvings of anthro¬

pomorphic raptorial birds. These creatures, perhaps the spirit-
helpers of the main deity, have grotesque upturned heads (or masks)
with snarling feline-mouths combined with a bird of prey beak, and
wings rendered in an ultra-stylised Chavm manner with cat-mouths
and bared fangs. Each grasps a staff and has clawed hands and feet
in precisely the same way as the Staff God of the Raimondi Stela.
It is the Janabarriu-phase Staff God who appears as a popular
motif in other parts of Peru during the Early Horizon, suggesting
perhaps that Chavm art (and maybe its ideology) was reinterpreted
by local cultures whose representatives had visited the site and
returned home with portable images of the main deity. Such local
variations of Chavin imagery are found throughout the Andes and
adjacent coastal regions.
In the northern Andes, the inhabitants of Pacopampa restructured
their temple to imitate the architecture of Chavm, and their pottery
and stone-carving were also influenced by its style. Similarly, Chavm
influence can be seen in the mud-brick (adobe) sculptures at Caballo
Muerto in the Moche Valley on the adjacent north coast. Elaborate
stirrup-spout ceramics bearing Chavin-related jaguar and bird
imagery have also been found on the north coast, as has an em¬
bossed golden crown decorated with the image of Chavm’s main
deity and other similar items found at the site of Chongoyape.
On the south coast, spectacular tomb textiles from Karwa near
Paracas depict Staff God images painted on to cotton. At this time,
it seems, Chavin artistic influence was widespread, from rock
carvings to stone sculptures (including highly polished feline-shaped
stone mortars and pestles), to pottery, bone, shell and goldwork,
including crowns and miniature jaguar shapes presumably for
attachment to textiles.
The evidence of Chavin-influenced art among many different
prehistoric societies throughout Peru suggests that at least parts of
its religious worldview and ideology were attractive beyond its
Andean Valley homeland. It is also increasingly apparent that some
motifs and designs, previously thought to have originated at Chavin,
appear earlier elsewhere. In this case, pilgrims and visitors to Chavin
may have taken these images and ideas with them, and the master
craftsmen of Chavin then created bold new hybrid forms in new
media - from delicate goldwork to highly polished stonework and
sophisticated pottery. Nevertheless, as has long been thought,
 Andean Origins and Chavin 135

Chavm de Huantar was an extraordinarily successful and influential

ritual and pilgrimage centre which attracted devotees from all over
ancient Peru and was itself a focus of economic interaction in terms
of long-distance trade and perhaps llama herding activities.
It is possible, as some experts believe, that Chavm was an oracle,
and that the many different examples of Chavm motifs from across
the Andes indicate that part of the oracle’s sacredness and power
was transferred to other distant shrines, locally interpreted but
ultimately deriving their spiritual efficacy from Chavm itself.

Chavin’s legacy

Such had been the effect of Chavin’s dominance as a cult centre and
pilgrimage destination that long after the site itself had ceased to
function, it retained its sacred aura. The dazzling artwork and
memory of its heyday combined to make it a sacred place, a location
where myth, art, a spiritual landscape and a shamanic view of the
world came together. Chavin de Huantar slipped into what, to
Western eyes would appear a curious but influential limbo - cut off
from its historical past, yet living on in the spiritual present.
The tenacity of ancient Andean belief systems is evident at
Chavin. During the seventeenth century, the Spanish chronicler
Antonio Vasquez de Espinosa observed that at the time he was
writing, Chavm was a religious centre comparable to Jerusalem or
Rome. In other words, some two millennia after its heyday, and a
century after the Spanish conquest, the site of Chavin de Huantar
was still an important pilgrimage centre for indigenous Andean
peoples.
 EIGHT

Mocbe

Moche civilisation (also called the Mochica), flourished on

T the north coast of Peru between AD 100 and 750. This fell
mainly within the Early Intermediate Period of Peruvian prehistory
(200 BC-AD 600), though continued on into the early part of the
succeeding Middle Horizon (AD 600-1000). The Moche are justly
famous for three cultural features - huge adobe (mud brick) struc¬
tures, a richly expressive repertoire of modelled and painted
ceramics, and a uniquely innovative tradition of sophisticated
metalworking.
Moche civilisation was part of a North Coast cultural tradition
and emerged between AD 100 and 200 from an earlier culture
known as Gallinazo. The heartland seems to have been in the
Moche and Chicama Valleys from where, in about AD 400, tradi¬
tional thinking saw the Moche as extending their control through
military conquest south and north along the coast. However, what
was once considered to have been a straightforward process of
conquest has now been revised to a more cautious approach. There
were, it seems, differences between the process which brought the
northern and southern valleys into the Moche sphere of influence,
with different historical trajectories being experienced by individual
valleys.
Many aspects of Moche civilisation had their origins in the
preceding Gallinazo culture (which began c. 100 BC) to such an
extent that recent interpretations suggest that Moche was merely a
later phase of its predecessor. It seems as if many Gallinazo cultural
features continued well into the Moche period. Certainly, there were
shared aspects of cultural behaviour evident in elite burials, pottery
forms and monumental adobe architecture. Sophisticated metal¬
working and pottery with the distinctive stirrup-spout handle were
all to become diagnostic of Moche culture yet all were present
during the Gallinazo period. Only in the ceramics belonging to the
ruling elite were there significant differences. Here, high-quality
138 Ancient Americas

Moche pottery was decorated in a more sophisticated way than its

plainer Gallinazo predecessors - an insight, perhaps, into changing
ideas and practices surrounding the representation of political and
ideological power.

Religion, power and pyramids

Embodying and representing the power and prestige of Moche

civilisation are its two major constructions, the Huaca del Sol
(Pyramid of the Sun) and Huaca de la Luna (Pyramid of the Moon),
both located on the lower reaches of the Moche river valley.
The Huaca del Sol is thought to be a royal palace and mausoleum
for the ruling dynasty, as shown by the discovery of elite burials
beneath its various terraces. However, it was also a secular site where
the everyday business of empire and administration took place, as
evidenced by domestic refuse. It was constructed of an estimated 143
million adobes, the largest mud-brick building in the Americas.
Today, about one third remains due to the destruction of the
remainder by the Spanish who diverted the Moche river to cut into
its flanks in their search for buried gold. Although there is tantalising
evidence that gold artefacts were found, the Spanish looting did have
one beneficial effect. By eroding through the Huaca del Sol the river
effectively cut a cross-section through the structure and laid bare the
construction techniques used by the Moche builders.
Given the scale of the building, its eight-stage construction prob¬
ably took several generations, and employed many different labour
gangs working simultaneously to a given plan. This became clear
when it was discovered that each and every one of the millions of
adobes used was stamped with one of about 100 makers’ signs.
While we can never be certain, it is likely that the bricks were made
by individual communities whose workers were organised into
groups who were responsible for building vertical sections of the
structure with their own marked bricks and with both the adobes
and the construction efforts being part of a labour tax (known as
mita in later Inka times).
While probably contemporary with the Huaca del Sol, the smaller
Huaca de la Luna seems to have had a different function, and cer¬
tainly possessed aspects of construction and decoration that were
not present in the larger pyramid. Built at the base of a (perhaps
sacred) hill known as Cerro Blanco, the Huaca de la Luna was made
 Mocbe 139

up of three interconnected platforms surrounded by high walls, the

two largest platforms showing evidence of having been enlarged or
reconstructed on various occasions, whereas the smallest one, once
finished, was never touched again.
An important feature is the presence of some of the most astonish¬
ing multi-coloured murals known from the Moche area; they depict
typically supernatural creatures in human and animal form, as well
as unusual animated items such as war clubs and shields. Some
motifs show a snarling central face whose swirling hair and sur¬
rounding elements end in a bird-shaped head. Others depict grimac¬
ing anthropomorphic beings with upturned comma-shaped eyes,
elaborate headdresses and arms that divide into looping designs and
that end with zoomorphic heads shown in profile.
While the two principal constructions of the Huaca del Sol and
Huaca de la Luna are the focal point of the settlement centred on
Cerro Blanco, the area was also one of intense occupation and craft
specialisation. Excavations have revealed the remains of metal¬
working, pottery production and the manufacture of elite jewellery
made from lapis lazuli, and the ritually important Spondylus seashell.
Investigations of the area between the two pyramids have revealed the
houses where the Moche lived, apparently divided into three classes,
with those of highest rank (and greatest material possessions) in the
area nearest to the Huaca de la Luna.

Art and society

As the Huaca de la Luna’s murals indicate, the Moche are famous

for their outstanding artworks, achieved notably in precious metals
and some of the most extraordinary pottery in the Americas. Moche
pottery combined the symbolic with the realistic in ways which force
us to question our own conceptions of the natural and supernatural
worlds (and the boundaries between them) in our attempts to
interpret them. Technically brilliant and beautifully decorated as
Moche ceramics and metalwork are, they are nevertheless the
product of a state system and official style, as well as embodiments
of a worldview or natural philosophy very different from that of the
modern West.
Moche ceramics come in a variety of forms, though the typically
North Coast stirrup-spout handle is ubiquitous. Indeed, the different
forms of the stirrup-spout have been divided into five types, each of
140 Ancient Americas

which appears at a different time, but, confusingly, older forms con¬

tinued to be made and used alongside new ones. Such has been the
amount of attention given to the changing shape of stirrup-spout
handles that the stages in their evolution have been taken to form
the basis of Moche chronology: Moche Period 1 (AD 50-100),
Moche Period 2 (AD 100-200), Moche Period 3 (AD 200-450),
Moche Period 4 (AD 450-550), and Moche Period 5 (AD 550-800).
These ceramics were made to a standardised form in moulds and
appear to have been used mainly for pouring libations during reli¬
gious ceremonies. It is thought that those specialists who manu¬
factured Moche ceramics developed a series of abstract picture signs
which conveyed information to others within the tightly knit potter
community. Although not an early writing system, such signs have
been termed a kind of proto-writing.
Given the spiritual importance of sound, wind, music and human
breath in South America, it is perhaps not surprising to find such
accomplished potters as the Moche producing double-chambered
stirrup-spout ceramics that whistle as the libation is poured out.
Many of these, not surprisingly, are bird-shaped items. As we will
shortly see, there may also have been a highly specific association of
whistling with human sacrifice.
Stirrup-spout handles are found on the two main kinds of Moche
pottery, those which were shaped as effigies of animals, myth¬
ological creatures and realistically portrayed human faces; and those
whose flat surface was decorated with the superbly rendered fine-
line paintings of ritual and mythological (and probably partly
historical) scenes.
Effigy ceramics are of several different kinds, some realistically
depicting real-life tasks, such as a bowl which shows four individuals
engaged in metalworking. Most, however, are either the so-called
portrait vessels of individual people, or beautifully modelled repre¬
sentations of half-human, half-animal beings, perhaps humans
wearing animals masks, and, conceivably, animal images as
metaphors for certain kinds of individuals such as war captives.
Always richly dressed - they wear mantles and headdresses - these
creatures sometimes look like deer. Situated within a wider study of
Moche art, it seems likely that deer could represent an enemy warrior
and perhaps also an enemy captive about to be sacrificed. There
seems to be a conceptual equivalence in Moche art between warfare
(i.e. the hunting of men), and deer-hunting perhaps as symbolic war.
 Moche 141

It may be that in both cases humans and deer were captured only, or
mainly, for sacrifice. Other, more clearly zoomorphic representations
show llamas, jaguars and birds such as the macaw.
Some of the most intriguing of Moche effigy pots are those that
represent what appear to be real people. These portrait vessels have
become an international icon of Moche culture, exhibited in
museums worldwide. Yet this ubiquity is misleading, for in Moche
times such objects were limited in time and space. They were pro¬
duced in only three of the fifteen valleys occupied by the Moche -
the heartland of the Moche Valley, Chicama Valley, and Viru Valley
- and produced almost entirely during the period AD 200-550 (i.e.
Moche Periods 3 and 4). Before and after this time, human faces
were rendered in a standardised generic fashion. While the realistic
portrait vessels were made in large quantities, they clearly had a
significance beyond that of simply being a more technically and
artistically accomplished kind of pottery.
Christopher Donnan, the expert on Moche ceramics, has observed
that the explosion of portrait vessels coincided with a wider trend in
Moche art, away from representing supernatural beings and towards
depicting elite individuals, and that the practice ended during the AD
560s as Moche culture underwent dramatic changes. It seems likely
that as Moche culture reached its zenith, the military, political and
ideological power of the ruling elite also climaxed, one consequence
being the appearance of ceramic vessels that represented them in a
highly personal and thus recognisable way. Whether this recognition
factor was purely one of self-aggrandisement, or was perhaps aimed
at the spirit world (or both) is not known.
On some occasions, multiple portrait vessels of the same indi¬
vidual were made from the same ceramic mould, although painted
and adorned differently. Even more insightful are the forty-five
portrait vessels apparently showing the scarred face of a single male
at various ages, from around ten years old to maturity at thirty. On
full-figure portrait vessels, it is sometimes possible to recognise an
individual at various stages of adult life - as an elaborately-dressed
warrior accompanied by full paraphernalia, to a naked and bound
captive about to be sacrificed. It seems likely that, as with the
Classic Maya in Mesoamerica, such combat-related scenes had a
strong ceremonial nature that stressed the high status of those about
to be ritually killed, and thus added to the prestige of the captor/
sacrificer in ways that were artistically framed in the medium of
142 Ancient Americas

pottery. Scenes that depict such activities may not be straightforward

records of war, but perhaps more sophisticated ideological
manipulations of ceremonial events.
Fine-line ceramics were often painted with a background cream-
coloured slip upon which delicately painted figures and scenes were
rendered. For several decades, this kind of pottery has been the
subject of painstaking investigations by Christopher Donnan and his
colleagues. Their conclusions show how the Moche used a symbolic
code and several major themes to illustrate the complex link
between mythology, set scenes and a cast of natural and super¬
natural characters. These images depicted scenes and ceremonies
associated with war, prisoner capture, human sacrifice and prob¬
ably also the acting out of important myths in grand events that
combined all three elements. Among the major themes so far identi¬
fied are the so-called ‘burial theme’ and ‘presentation theme’ (now
more usualy called the ‘Sacrifice Ceremony’). In the latter, the main
actor is an elaborately dressed individual called the ‘Warrior Priest’
who drinks the blood of sacrificed prisoners from a ceremonial
goblet.
Apart from ceramics, the Moche also excelled at metalworking.
Recent archaeological investigations and technical analyses have
shown that Moche metalwork is arguably the finest technological
achievement in ancient South America. During the Moche era, their
master craftsmen innovated new ways of gilding, alloying and
colouring metals to such a high degree of excellence that some
experts regard Andean metallurgy as Moche metallurgy. The ways in
which metalworking was integrated with, and representative of,
Moche society are illustrated by the extraordinary discoveries made
by the Peruvian archaeologist Walter Alva at the site of Sipan in
Lambayeque Valley north of the Moche homeland.
Sipan itself consists of the eroded remains of two large adobe-
brick pyramids and a burial platform built between AD 1 and 300.
Here, since 1987, have been found twelve tombs of high-ranking
Moche individuals, whose grave goods have allowed a social
classification of those buried into rulers, priests, warrior-leaders, and
assistants to these high-ranking individuals. Such were the quality
and quantity of mortuary goods, that it has been possible to suggest
interpretations concerning the complex symbolism of duality for
Moche social identity as manifested by paired ornaments and items
made of two precious metals, gold and silver.
 Moche 143

Tomb 1 has been described as the richest unlooted tomb ever found
in the Americas, and contained the remains of a royal personage
called the ‘Lord of Sipan’. He was accompanied into the Moche
afterlife by eight retainers. The untouched burial chamber contained a
wooden coffin within which were the remains of a male about forty
years old. Surrounding him, in niches and cane coffins, were three
adult men, three young women, one adult woman and a child.
Over four hundred and fifty further items were buried in the
tomb, some of them masterpieces of the metalworker’s art. These
included metal banners composed of small metal squares sewn on to
cloth, fringed with metal depictions of the ulluchu fruit and with a
central image of an embossed anthropomorphic figure; pectorals
made of thousands of shell beads; ear discs of gold and turquoise; a
spectacular necklace of peanut-shaped pendants, made of gold on
the right half and silver on the left; a gold and silver sceptre/knife
decorated with scenes associated with prisoner-capture; the remains
of a gold and feather headdress; and two ceremonial items called
backflaps, one of gold, the other silver.
Tomb 2 contained the individual referred to as the ‘Priest’, and
was probably contemporary with Tomb 1. This also contained an
adult male around forty years old and who was accompanied by six
retainers, one of whom had had his feet cut off. Although generally
of less high quality than in Tomb 1, the objects found in Tomb 2
were also impressive. They included a great owl-shaped gilded-
copper headdress with pendant metal squares, a bimetallic backflap,
half gold, half silver, and a ceremonial goblet. The items buried here
suggest that this individual could be identified as the so-called Bird
Priest figure shown in sacrifice scenes of Moche pottery.
Tomb 3, the last of the major burials, yielded the remains of the
individual dubbed the ‘Old Lord of Sipan’, so-called because this
was a much earlier interment. The individual buried in this smaller
and more basic tomb was around fifty years old, and had only one
female retainer and a llama interred with him. Despite this, the
metalwork was again of the highest quality and included an
anthropomorphic crab-being made of gilded copper, two small
sceptres (one of gold, the other silver), an elaborate copper burial
mask with a necklace of owl heads, and a stunning necklace
composed of ten discs each of which represented a spider on whose
back was a human face ‘trapped’ in the centre of a filigree web. A
set of ten backflaps, a nose-ornament incorporating a miniature gold
144 Ancient Americas

and turquoise warrior figure, and various weapons were also

included.
Besides the remains of a looted tomb, nine other burials were
found whose contents suggested they accompanied lesser members
of Sipan’s elite. In addition to metalwork (notably copper
headdresses), these contained such varied mortuary offerings as
ceramic pan pipes, weapons, llama heads, headless llamas, shell-
bead jewellery, pottery, sceptres and small ceramic masks. Perhaps
the most important feature of these varied burials and their contents
was that the excavated objects were those that appeared on Moche
ceramics portraying scenes associated with rulership and its many
ceremonial aspects.
As Walter Alva has observed, what emerges as most significant
from these extraordinary discoveries is the way in which objects
represent and embody the hierarchical relationships of Moche
society. In life, the different ranks are shown in great detail on fine-
line pottery, perhaps re-enacting cosmic myths as well as fighting
(portrayed realistically, and perhaps metaphorically as deer hunts),
taking prisoners, presenting them to the ruler, and humiliating and
sacrificing them to the gods. In death, the elite are discovered buried
with these same items of clothing and paraphernalia. Thus there is a
strong, though not always straightforward, correlation between how
the elite of Moche society saw themselves in relation to what we
regard as the utterly distinct arenas of myth and history. Archae¬
ology has revealed the existence of these correlations, though to
what extent they reflect historical reality throughout the Moche area
is much more difficult to assess.
Archaeology and art history combine in the investigation of the
Moche, where excavations have yielded physical remains of people
and their paraphernalia that appear the same as those items repre¬
sented on fine-line painted scenes. Occasionally, as with the effigy
vessels, fine-line pots portray real-life tasks, such as the inside of a
dish which shows women weaving elaborate textiles on backstrap
looms, a type which can still be seen in use today.

Sacrifice

In recent years, dramatic new discoveries have been made that

throw intriguing light on the relationship between Moche human
sacrifice, cosmology, religion and also, perhaps, the unique climatic
 Moche 145

event known as El Nino. Moche ceramics display many images of

the imminent ritual decapitation of sacrificial victims which suggest
a cut through the neck from front to back, and the subsequent
drinking of the deceased’s blood in a ceremonial goblet. In 1994,
at the well-named site of Dos Cabezas (‘Two Heads’) in the
Jequetepeque Valley, a unique discovery of eighteen decapitated
heads was made. Nearby, and contemporary, were the remains of a
man holding a ceramic head in one hand and a functional copper
tumi knife in the other. The whole assemblage has been interpreted
as the body of a real-life decapitator individual, perhaps the same
one responsible for the eighteen heads lying nearby.
In the Moche Valley, excavations of the Huaca de la Luna have
also yielded new insights into Moche sacrifical activities. Built
between the sixth and seventh centuries AD, Plaza 3A and Platform
II have yielded unexpected and still not fully understood human
remains, almost certainly a series of layered sacrifices representing
six ritual events and some seventy human bodies in the plaza, and
four tombs in platform.
Excavation by Steve Bourget and his colleagues revealed that an
older Moche cemetery had been partly removed in order to
construct this plaza and platform, upon whose completion three
children were buried, two of which were headless and may have
been decapitated (alternatively, they may simply have been buried,
their heads removed, after a natural death). One of the children
was still grasping one of two small ceramic whistles in his right
hand. Not long after this interment it seems there was a heavy
downpour which washed a deposit of clay over part of the plaza,
after which the childrens’ burial space was surrounded by a wall of
adobe bricks. At this point, there was nothing unusual in this dis¬
covery, as sacrifices were often made throughout the Americas to
dedicate and sanctify new religious structures. However, compari¬
son of the child burial with the two whistles and Moche ceramic
iconography reveals a possible association between pottery images
representing figures carrying (possibly dead female) children and
whistling pots.
Further careful investigation revealed that on this same spot, five
adults had later been sacrificed during a second downpour, and then
more again after the liquid mud had hardened into clay. Holes had
then been dug into the ground and filled with human remains and
clay effigies of nude male figures each of which had a rope tightened
146 Ancient Americas

around his neck. These figures were then ritually smashed.

Sometime later, during another heavy rainfall, more people were
killed again on the same spot and later, after the mud had again
dried, still more were sacrificed. What is notable about this sequence
of superimposed bodies is that they were all concentrated in a small
area next to the possibly sacred rocky outcrop of Cerro Blanco, and
their numbers increased at each event. Analysis of the bones indi¬
cates that all the bodies except those of the children were warriors
captured in conflict. Interestingly, a bird-shaped whistle was found
with these warrior remains, suggesting perhaps, and according to
the excavator, a symbolic association between whistling and ritual
death, whether of children or adults.
In a fortuitous discovery in one of the nearby platform tombs
were found two items associated with the looted remains of a sixty-
year-old male who may have been a priest-warrior. The first was a
stirrup-spouted effigy pot depicting an elaborately garbed male
holding a mace of the same kind shown on pottery depictions of
warfare and of hunting both of deer and sea lions. Also found was a
wooden mace which analysis revealed to have been drenched in
human blood. This find suggests that the individual buried in the
tomb may have used the mace interred with him to sacrifice some of
the victims in the plaza below. It also supports the interpretation
already mentioned that there was a connection in the Moche mind
between hunting/sacrificing human warriors and deer (and probably
also sea lions). Whatever the truth may be concerning this intriguing
set of discoveries, the relationship between human sacrifice and
torrential rain is suggestive of an association with the El Nino events
that took place in the area during the late Moche era.

Empire

At its height, Moche influence extended from the Piura area in the
north to the Huarmey Valley in the south and over offshore islands
as well as the mainland valleys. The nature of Moche political
control was subtle and regionally appropriate, with strong
centralisation in the small valleys to the south* and a more co¬
operative approach in the populous larger valleys to the north.
Archaeologists agree that Moche civilisation was an original and
innovative state that managed to weld together large areas of Peru’s
northern and central coasts for the first time.
 Moche 147

In the southern valleys, the Moche built large-scale architecture as

a symbol of their imperial presence. Sites such as Panamarca in the
Nepena Valley and Huancaco in the Viru Valley followed the designs
of the Moche heartland, and administered trade, tribute and
craftwork for the imperial centre. It seems likely that Moche control
was spread militarily in many of these valleys, and that military and
sacrifice scenes depicted on pottery reflect the activities of Moche
warriors in these events. Such scenes suggest that Moche warfare
was often concerned as much with gaining captives for sacrifice as
with extending the borders of the state - in this sense at least mak¬
ing the Moche somewhat similar to the Classic Maya of Meso-
america. However, as with the Maya, it is dangerous to assume that
ritual motives were at the heart of conflict rather than an integral
part of it.
In the northern valleys, the Moche appear to have adopted a more
sophisticated divide-and-rule policy, retaining pre-existing local
lords and their fragmented political groups, incorporating them into
an overarching Moche political system, and thereby preventing any
unified revolt against Moche presence and control. In many ways,
this was a typical Andean political manoeuvre, ruling through local
leaders who themselves gained added prestige by association.
The nature of Moche warfare and sacrifice as described above is
in many ways a difficult issue to interpret. What is clear from the
archaeological record is that Moche culture was an expansionist,
imperialistic state during its height, between AD 200 and 550. The
conquest and integration of other valleys, their local leadership
regimes and their economic resources was a prime objective. Yet,
simultaneously, the nature of Amerindian warfare throughout the
Americas included strong ritual elements that blended into an
ideology.
What we see on Moche ceramics and uncover in archaeological
contexts are those aspects of warfare and sacrifice that emphasise
the role of Moche leaders in making the most ideological capital out
of real military confrontations. In other words, the propaganda bias
of Moche iconography should not necessarily persuade us that
Moche warfare was only or even mainly ritual in nature. Success in
war brought material and ideological rewards for the victor - multi¬
dimensional benefits that were symbolically compressed and
represented in art rather than indicating that Moche war was only
waged for religious reasons to capture sacrificial victims.
148 Ancient Americas

Mocbe demise

Moche civilisation went into decline during the late sixth century AD
- the transition between Moche Period 4 and Moche Period 5. This
was not, however, a total or abrupt collapse, and did not happen in
the same way for each of the valleys under Moche domination.
Various explanations have been offered to account for the stress
on the Moche political system. The most recent theory is that some
kind of environmental catastrophe struck the North Coast, such as
an El Nino event which caused serious rainfall, flooding and
disruption to canal-fed agriculture, food production and procure¬
ment, and political stability. Equally disastrous consequences would
have followed an extended period of drought for which there is also
evidence elsewhere in the Andes. Whether or not alternating
droughts and floods were the combined cause of Moche decline, it is
the case that large parts of the Cerro Blanco settlement area in the
Moche Valley were covered over with wind-blown sand and soon
abandoned.
A longer-established explanation is that of foreign intrusion,
usually associated with the expanding Wari state. There is evidence
of changing pottery styles to support Wari influence beyond its
homeland of Ayacucho in the Andes. Although no remains of Wari-
style architecture have been found in the Moche area - an indica¬
tion, perhaps, that there was no military invasion per se - Wari
iconography on ceramics and murals does appear, and excercises
an influence over later artistic developments in the region. It may be
that the southern coastal-valley frontier of the Moche empire
was affected in some way by Wari encroachment nearby and that
this led to destabilisation and Moche abandonment. A third
possibility is that some form of internal stress affected, or contri¬
buted to, the Moche demise - perhaps a combination of ideological
and political over-reach that disrupted the hitherto balanced system
of expansion.
In the way of Andean (and wider Amerindian) cultural systems,
any disruption to society could be seen in a religious light and may
have serious political and ideological consequences. The religious
nature of power is a fundamental characteristic of pre-Columbian
(and native) American societies. It expresses itself (n different ways -
extraordinary cultural achievement when working well, and
sometimes almost total collapse when put under pressure.
 Moche 149

Whatever the cause of the Moche decline in the south, to the

north a vast new (and apparently rapidly built) corporate centre was
constructed at Pampa Grande in the Lambayeque Valley. While the
population around the monumental architecture in the Moche
Valley was a pale shadow of its former self, a new site was estab¬
lished over an earlier smaller village at Galindo on the north side of
the Moche river. Galindo was a very different place from its pre¬
decessors, with an urban feel and discrete high-walled areas within
which religious ceremonies were conducted replacing the more open
and public platforms of earlier times. The nature of politics and
ideology had clearly undergone drastic revision.
By about AD 750, both Galindo and Pampa Grande had col¬
lapsed, and with them the last true expression of classic Moche
civilisation. In the years that followed, the influence of Wari was felt
once again, though this time in the northern Moche area. Once
more the presence is artistic rather than architectural or military,
and Wari-associated ritual activities seem to have taken place at the
old Moche Huaca de la Luna. It was perhaps from a creative syn¬
thesis of their ancient North Coast traditions and Wari influence
that the descendants of the Moche would create the Sican culture of
the Lambayeque Valley and the imperial Chimu civilisation of the
Moche Valley in the centuries to come.
,

v
 NINE

Nasca

T ^he Nasca culture was one of the most extraordinary in ancient

Peru. It flourished in the valleys that cut across the arid south
coast between AD 1 and 700. As with the North Coast Moche, the
Nasca mainly belonged to the Early Intermediate Period (200 BC-AD
600), though continued on into following Middle Horizon (AD
600-1000). It is justly famous for its striking polychrome pottery,
decorated with a wide range of real and mythical creatures, and its
human trophy heads. The Nasca also created huge desert drawings
or geoglyphs; these were of two types - earlier images of gigantic
animals and, later, long lines (perhaps intended as ritual pathways),
and geometric shapes, such as trapezoids and spirals.
Historically, there has been a confusing use of alternate spellings -
Nasca and Nazca - with different investigators using one or the
other at different times. Following the suggestion of Nasca specialist
Helaine Silverman, the spelling Nasca will be used here when dis¬
cussing the archaeological culture, and Nazca where it relates to
geography, i.e. the region, town and river.
A more serious issue relates to the difficulties archaeologists have
encountered in establishing a reliable chronology for the develop¬
ment of Nasca culture. For different reasons, especially the lack of
reliable material from dwelling sites that can be subjected to radio¬
carbon dating, some of the phases are indistinct and sometimes
overlapping: Nasca Period 1 (150 BC-AD 100); Nasca Period 2
(AD 100-200); Nasca Period 3, the height of Nasca culture
(AD 200-400); Nasca Period 4 (AD 400-500); Nasca Period 5
(c. AD 525); Nasca Period 6 (AD 600-900); Nasca Period 7
(AD 576-696); and Nasca Period 8 (AD 830-c. 1000), and Nasca
Period 9 (c. AD 1000-c. 1300).
152 Ancient Americas

Paracas and Nasca origins

Nasca culture developed out of the final phases of the preceding

Paracas culture (c. 100 BC-AD 200). This precocious society takes its
name from the Paracas Peninsula which juts out into the Pacific on
the coast north of the Nazca region. During the 1920s, spectacular
burials were excavated there by the Peruvian archaeologist Julio
Tello. There were two occupation sites, Cerro Colorado and Arenas
Blancas, and four cemeteries. The mortuary evidence permitted the
identification of two different local cultures, the earlier Cavernas,
with colourful painted pottery, and the later Necropolis/Topara,
with monochrome ceramics but astonishingly coloured textiles
decorated with equally dazzling embroidered images of humans and
supernatural creatures.
The burial practices and material culture belonging to these two
possibly contemporary societies are different. While all bodies were
naturally mummified by the dry desert heat and preserved as
mummy bundles, those belonging to Cavernas society were placed at
the bottom of globular chambers cut into the bedrock. Those of the
Necropolis/Topara society, by contrast, were simply placed among
the ruins of abandoned dwellings. Despite the numbers of mummies
discovered (over five hundred in all), and their rich grave goods -
ranging from trophy heads to jewellery, Spondylus shell to slings - it
has been the technical innovation and colourful decoration of the
textiles that have received most attention from experts. Anthropo¬
morphic beings, fish, plants, birds and felines all appear as richly
embroidered images, indicating a vibrant animistic view of the
world. It has been estimated that the textiles of each mummy bundle
took between 5,000 and 29,000 hours to produce.
Despite being discovered on the Paracas Peninsula, the fullest
picture of ancient Paracas culture comes from further inland, at sites
located in the lea, Pisco and Palpa Valleys. In the lea Valley, Paracas
objects are referred to as belonging to the Ocucaje style, and it is
from this manifestation of Paracas culture that Nasca is most
commonly thought to have developed.
The Paracas culture seems to have been influenced, at least in its
iconography, by the ritual centre at Chavin dexHuantar in the
northern Peruvian Andes. Paracas, however, was an independent
culture which selectively borrowed only some Chavin motifs, such as
felines and birds, and integrated them into its own highly distinctive
Royal Moche burial from Sipan.
f© Author’s collection)

Nasca mummy, well preserved by the

desert conditions. (© Author’s
collection)
General view of the Inka mountain-top city of Machu Picchu. (© Author’s collection)
 Nasca 153

material culture. Probably a major deity during early Paracas times

was the so-called ‘Oculate Being’, a typically shamanic hybrid
creature with human and feline elements and large prominent eyes,
and often associated with human trophy heads. Ocucaje pottery is
decorated with rows of eye-like motifs, and desert drawings (which
first appeared during Ocucaje times) and petroglyphs show
anthropomorphic creatures with staring eyes and rayed headdresses.
The end of the Paracas era at lea, called Ocucaje Period 10, is
seen as the immediate predecessor of Nasca Period 1. Archaeological
and iconographic investigations indicate that the Nasca peoples
were the same as their Ocucaje ancestors, using the same kinds of
pottery, and decorating them with similar themes and motifs, such
as the killer whale, felines and human trophy heads. Despite the
apparent continuity of population, other cultural influences and
developments inevitably left their mark. The early Nasca peoples
changed elements of their predecessors’ technology and production:
pottery masks disappeared, and the practice of painting pots with
one of thirteen different colours as a background slip before firing
rather than afterwards was adopted. Clearly, for the Nasca potters,
colour was a key element of decoration and perhaps suggests a
prominent role for colours and shades in their cosmology. A striking
Nasca innovation in pottery shape was the step fret vessel which
featured also a double-spout-and-bridge handle.

Art, society and religion

Nasca society, its art and religion, were unique products of its desert
and oasis-valley environment. Yet, like all other pre-Columbian
American societies, its culture was also a result of social, historical
and religious factors.
Nasca worldview, while typically Amerindian, reflected its own
distinct characteristics and concerns, some of which are visible on its
pottery - clearly its chosen medium for cultural expression.
Agricultural fertility seems to have been a principal concern, not
only in representations of different plants, but also in the more
symbolically complex association of warfare and trophy-head
hunting. For many indigenous American societies, headhunting, and
the ritualised death of human sacrifice were an integral part of the
recycling and renewal of life force, both physical and spiritual. This
certainly seems to have been the case with the Nasca (see below).
154 Ancient Americas

It seems likely that the Nasca shared a generalised shamanic

worldview with all pre-Columbian Andean peoples. This was
characterised by beliefs in a spiritually animated universe, human-
animal transformation, magical curing, animal sacrifices in acts of
divination, and the taking of powerful hallucinogens to access the
spirit realm. The discovery of over twenty headless guinea pigs at
Cahuachi suggests curing and divination, and images of the
powerfully hallucinogenic San Pedro cactus on pottery suggests its
ritual use in shamanic seances.
Apart from this, evidence for the specific rituals of Nasca religion
are ambiguous, a fact which has led to varying interpretations by
different scholars. Some consider that they practised ancestor wor¬
ship on the basis that some tombs seem to have been reopened after
burial and the bodies and burial goods disturbed. While this might
be the case, it is equally possible that, as elsewhere, prehistoric
looting could have taken place, or even the deliberate removal of
ancestral items to be re-used as sacred relics. It is often difficult to
know whether pottery scenes which depict dancing and the dead
represent a ritual surrounding burial, or a later ceremony which
amounts to ancestor veneration.
As with Amerindian religion and worldview more generally,
nature and supernature are not divided by hard and fast boundaries.
Nasca pottery abounds with images of different kinds of birds,
plants and animals though, significantly, many of these seem to have
a symbolic association with other perhaps more mythical life forms.
Among the natural animals which find their way into Nasca art are
the killer whale, the pampas cat, falcons and foxes.
There are other more unusual figures that are also depicted on
Nasca pottery, though whether these represented gods, shaman-
priests dressed in elaborate costumes, or fantastical creations serving
as visual metaphors for important Nasca principles is still debated.
Perhaps the best known is the so-called ‘Anthropomorphic Mythical
Being’, a human-like creature which has feline characteristics in
much the same way as jaguar-shamans are described in more recent
ethnographic South American societies. The ‘Mythical Killer Whale’,
perhaps representing a maritime concept of predatory behaviour
linked to fertility (i.e. the abundance of the sea and the regenerative
quality of water), is shown with human trophy heads and knives.
Other, equally supernatural creatures are the ‘Horrible Bird’, an
anthropomorphic raptorial bird, the ‘Mythical Spotted Cat’ based
 Nasca 155

on the pampas cat but wearing a mouthmask, and the ‘Jagged Staff
God’. Each of these supernatural creatures can share elements of the
other, suggesting the presence of a grammar of motifs, each of which
carries a significance that can be recombined with others and shared
between supernaturals. There are many other such creatures in the
mythical zoo of the Nasca imagination and that also appear on pottery
and textiles. While the supernatural world of the Nasca is realised in
many scenes depicted on ceramics, they were almost certainly repre¬
sentative of beliefs which articulated Nasca religious and ceremonial
life. Unusually, at least in terms of surviving items, it seems that musical
instruments were also an important and integral part of Nasca ritual
activities. Native Amerindian ideas of music, which incorporated
beliefs concerning sacred breath, whistling and spiritual presence, add a
strikingly non-Western dimension to the more unusual associations of
music and dance in communal celebrations.
The frequency and variety of musical instruments depicted on
Nasca pottery and found in archaeological sites (especially in tombs
and offerings) indicate a central role for music in Nasca ceremonial
life. Panpipes, trumpets and ceramic drums were all made from fired
clay and painted in vivid colours. One unique item is a modelled
representation of a family group dressed in their finery, accompanied
by several dogs and playing and carrying panpipes. In excavations at
the Great Temple at the Nasca centre of Cahuachi (see below) was
found a cache of several hundred panpipes - all of which were
broken, possibly ritually.
Due to their emphasis - perhaps obsession - with ceramic artistry,
Nasca craftsmen expended little effort on other technological activities
such as featherwork, stone-carving and metallurgy. Gold working, for
example, never reached the heights of achievement that characterised
the North Coast Moche, despite deposits being readily available in the
area. It was hammered into thin strips and cut into various shapes such
as face masks, nose-ornaments and decorative items attached to
headdresses and clothing, some of which, such as the mouthmask,
appear also on pottery images. Featherwork is occasionally found but
rare, and stone carving would seem to have been restricted to either
small stylised and sexless statuettes or somewhat more elaborate stone
vases engraved with anthropomorphic figures with feline character¬
istics. In terms of achievement, the only rival to pottery, it seems, was
the Nasca practice of creating giant designs on the vast open desert
spaces (pampas) that separated their oasis-like valleys.
156 Ancient Americas

Geoglyphs, water and mountains

The thirty or so zoomorphic and countless geometric designs etched

on to the sun-baked desert surface of the Nazca region - most
notably the area known as the Pampa de San Jose between the
Nazca and Palpa Valleys - are arguably one of the world’s most
famous and enduring archaeological enigmas. They have attracted
the attention of a wide variety of investigators, some serious, others
less so, and generated a bewildering array of bizarre explanations.
Nazca’s desert drawings have been seen as evidence that the
ancient Nasca people could fly, that Nazca was visited during
prehistory by extraterrestial life-forms who inexplicably landed their
intergalactic spacecraft on the cleared ‘airstrips’, and that they were
seen in visions ‘from above’ during drug-fuelled flights of shamanic
ecstasy. Other suggestions include the ideas that they were areas of
large-scale textile production, or the dessicated remnants of agri¬
cultural fields and canals. While these theories give fascinating
insights into our own society, they tell us little of why the ancient
Nasca created these images, their development over time and the
important meanings they clearly had.
For those who did not know where to look or how to ‘see’, i.e.
anyone who was not a member of Nasca culture, the strange shapes
on Nazca’s deserts can be instantly recognised only from the air. It is
for this reason that the geoglyphs first came to the world’s attention
during the 1920s and 1930s when commercial airlines began flying
over the area. Although first discussed seriously by the Peruvian
archaeologist Toribio Mejia Xesspe in 1927, it was the American
scholar Paul Kosok who, by chance, saw the sun setting along one
of the lines on the Pampa de San Jose at the winter solstice of 1941.
This was the origin of the theory that the Nazca drawings were ‘the
largest astronomy book in the world’, designed and laid out to
measure and predict the movements of, and perhaps represent, the
heavenly bodies. Exploring the theory of an astronomical and
calendrical purpose for the Nazca lines became the life work of
Maria Reiche, who spent decades walking, measuring and cleaning
the great desert images.
Today, Reiche’s investigations and her efforts to establish Nazca as
a world-famous archaeological destination are justly acknowledged,
and the desert drawings have UNESCO World Heritage status. The
purely astronomical hypothesis has largely been discarded however.
 Nasca 157

With so many lines, plazas and geometric shapes criss-crossing the

desert and superimposed with others over time, the chances of
accidental alignments to stars, constellations and the sun are high and
thereby prove little. The earlier (and much fewer) zoomorphic designs
- including a giant spider, condor, killer whale and hummingbird -
may have represented Nasca emblems and/or local magical animals
(or animal constellations) associated with kinship, shamanism and
mythology, but again, such associations are difficult if not impossible
to prove. Perhaps the best hope of progress here lies in investigating
possible correlations between these desert zoomorphs and their
miniature counterparts painted on to Nasca pottery.
During the 1980s especially the astronomical hypothesis was
replaced by several interrelated (and much more culturally
informed) theories that saw a relationship between Nazca’s lines and
geometric shapes and the well-documented Andean ritual practice of
constructing, maintaining and walking sacred lines (sometimes
aligned to prominent mountains) as part of religious ceremonies
associated with ancestor worship and fertility rites. Such interpret¬
ations also borrowed heavily from the well-documented (and much
later) system of imaginary ‘straight lines’ called ceques that
organised the ritual space of the Inka capital of Cuzco. These were
related to water flow and were the focus of religious processions and
sacrifices. These ideas were located much more securely in Andean
worldview which saw the landscape as a living entity, mountains as
the homes of all-powerful weather deities, and caves, lakes, fresh¬
water springs and the Pacific Ocean as manifestations of the
numinous - borderlands between earthly existence and the spirit
realm.
The most recent theory draws in part on these new ideas but casts
its explanation in a more scientific and pragmatic light. It suggests
that there is indeed an association between the geoglyphs and water,
but that it is based on correlations with subterranean water flow,
aquifers, geological faults and the location of archaeological sites.
This view sees the ancient Nasca people as possessing an intimate
understanding of the local hydraulic regime, and building their
villages, cemeteries, reservoirs and underground water-capturing
filtration galleries (puquios), at points where geological faults
brought water to (or near) the surface. Then, so the theory goes,
they marked the location and flow of these underground water
sources with geoglyphs on the surface.
158 Ancient Americas

This hypothesis was tested geologically and archaeologically at

several locations, and appears to have yielded some positive correla¬
tions. Trapezoid-shaped geoglyphs were created over these faults
and stone circles marked the points at which aquifers entered a
valley. Zigzag designs are said to mark the waterless boundaries of
aquifers and zoomorphic shapes announce a change in direction of
sub-surface water flow. While this theory is not conclusive, and
certainly not accepted by all Nasca experts, it does explain some
associations and proposes a relationship between landscape, water
and animal imagery that is in keeping with other better-documented
Andean rituals that also incorporate these elements.
It is probable that over hundreds of years of prehistory, beginning
with the preceding Paracas/Ocucaje culture, the Nasca people made
geoglyphs of different shapes and sizes at different locations for a
variety of practical and spiritual reasons, and that there is no single
overall theory that can explain this diversity.

Trophy heads and headhunting

Although the practice of headhunting and the ritual treatment and

display of human heads is widespread across the Americas, it appears
that for Nasca society such activities held a special place. Most of our
ideas about what Nasca trophy heads might have meant to the Nasca
themselves come from projecting historically recent information back
into the prehistoric past. Such information typically comes from the
Jivaro Indians of Ecuador, although they, unlike the Nasca, removed
the skull and thereby ‘shrunk’ the head. Ethnographic insights stress
the spiritual purpose of headhunting and trophy collecting, whereby
the powerful spiritual essence of the dead was symbolically captured
and kept as magical protection against malign forces, and simul¬
taneously advertised the warrior status of the victor.
While it can be misleading to read too much into Nasca trophy
head hunting in the light of more recent activities, both the Jivaro
and the Nasca ritually closed the eyes and mouth by sealing them
shut with thorns, or by sewing them up. Ethnographically, this was
to ensure that the power within did not escape through the two
main sensory orifices of sight and speech. Whether ,this was also the
case for the Nasca is unknown.
Trophy heads in Nasca society appear to have derived from the
earlier Paracas culture, where images of human heads adorn
 Nasca 159

their elaborate textiles. There is a case for head-taking to have

occurred between different Nasca groups, rather than against a
common non-Nasca enemy as previously supposed. Whether this
was part of ritualised violence (well documented in recent times in
the Andes) between otherwise friendly communities, or as a result
of outright warfare between agonistic groups can only be guessed
at. Sometimes trophy heads are found buried alongside complete
bodies and treated in the same respectful way, and headless bodies
sometimes have a piece of pottery or a gourd substituted for the
missing head.
In Nasca society, trophy heads seem to have two distinct, albeit
probably related aspects. In early Nasca times, it is likely that head¬
hunting was more religious and symbolic, appearing as quite rare
real heads, and more commonly as pottery depictions associated
with mythological beings, such as the ‘Killer Whale’ and the
‘Horrible Bird’, and as decorative motifs on bowls. It may be, as
some experts believe, that this early manifestation of the trophy-
head cult was related to ideas of ancestor worship and fertility
which were probably an integral part of the rituals that took place
at the great ceremonial centre of Cahuachi (see below).
In later Nasca times, after the demise of Cahuachi in about
AD 400, a rise in conflict is apparent, as is a significant increase in
the number of trophy heads found in excavations. While trophy
heads probably did not lose their spiritual dimensions, it may be
that now they reflect an increasingly secular, perhaps political and
military significance, as they are shown in conflict situations on late
Nasca pottery - carried by warriors, and attached to depictions of
elaborately attired elite men - perhaps war leaders. It is also true
that most Nasca trophy heads belong to young men of warrior age.
Trophy heads appear in art and archaeology throughout the life of
Nasca culture. However, their presence can be misleading, as
headhunting is a function of the political dynamic that shapes and
drives a society as it changes through time. Headhunting is an
inherently bloody and violent activity, imbued with many kinds of
symbolism in pre-Columbian America. As Nasca society developed
between early and late Nasca times, it must be acknowledged that
the significance given to headhunting probably also changed,
perhaps reconfiguring itself towards more secular political ends -
although the spiritual dimension of politics in ancient Peru means
that trophy heads were probably never simply trophies.
160 Ancient Americas

Cahuacbi, the Nasca capital

Investigations by archaeologists Helaine Silverman and Guiseppe

Orefici at the great site of Cahuachi have revealed a large settlement
distinctly different from contemporary sites in other parts of Peru, as
well as from diverse smaller communities in the Nazca region.
Located in a probably sacred landscape amid wind-sculpted hills
and where subterreanean water emerges as a spring, Cahuachi’s
temple-mound architecture appears physically and symbolically
aligned with some of the huge desert geoglyphs on the adjacent
pampa. Clearly, at some time in the past, the ritual activities that
defined Cahuachi’s monumental architecture reached out on to the
desert, incorporating the still little-understood imagery scratched on
to the hard desert surface.
Cahuachi’s location is not especially promising from the per¬
spective of everyday living and economic activity. Water supply is
not particularly abundant, despite the proximity of the flood-prone
Nazca river; the soil is salt-ridden, and local windstorms scour the
area. Yet, at the beginning, Cahuachi was more in keeping with
other sites; during Nasca Period 1, there is evidence for extensive
occupation alongside early examples of monumental architecture,
such as the recently discovered ‘Step Motif Temple’. Nevertheless,
some unknown factor in Nasca society led to an emphasis not on
developing or extending the site into an ancient city or even a well-
populated ritual centre such as Pachacamac on Peru’s central coast,
but rather in privileging its ritual and ceremonial functions.
As a consequence, at its height during Nasca Period 3, Cahuachi
spread over 150 ha, but was never an urban phenomenon. Rather, it
had developed into a pilgrimage centre whose monumental archi¬
tecture was probably produced by different groups coming together
at certain times of year to undertake commercial, ritual and,
probably, political activities. This view sees Nasca society not as an
hierarchically integrated state such as their contemporaries the
Moche on the North Coast, but rather as a chiefdom or confederacy
of chiefdoms who used Cahuachi, among other things, as a place to
create and maintain a peaceful co-existence.
It seems as if Cahuachi’s many great temple mounds were made
piecemeal, inasmuch as they were not the result of human occupa¬
tion, nor of a preconceived civic plan devised by one corporate elite
group. Rather, they were constructed by different groups of the
 Nasca 161

region who simply built around natural hills and mounds, thereby
giving the impression of large-scale architectural undertakings. In
this way, Cahuachi would have presented an impressive fagade
without the need for organised Moche-like labour forces and all the
political support their mobilisation would have entailed. There are
some forty ceremonial mounds of various sizes with adjacent plazas
(presumably for public rituals).
Investigations have reinforced the impression of Cahuachi as an
essentially empty ceremonial centre whose purpose was to be the
focus of pilgrimage (and doubtless its many associated activites).
Unlike contemporary sites elsewhere, Cahuachi has yielded com¬
paratively little evidence of domestic refuse - the detritus of every¬
day life, such as domestic pottery and the animal bones from meals.
There are few remains of guinea pigs for example, a normally
ubiquitous food resource.
Nor has there been found, so far, any evidence for large-scale
long-term storage or workshop areas for specialised craft produc¬
tion. However, it is likely that certain kinds of craftwork were
carried on at Cahuachi but so far only tantalising details have
emerged. There is evidence for an area that may have specialised in
textile production, the remains of possible paintbrushes have been
found and also pieces of red pigment, the latter two items suggestive
of high-quality pottery production and decoration. The sheer
quantity of obviously valuable and beautifully painted ceramics
decorated with complex mythical-religious motifs found here
indicates that at least some manufacturing could have been
undertaken on site.
Despite the relative paucity of such everyday remains, the site is
rich in the ritual paraphernalia that would be expected of occasional
and temporary visitors, such as elaborate textiles, engraved gourds,
sacrificed llama remains and an unusual cache of petrified wood
that perhaps suggests its status as a sacred mineralised example of
naturally occurring wood. At the so-called Great Temple, large
quantities of high-quality pottery were found alongside feathers and
the ceramic panpipes for which Nasca culture is well known.
Probably equally a sign of ritual behaviour is the large amount of
high-quality pottery that was discovered in pieces, perhaps an
indication that the ritual smashing of ceramics was as much a part
of Nasca religious behaviour as it was for the Tiwanaku and Wari
civilisations.
162 Ancient Americas

The excavation of a temple mound known as Unit 19 illustrates

the kinds of activity which took place in such structures. Across the
mound were found elaborate pottery, textiles and pieces of ceramic
panpipe. In a part of the mound called the ‘Room of the Posts’ it
was apparent that there had originally been twelve wooden posts,
eleven of which were of the characteristically twisted huarango tree,
one of which had been cut smooth. In the centre of the room,
circular depressions were cut into the floor, and careful examination
of surviving walls revealed that the room had been replastered many
times. Helaine Silverman interprets a clean layer of sand which
covered the Room of the Posts as a much later (i.e. Nasca Period 8)
ritual entombment into which later objects were placed, including
whole pots and trophy heads. It seems that after the demise of
Cahuachi, at least some of its buildings continued to be used as sites
where local peoples congregated for ritual purposes.
It seems that Cahuachi’s ritual purpose served a multitude of
social ends. As a pilgrimage centre it was not only an expression of
religious fervour, but also a ritual arena where local groups met to
represent their local communities and probably also establish or
reaffirm shared cultural values and the place of their community in
the regional political hierarchy. The evidence suggests they dressed
in their finery and brought sacrificial offerings of polychrome
pottery, llamas, trophy heads and colourful textiles.
In this sense, Cahuachi was as much a political as a religious
destination for the small communities spread over the Nazca region.
Appearing to us as a religiously and ritually inspired place, to the
Nasca peoples it was this and more - a sacred location where ethnic,
social and spiritual identity were physically and symbolically renewed.
The possibility that it served in some ways to integrate local groups
and perhaps alleviate social tensions in a religious setting is supported
by what occurred after its demise. At this time, there is archaeological
and artistic evidence for an upsurge in armed conflict manifested most
graphically by a dramatic increase in the number of trophy heads
shown on pottery and deposited at the site. Cahuachi at this time, and
for centuries to come, may have ceased to exercise social and political
influence over Nasca society but clearly continued to be a sacred place
where numerous burials were made. It may be that as the large-scale
building activities ceased and Cahuachi was abandoned (in Nasca
Period 4), cultural energies were transferred to the desert pampa and
ever more ambitious geoglyphs (lines and plazas) were constructed.
 Nasca 163

The end of Nasca

The end of an identifiably Nasca culture occurred in about

AD 700-800, during Nasca Period 8, or Loro as it is now called. The
most striking difference between the Loro phase and its mainstream
Nasca predecessors is the change in pottery. Highly polished and
colourful pottery disappears and is replaced by thicker unpolished
vessels, and the hitherto common panpipes and bridge-and-spout
handle items also cease. Decoration too is radically different with
the abandonment of mythical imagery and the appearance of
geometric designs such as chevrons and zigzags, sometimes as
abstractions of earlier forms such as the killer whale. By so-called
Nasca Period 9, it is influence from the highland culture of Wari that
is predominant, with several tons of Wari-style pottery fragments
being discovered at the site of Pacheco nearby Cahuachi. By this
time, pure Nasca culture had to all intents and purposes ceased
to exist.
-
 TEN

Wari and Tiwanaku

K|[Nhe Wari and Tiwanaku civilisations flourished during the so-

-.1 called Middle Horizon (AD 650-1000) period of Andean
prehistory. Wari (also spelt Huari) itself developed between c. AD 400
and 800 in the Ayacucho region of the central highlands of Peru. Its
imperial influence spread throughout the Andes and along the
adjacent Pacific coast, manifesting itself in different ways in these two
regions. Wari innovations included roadbuilding, planned archi¬
tecture, agricultural terracing, bronze working and the introduction
of the uniquely Andean system of keeping (presumably) adminis¬
trative records - the knotted string called quipu. At its height the city
of Wari covered perhaps 4sq. km and had a population that may
have numbered as many as thirty-five thousand.
Broadly contemporary, on the southern shores of Lake Titicaca in
modern day Bolivia, the great city of Tiwanaku (also spelt
Tiahuanaco) rose to prominence. Famous for its monumental archi¬
tecture and sophisticated hydraulic engineering, it reached its zenith
during the fourth century AD, extending over some 8sq. km with a
population of between thirty thousand and forty thousand. It was
the hub of an empire whose llama caravans connected vast areas of
southern Peru and northern Chile. This chapter outlines the
achievements of these two civilisations and illustrates their role in
the rise of the Inka empire.

WARI

The origins of the Wari civilisation appear to have been with the
Huarpa people (AD 100-600), famed for their abilities to produce
terraces and canals in their wild homeland dominated by deep
ravines and little available flat land suitable for agriculture. The
Huarpa peope lived in scattered agricultural hamlets, and their
capital of Nawimpukuyo today overlooks the modern town of
166 Ancient Americas

Ayacucho. It is thought that the Huarpa people had long-distance

contacts with the Nasca culture on Peru’ south coast and also with
the emerging Tiwanaku civilisation on Lake Titicaca’s southern
shores. It was this interaction which some experts believe stimulated
Huarpa culture in ways which led to the development of the more
sophisticated culture known today as Wari.

The city of Wari

The political centre of the Wari civilisation was the city of Wari
itself, with a population calculated at between ten thousand and
thirty thousand spread over some 4sq. km near the modern city of
Ayacucho in the central southern Peruvian Andes. The earliest traces
of habitation suggest the site had originally been settled by the
Huarpa people. The site itself appears to have been terraced and to
have had an elaborate system of underground drains to move water
throughout the city. The early inhabitants had invested greatly in
building a series of canals to irrigate the terraced fields that sur¬
round the city and were able to grow large quantities of maize and
other crops on this previously under-exploited land.
The beginnings of Wari as a major political centre are associated
with the appearance of the so-called Okros Style of pottery. During
this period, the population centre at Nawimpukuyo and other
smaller Huarpa communities were abandoned and their populations
moved to live at the nearby centre of Conchapata, and perhaps also
at the more distant site of Wari.
A distinctive feature of ancient Wari was its system of massive
walls that delineated compounds and would have made moving
through the city a difficult undertaking. These high walls probably
would have served to separate off one area from another and some
archaeologists interpret this as an indication that Wari society was
strongly segregated in nature, perhaps along lines of economic
specialisation, kin, status or a combination of these.
The structures within the compounds had two or three storeys
and were arranged around rectangular central patios, the buildings
themselves having the appearance of long halls. The discovery of
domestic refuse within indicated they were used as dwellings. One
high-status compound, known as Cheqo Wasi, appears to have been
the residence of high-ranking Wari individuals as indicated by the
discovery during excavation of megalithic underground chambers
 Wari and Tiwanaku 167

formed of well-cut stone and containing human remains, and high-

status goods made from gold, silver, lapis lazuli and the ritually
important Spondylus shell. Many of these are exotic to the Wari
region, and would have been the focus of long-distance trading
activities. It seems likely that one feature of Wari as an urban phe¬
nomenon was the presence of specialist craftsmen working with
these exotic raw materials alongside administrators and ritual
specialists.

Society, art and religion

As Wari society developed out of the earlier Huarpa culture it seems

as if its leaders became increasingly concerned with advertising their
status by creating an art style which symbolised political, economic
and presumably religious power. To this end, they selectively
borrowed aspects of the art of the Nasca and Tiwanaku peoples.
Of the icons that Wari adopted from Tiwanaku and spread
throughout the northern Andes, the most famous was the so-called
‘Staff Bearer’, often shown either as a human wearing a snarling
feline face, or perhaps a mythical being with these age-old features
of supernatural status. These figures decorated the extraordinary
polychrome Wari pottery and, in a squeezed or stretched form, also
adorned textiles. The related image of the Staff God, known best as
the central figure on Tiwanaku’s Gateway of the Sun, was also
acquired by the Wari elite, though perhaps reinterpreted as a deity of
agriculture and fertility.
Perhaps more unusual was the Wari borrowing of the typically
Tiwanaku-style sunken ceremonial court in rectangular shape. One
example, which seems to have been used for a century or so,
between AD 580 and 660, was discovered buried beneath a later
building at Wari. Archaeologists regard it as a religious building as it
not only appears to have been kept clean, but its floors were
regularly renewed with clay and coloured plaster. Whether this was,
as in Mesoamerica and elsewhere, a kind of symbolic interment or
had simply been built over is unknown, though its preservation
indicates it was carefully built over. While much Wari art and
religion were inspired by the beliefs and styles of Tiwanaku, it also
had its own distinguishing features. One of these was the practice of
ritually smashing the beautifully painted polychrome ceramics
which, with their depictions of the so-called Wari rayed deity, were
168 Ancient Americas

among the most expensive and prestigious examples of Wari

material culture. While the Tiwanaku people also ceremonially
smashed some of their high-status ceramics, for the Wari this activity
involved drinking cbicba beer stored in magnificent elaborately
decorated pottery urns. The analysis of several excavated caches of
these ceramics indicates they may have been specially made for these
one-off ritual events.
One intriguing parallel between Wari and the later Inka is the
discovery of Wari-period quipus, a record-keeping system of multi¬
coloured knotted strings. The quipu system was perfected by and is
best known from the Inka period, when they were used by specialist
bureaucrats known as the ‘Keepers of the quipu’’. Comparatively
little is known of the few surviving Wari examples, other than that
they are visually and technically different by virtue of having a
coloured thread wrapped around the subsidiary strings which hang
from the main cord.
Burial practices usually present archaeologists with insights into
the nature of a culture’s social structure, religious beliefs and ideol¬
ogical orientation. For the Wari period, information on burials is
frustratingly incomplete due to prehistoric as well as more recent
looting, and the practice of the Wari themselves of reopening
ancestral tombs and adding and/or taking away body parts and
other items. Available evidence indicates that the Wari buried their
dead and caches of material culture beneath the floors of their
buildings. Excavation reveals a variety of burial practices - indica¬
tive of a range of social statuses. Burials could be in simple earthen
pits, rock cracks, or more elaborate stone-lined cists. They could
hold one, two, or more individuals; sometimes an extra body was
pushed in at a later date.
The most impressive unlooted burial so far found was perhaps the
tomb of a local curaca (chief). It was discovered beneath the floor of
a room, with the skeleton of a pregnant woman found just inside the
tomb’s entrance. Inside were fourteen other individuals including
two fetuses in jars, pottery and items made from copper and
greenstone. The archaeologists who excavated the tomb consider it
possible that it was reopened and added to at least once.
Evidence from recent investigations at the site, of Conchapata
indicate that the structures known as ‘mortuary rooms’ held the
remains of high-ranking individuals. Preliminary study of the
damaged and incomplete skeletal remains suggest the main burials
 Wari and Tiwanaku 169

here were of elite men who were interred with a number of their
wives and sometimes children. The occasional find of small gold
items reinforces the impression that mortuary rooms were where the
leaders of the community joined the company of immortal
ancestors. Small holes in the slab covering the tomb may have been
for communing with the spirits of the deceased or perhaps, on
occasion, pushing through small offerings which were then found
around the entrance when excavated. Although the Wari probably
engaged in ancestor veneration, unlike the later Inka, they appear
not to have mummified their dead leaders and paraded them around
in public ceremonies, preferring to leave them in peace in their sub¬
terranean tombs.
As previously noted, Wari religion and ritual behaviour also saw
the burying of smashed high-status ceramics in underground caches.
These are painted with various figures as described above, though
one, called the ‘Front View Sacrificer’, has recently been studied in
depth. From both hands and both feet are suspended decapitated
trophy heads which suggest ritual sacrifice. These figures are often
shown in close proximity to a dome-shaped image which has been
interpreted as the D-shaped building found at Wari sites such as
Conchapata and Wari itself.
In recent years, many D-shaped structures have been identified
and excavated, and many are associated with human remains,
disarticulated skeletons and skulls, and on one occasion a cache of
human trophy heads. It is thought that these D-shaped buildings are
ceremonial precincts - temple locations for acts of human sacrifice,
the remains of which are interred nearby, and the whole scene
rendered in the iconography of the Front View Sacrificer on pottery.

Empire

Traditionally, the Wari have been seen as an imperial civilisation,

spreading their culture and control over the Andes and adjacent
Pacific coast through aggressive military actions and in many ways
acting as precursors for the later Inka empire. Increasingly, as more
archaeological investigations are undertaken, this view is being
modified. Some experts now prefer to see alternative strategies at
work, based perhaps on a mix of militarism and adaptive ideas in
agriculture and economics. The nature of the Wari’s relationship
with Tiwanaku is often central to this issue.
170 Ancient Americas

Illustrating the hitherto universally accepted aggressive aspect of

Wari, and its ambiguous relationship with Tiwanaku, is the
strategically located and fortified site of Cerro Baul. Initially it was
considered that this was a Wari colony situated deep within
Tiwanaku territory. This impression was reinforced by the fact that
Cerro Baul was a fortified site built atop a 600m high rocky outcrop
in the Moquegua Valley and only approachable by a series of steep
and easily defended switchback paths. Although there is evidence
that Tiwanaku people lived nearby, the Wari created agricultural
terraces and brought water to the citadel by a long canal. On the
summit, around central patios they constructed typically Wari
buildings in the remains of which were found smashed pottery and
evidence of stone-bead production.
However, recent survey work during the 1990s suggests the
possibility that this was perhaps an unpopulated or underpopulated
area on the borderlands of the Tiwanaku sphere of influence, and
that Cerro Baul may simply have been a temporary control point for
trade routes down to the south coast. Some archaeologists believe it
was a Wari colony specifically designed to extract onyx for making
elite jewellery. While some experts regard the evidence as pointing to
the destruction of Tiwanaku settlements and the withdrawal of the
Wari people, others see no real evidence for conflict. Yet, while the
evidence for warfare remains ambiguous at Cerro Baul, recently
discovered polychrome pottery from the earlier levels of Conchapata
show Wari warriors armed with battle-axes and bows and arrows
kneeling on reed boats - presumably sailing on Lake Titicaca.
There is another view of Wari civilisation beyond its heartland
and this is provided by looking at administrative centres rather than
military locations. In these areas', it was not warfare that was the
founding principle but rather the agricultural advances perfected
and spread by the Wari people; irrigation canals, terracing, and the
introduction of new high-yield crops clearly drew local peoples
down from scattered villages at higher altitudes to congregate in
Wari centres in low-lying flatland areas. In other words, the cultural
landscape was redefined by Wari agricultural practices and new
communities such as Jincamocco and Viracochapampa appeared. In
these last two cases, and despite their proximity to other com¬
munities, there is no obvious evidence of militarism.
Such centres usually take the form of several rectangular en¬
closures with no defensive features. One of the largest and best
 Wari and Tiwanaku 171

investigated of these Wari administrative centres is that of Pikillaqta

in the southern end of the valley of Cuzco. The site spreads over
some 50ha, and still today has the remains of high walls, and large
storage areas. It is thought to have functioned partly as a storehouse
centre where food and other materials were kept in order to pay
those who worked for the Wari state in this region. These workers
probably lived in the numerous rooms that resemble an army bar¬
racks at the site. Excavation suggested some parts of the occupation
area belonged to women who prepared food and drink (probably
chicha beer) for the feasting that was such a feature of Wari social
and ritual life.
At Conchapata, according to recent investigations during the late
1990s and early 2000, the site was dominated by elite architecture
in the form of palaces. It originally covered over 20ha, and was
traditonally thought to have faded as the city of Wari reached its
zenith. Conchapata is especially famous for its Conchapata Style
polychrome pottery which appears to take its inspiration from the
art of Tiwanaku, especially the rayed deity holding two staffs and
wearing an elaborate headdress similar to that portrayed as the
central figure on the Gateway of the Sun at Tiwanaku.
Recent excavations have also revealed a number of large, beauti¬
fully painted ceramic urns and so-called face-neck jars which had
been (presumably) ritually smashed then buried, though, signifi¬
cantly, not all were complete. These objects were decorated
variously with the rayed deity, profile images of spotted felines, and
horizontal anthropomorphic creatures with feline-like heads (or
masks) carrying similarly feline-headed staffs. Most of the pottery
dates to between AD 600 and 850, and so is contemporary with
similarly decorated pottery from Tiwanaku.
These discoveries have enabled a more fine-tuned interpretation of
Wari ceramics at the site. Not all are decorated with Tiwanaku style
imagery and, even more important, the urns and face-neck jars are
shapes which are not found at Tiwanaku. In other words, some of
these newly found ceramics represent an identifiably independent
pottery style. These have been seen as representing an intial pottery
phase in local Wari style dating to c. AD 550 with more Tiwanaku-
like examples dating to c. AD 850. Where both kinds appear
together in later contexts, it may be that earlier pots were kept for
centuries (or perhaps dug up) before being ritually smashed. If this
was the case, then there was a sense in which Wari ancestor
 172 Ancient Americas

Mythical animal and human heads painted on Conchapata pottery of the Wari
culture. (© Roxanne Saunders, after ]. Ochatoma Paravicino and M. Cabrera
Romero, ‘Religious Ideology and Military Organization in the Iconography of a
D-Shaped Ceremonial Precinct at Conchapata’, in H. Silverman and W.H. Isbell
(eds), Andean Archaeology II, pp. 225-247, Fig. 8.9)

veneration extended to ‘scavenging’ the power-laden bones of their

long dead predecessors.
The archaeological evidence of pottery vessels made for drinking and
serving suggests perhaps official feasting events which may have
articulated a distinctive kind of social organisation for such centres.
High-class Wari pottery is found alongside local imitations and also
with local kinds of ceramics, and while buildings are never identical,
they do conform to the Wari style. Archaeologists have interpreted this
mix-and-match evidence as an indication that at such locations local
people and their own leaders were living and working under Wari
supervision. For the Wari, it seems, there was a variety of responses to
the mosaic of local conditions, perhaps suggesting that Wari
imperialism was a mix of militarism and economic reorientation.
This possibility seems to be supported by the evidence from the
deserts of the Peruvian coast, where the advantages of Wari’s
sophisticated high-altitude agricultural revolution could not be
 Wari and Tiwanaku 173

applied. Despite this, Wari civilisation does seem to have exerted a

profound influence on coastal civilisations, from Nasca in the south
to the great shrine centre of Pachacamac on the central coast and
north to the great cultures of the Moche and Lambayeque Valleys.
This influence, however, was less technical than artistic and perhaps
religious, as much of the evidence is in Wari-influenced imagery on
pottery interred with the dead as grave goods. Particularly prom¬
inent in this respect is the so-called rayed deity. The presence of Wari
artistic and religious motifs combined with the absence of their
buildings and architecture creates a sense of ambiguity, and poses
the so far unanswered question of what was the precise nature of
Wari influence among coastal civilisations.
It has long been observed that Wari settlements appear located on
or near much later Inka roads, suggesting perhaps that Inka high¬
ways merely followed original ones planned and built by the Wari to
link their empire’s administrative centres. However, while some Inka
roads do follow earlier Wari ones, many do not and the two road¬
way systems reflect the different political and economic orientations
of their respective empires. Neverthless, it is probably true that some
aspects of Inka imperialism were but larger scale elaborations of
previous Wari practices.
Although new evidence may alter the view, traditionally it is
thought that Wari civilisation collapsed suddenly in about AD 800.
The Ayacucho heartland ceased to enjoy extensive contacts with the
rest of the Andes, and while Tiwanaku flourished for another two
hundred years, the southern Peruvian Andes and adjacent coast
seem to have entered a period of balkanisation with communities
becoming inward looking, and probably poorer as well. As the
situation in southern Peru deteriorated, the flag of pre-Columbian
civilisation was taken up on the north coast with the emergence of
the Sican and later the Chimu civilisations.

TIWANAKU

The city by the lake

Tiwanaku civilisation embodied and symbolised two key elements of

life in the Andes - stone and water. Located about 15km from Lake
Titicaca’s southern shore, next to a small river and possessing
numerous springs, this monumental stone-clad city incorporated a
174 Ancient Americas

sophisticated system of elaborate stone channels, conduits and

drains designed, it seems, to display and control the ritual as well as
actual flow of water. The ceremonial heart of the city, dominated by
massive temple platforms and monolithic artworks, was itself
surrounded by a great water-filled moat that perhaps made the city’s
core a symbolic reflection of the sacred Islands of the Sun in the
middle of Lake Titicaca.
Although Tiwanaku’s origins are not yet well known archaeolog-
ically, the city and the nearby lake feature repeatedly in cosmogonic
creation myths of the region’s local peoples. These legends, pieced
together from the fragments of oral tradition collected by the
Spanish, exist in different versions, some adapted for their own use
by the later Inka. In one Inka version, the creator god Viracocha set
out a new world order at his dwelling place at Tiwanaku, sending
out the first man and wife from there to call forth Andean peoples
from every feature of the landscape.
It was between AD 100 and 600 that the city grew to its maximum
extent and included the magnificent ceremonial centre which has
only recently begun to be scientifically investigated. There are two
main periods in Tiwanaku’s spectacular rise to power: Phase 3 is
dated to AD 100—375, and Phase 4 to AD 375-600, this latter period
representing the height of the city in terms of achievement and size.
Period 5 lasts from AD 600 to 1000, and perhaps just slightly after.
During most of this time, Tiwanaku became the single most impres¬
sive and important centre in the southern Andes, often described by
such terms as centralised, hierarchical, and theocratic. At its height
the city probably extended over some 8sq. km, within which the
ceremonial core area was perhaps 16ha. Its population was in the
region of 30,000 to 40,000, though the wider, so-called metropol¬
itan district had perhaps as many as 365,000 people.
Three monumental constructions dominate Tiwanaku’s sacred
profile: the Kalasasaya, Pumapunku, and Akapana temple mound
complexes. The Kalasasaya and Pumapunku are described as
U-shaped rectangular platforms, open to the rising sun and having a
typically Tiwanaku-style sunken court within. Both structures had a
ceremonial entrance of a typically Tiwanaku-style monolithic stone
doorway.
The earliest ceremonial structure, however, appears to be the so-
called Semisubterranean Temple, which has predecessors at the
earlier pre-Tiwanaku sites of Pukara and Chiripa. It is a large
 Wari and Tiwanaku 175

sunken plaza whose walls are adorned with small carved stone
heads that have been inserted into the wall and which were probably
replaced or renewed at various times. The whole structure may have
been dedicated to a deity referred to as the ‘Bearded Statue’, a cult
object which still stands in the sunken plaza in the shape of a
roughly carved rectangular column depicting the features of a
human being with prominent hands.
Nearby is the huge 15m high mound known as the Akapana.
Long regarded as a natural hill, it is in fact the eroded and looted
remains of an originally seven-stepped, stone-clad temple platform
which may have been a symbolic miniature of the prominent sacred
mountains that dominate the surrounding landscape. It is thought
that the summit of the Akapana was designed with ideas of sacred
geography in mind as it seems to be the only place on the low-lying
valley floor where the distant snow-capped peaks of Mount Illimani
and the glittering Lake Titicaca can be observed in a single glance.
Investigation has revealed that this and other structures were closely
associated with the ritual flow of water, and perhaps more generally
the idea of sacred moisture. The Akapana’s summit had a layer of
green water-rounded gravel brought from nearby mountains, and
stone drains to regulate water flow and perhaps produce fountains.
Recent excavations have yielded intimate insights into the practice
of human sacrifice and the ways in which the philosophy of the
Tiwanaku elite bound together religion, ritual death and material
culture. One discovery was a cache of keros, distinctively shaped
ceremonial beakers with a flared rim, used probably for ritual
drinking and pouring libations. As was the practice at Wari, these
vessels had been ritually smashed then carefully buried. Their
decoration featured the same motif - decapitated human trophy
heads. Nearby were the remains of sacrificial victims, many of
whom had been decapitated, and a superbly carved stone image of a
kneeling figure wearing a feline mask and holding a human trophy
head. These burials appear contemporary, perhaps a single seventh
century AD event that sanctified the Akapana mound. While
indicating the practice of human sacrifice at Tiwanaku, they also
play on age-old ideas of feline symbolism, masking and transform¬
ation, and dedicatory offerings of human life.
Adjacent to the Akapana, the Kalasasaya is another great ritual
enclosure within which stands the impressive stone statue known as
the Ponce Monolith. The figure appears framed by the great stone
176 Ancient Americas

doorway that sits atop a monolithic stairway at the entrance to the

enclosure. It has typically Tiwanaku-style rectangular eyes, a
rectangular mouth and is shown holding a kero and a sceptre-like
object. The Kalasasaya is bounded by massive walls and has
elaborate water channels incorporated into its structure. Nearby, the
building called the Putuni complex is now regarded as a palace built
for Tiwanaku’s ruling elite. Beneath it was laid an intricate sewage
system and on the surface fresh spring water was channelled around
the palace building. The excavation of an unlooted chamber tomb in
the palace complex yielded the remains of a high-status woman
accompanied by a miniature gold mask, a collection of obsidian
chips and a collar of multi-coloured minerals including turquoise
and lapis lazuli; in a side chamber were found a copper mirror and
other metal items.
The third major architectural complex is the Pumapunku cere¬
monial platform. Built of andesite and sandstone masonry, this finest
of all the city’s great structures has a huge stone-built facade and
several monolithic gateways. The lintel of one is carved with a typi¬
cally long-tailed feline figure (perhaps a jaguar), complete with
collar and leash. This masterpiece of stone carving perhaps suggests
that, as with other Andean civilisations, jaguars, pumas and may be
even the smaller ocelot were kept either as pets or more likely for
ritual purposes.

Art and religion

Most experts consider that Tiwanaku art shares a common heritage

in Andean mythology that was first represented by the culture that
flourished at Chavin de Huantar between 800 and 400 BC. Motifs
such as the ‘Staff God’, his helpers shown in profile, and anthro¬
pomorphic raptorial birds all appear at Tiwanaku as developments
from earlier Chavin prototypes. While Chavin culture flourished
centuries before Tiwanaku’s great artistic designs appear, it is
possible that the culture known as Pukara preserved and adapted
older beliefs and images that were later taken up by the leaders of
Tiwanaku. Pukara society (200 BC-AD 200) was a cosmopolitan
culture and an urban phenomenon, spreading overcome 4sq. km. Its
population built monumental architecture including a sunken court,
and its master craftsmen created a sophisticated style of stone
carving.
 Wari and Tiwanaku 177

Monumental art at Tiwanaku is dominated by the so-called

Gateway of the Sun, a monolithic slab of andesite which, alongside
the remains of Inka city of Machu Picchu, has become an
international icon, emblematic of the archaeological grandeur of
South America. The central figure on this monumental piece of
stone sculpture is variously called the ‘Staff God’, ‘Gateway God’, or
‘Rayed Deity’. It shows a squat anthropomorphic figure rendered
face-on, with elaborate decoration around the eyes (sometimes inter¬
preted as tears). He wears a headdress whose ‘rays’ feature feline
heads and circles, a puma-ended belt, and a short tunic fringed with
ambiguous miniature heads that could represent ‘smiling felines’ or
perhaps grimacing human trophy heads (two definite trophy heads
are suspended from the headdress). In each hand he grasps a staff,
the ends of which finish in a beaked bird head (possibly that of a
hawk).
This deity, thought by some to be a creator god or solar being, is
approached on both sides by small winged figures with human,
animal and bird heads. These figures - perhaps supernaturals or
priests wearing masks - are depicted in profile. They wear smaller
rayed headdresses and carry a single staff adorned with a zoomor-
phic head. Although rarely shown in illustrated general books on the
site, the back of the gateway features two large and four small
niches, though whether these originally supported a wooden super¬
structure or were simply the repositories of religious images is
unknown. The Gateway of the Sun is only the best known of several
such monolithic doorways at Tiwanaku, the second best known
being the Gateway of the Moon.
Other monolithic statues are scattered around the civic centre of
the site. One of the most famous is the so-called El Fraile (‘The
Friar’), a figure which is located in the south-west corner of the
Kalasasaya. Purposefully carved from a block of stone with a
vertical streak of lighter stone, it is a typically Tiwanaku-style front¬
facing figure with large staring eyes, and is depicted holding a kero
and wearing a prominent belt.
Arguably the most impressive of all the city’s freestanding monolithic
statues, however, is that referred to as the Bennett Stela. Originally this
stood as the focal point of the Semisubterranean Temple, surrounded -
as if in homage - by a set of variously styled smaller sculptures and
stelae. The Bennett Stela and most of the others have now been
removed to a replica of the structure in Bolivia’s capital La Paz.
178 Ancient Americas

As with the other statues, the Bennett Stela depicts a human figure
holding a sceptre and kero, and dressed in typical Tiwanaku fashion.
Its complex iconography has been reproduced as a roll-out drawing
which in turn has led to several interpretations as to its symbolic
meaning. One view sees the statue as encoding a twelve-month
agricultural calendar based on observations of the moon and stars
and on counting the number of engraved circles and running figures.
Whether or not this is correct, it is a fact that flowering plants are
depicted, as are llamas, images of maize and a kero for drinking
maize beer (chicha).
Perhaps providing the most insight for the modern investigator
are the images of the powerful hallucinogenic San Pedro cactus, still
used by shamans today, and featuring also in the imagery of the
earlier Chavin civilisation far to the north. When assessed in
combination with the other ancient features of Andean culture, the
presence of San Pedro on the Bennett Stela reinforces the view of the
shamanic nature of Tiwanaku religion and cosmology. As with the
later Inka and also the Aztec of Mesoamerica, it may be that the
smaller statues represent ancestor images of other peoples conquered
or peacefully incorporated into the Tiwanaku state, and that they
were prominently displayed as symbolic hostages to the greater deity
represented by the Bennett Stela.
Tiwanaku ceramics also carry the Staff God’s image but usually
only represent the head. Felines (pumas and jaguars), serpents and
raptorial birds also are common motifs, as are the more hybrid
creatures of myth. Some of the most beautiful of these ceramics are
called incensarios (incense burners) though their actual function is
unknown. They take the form of brightly painted goblets, typically
decorated with long-tailed felines shown in profile and wearing
elaborate headdresses. Some examples also have a feline head
modelled on to the flared rim, the whole effect being that of the
typical kero or ceremonial beaker.
Part of Tiwanaku religion undoubtedly was characterised by the
ritual taking of hallucinogenic drugs. While such widespread
practices were an integral part of pre-Columbian Andean worldview,
in relation to the Tiwanaku they have left behind an important and
diagnostic kind of material culture. The so-called snuff trays survive
well in the dry conditions of the southern Andes ahd adjacent coast.
They have been found with carved-bone snuffing tubes and it is
probable that it was hallucinogenic powder known as vilca or yopo
 Wari and Tiwanaku 179

made from crushed seeds of the Anadenanthera plant that was

inhaled. At the site of Nino Korin, a dry cave on the eastern slopes of
the Andes, were discovered the remains of a shaman along with his
magical paraphernalia used for curing - a snuff tray, snuffing tube,
and even the remains of some of his curing plants. Coca chewing too
was a common habit and some effigy keros and carved stone statues
clearly show a human face chewing a wad of coca leaves.

Society and economy

It is likely that Tiwanaku was in some senses a multi-ethnic state,

whose highest echelons were probably dominated by those of
Aymara and Pukina ethnic affiliation, and who may have inter¬
married to form a ruling dynasty. It also seems likely that the official
Tiwanaku language was the native tongue of one of these two
groups and functioned in ways similar to the Quechua language of
the later Inka empire. It has been suggested that, in typically Andean
fashion, powerful ethnic lords - the chiefs known as curacas - who
controlled the Aymara and Pukina societies somehow agreed to co¬
operate, producing an energetic and unified political power which
led to the creation of the Tiwanaku state.
Tiwanaku had to be fed, and the scope of its architectural vision
and prowess was matched by its transformation of large areas of
surrounding altiplano into agriculturally productive land. The major
means by which yields were increased and new land brought under
cultivation was the large-scale creation and maintenance of ridged
field systems, especially the 75sq. km of such constructions in the
area known as the Pampa Koani.
Tiwanaku engineers displayed great ingenuity and persistence in
controlling the seasonal flooding of the pampa by the lake and
rivers, by planning, building, and maintaining canals and aqueducts,
and canalising river courses. They did not simply pile up earth in
long rows as raised or ridged fields but carefully thought out then
constructed the fields with permeable foundations of variously sized
boulders and stones upon which they deposited several metres of top
quality soil brought in from elsewhere.
This well-planned integration of fields and drainage canals had
heat-retaining qualities at this high altitude and permitted two or
more crops a year in a region where normal rainfall agriculture
could produce only one harvest. There is little doubt that this
180 Ancient Americas

transformation of the agricultural landscape played a major role in

supporting Tiwanaku’s population. Ironically, this system is no
longer used and the agricultural productivity of the area today is less
than it was in AD 500. Administering this state-sponsored exercise
were the two centres of Pajchiri and Lukurmata, both of which had
smaller versions of the architectural features of the capital.
Throughout Tiwanaku’s hinterland were scattered smaller
administrative centres and innumerable farms.

Empire and influence

Tiwanaku has been called an agro-pastoral state because of its

dependence on large-scale intensive farming in the heartland and
long-distance trading with far-flung colonies. By AD 600, this
strategic mixed economy had combined with an aggressive foreign
policy to produce what some experts refer to as a predatory imperial
state. This appears to have been based on a variety of approaches
which included military conquest, the foundation of large-scale
colonies, the control of long-distance trade caravans, the establish¬
ment of client-tribute relationships with local rulers and, where
appropriate, a stronger or weaker adherence to Tiwanaku’s official
state religion and ideology. This was not an empire on the Roman
model, nor even identical to the succeeding Inka empire, but was
rather a patchwork of variable responses to the multitude of far-
flung ethnic groups and local conditions that came under
Tiwanaku’s influence.
Tiwanaku’s presence beyond its heartland manifests itself as an
ambiguous mix of militarism, economic exploitation, trade and
artistic influence. At its height, Tiwanaku appears to have been the
hub of a vast empire in the southern Andes and adjacent coastal
regions. From high altiplano to steep river valleys and coastal desert
oases such as San Pedro de Atacama, a network of llama caravans
served Tiwanaku’s administrative centres in a complex web of pan-
Andean exchange.
Arguably one of the most impressive locations of such activity
was the site of Qeremita by Take Poopo, southeast of Tiwanaku.
Located in a landscape of high-quality basalt much prized by
Tiwanaku peoples for the production of tool's and weapons,
Qeremita still today shows evidence of high-density extraction and
manufacturing in the mines themselves, and at the collection areas
 Wari and Tiwanaku 181

that served as points of departure for llama caravans that carried the
stone to Tiwanaku communities throughout the region. These
communities are of various kinds, a mix of local people and tradi¬
tions and Tiwanaku people who controlled the caravan routes.
A spotlight is thrown on the relationships between local
communities and smaller numbers of outsider groups from
Tiwanaku at the site of Coya, which lies within the San Pedro de
Atacama oasis, some 800km from Lake Titicaca. It is clear that
while the two peoples lived alongside each other (probably inter¬
marrying), and were buried together in one large cemetery, the
distinctions of life were carried over into death. Ethnic identity,
displayed in the colour, design and style of dress (including bags,
belts, hats and tunics) was strictly observed post mortem by burying
the dead in two distinct groups. While burials of locals contained
items from the indigenous culture, those belonging to the Tiwanaku
individuals had keros, hallucinogenic snuffing equipment and
sometimes small lightweight gold items.
It may be, as in later Inka times, that the local curaca (chief) at
San Pedro organised the extraction of mineral goods required for
trade to Tiwanaku and received status, emblems, and perhaps even
high-status women in return. Yet, such was the distance and the
strength of local ethnic identity at San Pedro and other equally far-
flung ethnic groups, that Tiwanaku probably never absorbed these
communities wholesale into its empire. Rather, local peoples
adapted and adopted selected aspects of Tiwanaku art and ideology
for their own use, while benefiting from being locked, albeit
temporarily, into the greater regional networks of trade and prestige.
In the Moquegua Valley, there is clear evidence of the conquest and
incorporation of lower altitude, so called yungas, areas by the higher
altitude altiplano civilisation of Tiwanaku. At the Moquegua Valley
site of Omo, established between AD 600 and 700, the 7ha of main
occupation indicate its importance not just by dense habitation, but
also by the fact that it was the only centre outside the heartland
which had monumental Tiwanaku-style architecture. This was a
three-tiered temple platform built from adobe and stone, on whose
summit was a sunken courtyard. A typical Tiwanaku-style head was
all that remained of a large stone statue. Unusually, a small-scale
model of the Omo platform carved in stone was also found.
Spread around this civic centre was a large area of densely packed
housing and plazas, as well as several distinct burial grounds. There
182 Ancient Americas

is pottery evidence for the large-scale brewing of alcohol (probably

chicha beer), spindle whorls and coloured llama or alpaca wool to
indicate textile production, and the shaping and polishing of Pacific
Ocean shells (presumably for jewellery) that all speak of a diverse
economy, albeit one based mainly on agriculture.

The end of Tiwanaku

Tiwanaku’s demise seems to have begun in about AD 950 with a

severe drought, possibly lasting for decades. The consequences of
this might have included the diminishing of the large llama herds,
increasing pressure on the water-dependent ridged field systems, and
perhaps the movement of people away from the altiplano region to
lower, less severely affected altitudes. The state appears to have
responded well to earlier droughts by creating new ridged fields on
the land exposed by the shrinking Lake Titicaca and laying fallow
the increasingly stranded ones. But recent investigations suggest that
the AD 950 drought was too severe to permit recovery.
For reasons not fully understood, the high-maintenance agri¬
cultural system fell into disuse, with the consequent loss of food
which had enabled Tiwanaku to thrive. As the expensively reclaimed
land fell into decay, population declined and the days of the great
lakeside city were numbered. In more distant areas, there is evidence
for a violent end to some Tiwanaku colonies, perhaps earlier than
the collapse at Tiwanaku itself. At Omo, in about AD 800, the settle¬
ment was burned, irrigation canals disrupted and even the
cemeteries desecrated, though whether this was the result of outsider
action or internal uprising is not known.
It is not known either how Tiwanaku itself collapsed, although it
has been inferred that changing climate and agricultural decline
must have played a significant role. Alternatively, it may be that
Tiwanaku’s political system collapsed first and this led to the
abandonment of the state-sponsored hydraulic regime. Certainly by
AD 1000, the last vestiges of the once thriving Tiwanaku state had
broken down, and the heartland had been de-urbanised if not
depopulated.
Evidence suggests that local people fell back into a regional way
of life, relocated themselves, and turned away from intensive
agriculture and towards an increasingly pastoral life based on llama
and alpaca herding. The Tiwanaku area continued to be inhabited,
 Wari and Tiwanaku 183

notably by the Aymara peoples and then the Inka, both of whom
assimilated the vast ruins of the abandoned city into their own
cultural landscapes and myths of origin.
However, it may have been the Inka, as South America’s greatest
imperial civilisation, that had the manpower, political will and
ideological motivation partly to re-create Tiwanaku for their own
ends. The presence of Inka artefacts across the site suggests that they
may have been responsible for rearranging parts of it, moving the
Gateway of the Sun and the Gateway of the Moon from their
original places to their current and clearly ‘out of context’ locations.
It was, after all, at Tiwanaku that Inka myth records how the
creator deity Viracocha fashioned humankind from clays gathered
from Lake Titicaca.
'

'
 ELEVEN

Si can and Chimu

TTn the great river valleys of Peru’s north coast, the Sican and
iL Chimu civilisations flourished between about AD 800 and 1470.
For many years, the astonishing architecture and artwork of the
Sican civilisation were referred to as the Lambayeque culture, after
the valley in which its main monuments are found. The huge adobe
temple platforms and stunning gold objects - from death masks to
pairs of embossed-gold hands - were sometimes confusingly
identified with the later imperial Chimu state which flourished in the
Moche Valley to the south. Today, after decades of painstaking
archaeological investigations by Izumi Shimada and his colleagues, a
reappraisal has taken place and has been accepted by the archaeo¬
logical community.
It now seems clear that in the Lambayeque and La Leche Valleys,
the Sican civilisation was a distinct cultural and political entity,
beginning earlier than the Chimu culture which subsequently
conquered it. Both civilisations shared a common past in the earlier
Moche culture (see Chapter Eight) whose remains are also found in
the area, and their immediate successors the Wari culture whose
influence extended north along the Andes and adjacent Pacific coast
from its central Andean centre of Wari in about AD 700 (see Chapter
Ten). Both the Sican and Chimu civilisations shared a character¬
istically north-coast orientation to the sea, engaged in inter-valley
trade, promoted hydraulic agriculture in the form of irrigation
canals and constructed large-scale adobe ceremonial buildings.
Today, Sican has reclaimed its place as one of pre-Columbian South
America’s most astonishing civilisations.

sicAn

Sican civilisation flourished between about AD 800 and 1375, at

which time it was conquered by, and incorporated into, its southerly
186 Ancient Americas

neighbour the Chimu state. Early Sican culture began in about AD

800, but many of its traces are buried now beneath the remains of
the later and more extensive Middle Sican Period which developed
about a century later. Nevertheless, one feature which did emerge
during this early period was the zoomorphic face which blended
human and bird characteristics and which appeared on pottery -
this developed into the artistic motifs called the ‘Sican Deity’ and
‘Sican Lord’. Archaeologists believe that it was during this early
period that Sican culture adopted some cultural features of the Wari
civilisation.
Although problematic in their interpretation, there exist sixteenth-
and seventeenth-century Spanish historical documents which seem
to preserve an oral account of the founding of Sican civilisation.
They tell how a man known as Naymlap arrived off the coast of the
Lambayeque Valley on a fleet of balsa-wood rafts which carried his
family and royal court as well as a powerful greenstone idol. Among
his courtiers are eight named officials each of whom had a specific
responsibilty to his royal master. These include Llapchillulli who
was Naymlap’s dresser, Ninacola who looked after the throne and
Fonga Sigde who, intriguingly, is responsible for scattering seashell
dust in front of his lord. The latter official we will meet again.
Naymlap establishes a power base at a place called Chot, today
identified with the archaeological site of Chotuna. A dozen of his
descendants succeed to royal power in the area until the last ruler,
known as Fempellec, interferes with the greenstone idol’s sacred
location, whereupon incessant rains, flooding and famine ensue.
Fempellec is cast out by his own people, and the next major event is
the conquest of the area by the Chimu.
Whatever the status or reliability of this story, archaeological
evidence suggests that the fading of Wari as a cultural force soon led
to a drastic reorientation in the coastal valleys north of the Moche
river. Older Moche ideas combined with innovations to produce the
confident theocratic state of the Middle Sican Period. Between AD
900 and 1100, large numbers of huge adobe platforms were built
especially in the Fambayeque Valley, and a huge cultural and
ideological investment made in metallurgy, particularly in objects
fashioned from arsenical copper and various gold and copper alloys.
Targe quantities of metal wealth were interred iri newly developed
shaft-tombs indicating a strict and hierarchical society. At the same
time, Sican culture forged new, or revitalised existing, trading
 Sican and Chimu 187

relationships with far-flung areas to gain its precious raw materials,

such as the sacred Spondylus shells from coastal Ecuador.

Society and religion

The main expression of Sican religion would seem to be the

common representations of the so-called Sican Deity which most
famously appears as a large face with comma-shaped eyes made out
of sheets of hammered gold, but which can also be seen on textiles
and pottery. The gold masks are often painted with imported red
cinnabar, and accompanied their owner into the afterlife as funerary
goods. Some experts believe this deity derived partly from previous
Moche and Wari gods, and that the Sican lords especially favoured
the imagery of raptorial birds, as wings, talons and beaks also
features as characteristics of the Sican Deity.
In a long piece of vividly painted cotton textile found at the site of
Sican itself (also referred to as Batan Grande), the Sican Deity is
shown with a typical gold face-mask, holding up a severed trophy
head in one hand and the typically Sican ceremonial tumi knife in
the other. Advancing towards him on both sides are a series of
breaking waves, their feathered crests having zoomorphic faces, and
within the body of which are images of fish. At one end of the waves
is a representation of the sun as a Sican-style face, and at the other is
a crescent moon. This has suggested to some scholars that despite
the focus here of symbols associated with the ocean and the heavens,
the Sican Deity may be an all-powerful god of everything, perhaps a
cosmic lord of creation.
The shape of Middle Sican society is indicated by their mortuary
practices. The mass of ordinary people were buried in simple style
beneath the floors of the houses and workshops where they had
spent their lives. The idea of the dead and their spirits being ever¬
present for the living in this way, rather than separated off in a
cemetery, tells us something of the conditions and beliefs of the
common Sican folk.
By contrast, the ruling classes were buried in deep burial
chambers called shaft-tombs beneath large burial mounds. These
chambers were of variable shape and often contained vast quantities
of arsenical copper and high-class gold alloy items. To date, the
most impressive unlooted burial of this type is called the Huaca
Loro East Tomb, and was excavated by Izumi Shimada in 1991-2.
188 Ancient Americas

At the bottom of a shaft over 10m deep, crushed flat by the weight
of earth on top, was found over a ton of grave goods accompanying
one adult man, two women and two children. That Sican rulers had
created a cosmology based on the natural and supernatural symbol¬
ism of metals was clear from the discovery of layers of gold and
gold-alloy regalia, 200kg of arsenical copper items and, perhaps
most revealing of all, three piles of scrap tumbaga sheets along with
several heaps of the ritually important Spondylus shell.
The remains of the main male burial were interred with metal
jewellery including a death mask adorned with emeralds and amber,
sets of golden ear spools, layers of shell and beads, and the signs of a
now long since disintegrated cloak that originally had some two
thousand thin gold squares sewn on to it. As Shimada himself
observed, this vast haul represented not just incredible power
wielded by the deceased, but also his ability to call on a wide-
ranging trade network which supplied the exotic materials and
embodied untold labour-hours in making such exquisite objects.
Nearby was the Huaca Loro West Tomb, which revealed the remains
of one man and twenty-three women, llamas or alpacas, indications
of many rolls of cloth and tumbaga-plated pottery. Interestingly, the
study of the physical remains of the occupants of both tombs
suggests they were related.
These rich burials, and probably many others whose presence is
suggested by geophysical investigations, indicate that the whole
Huaca Loro temple-pyramid was a Middle Period Sican centre built
between AD 1000 and 1050. As with the Classic Maya temple-
pyramids of Mesoamerica, they were focal points for ancestor wor¬
ship and elaborate ceremonial, incorporating ideas of divine
dynastic descent for those buried within. Other nearby mounds,
thought possibly to have had similar functions for other elite
segments of the society, are regarded as forming the sacred centre
which Shimada calls the ‘religious city of Sican’.
This conglomeration of great adobe-brick temple-platforms was
built around the so-called Great Plaza. Huaca Loro, La Ventanas, La
Merced and other mound groups have been dated to between AD
900 and 1050 and were of a building style that permitted rapid
construction. The mounds themselves are of two different kinds but
both apparently possessed walls decorated with colourful murals
depicting the Sican Deity and other motifs. The political nature of
Sican civilisation has been interpreted as a kind of theocracy, with
 Sicdn and Chimu 189

the great lords regarding themselves as the earthly embodiment of

the Sican Deity. The Sican state was centred on the Lambayeque
Valley, and was clearly successful at integrating the people of a
number of lesser valleys and communities, tying their political
leaders into a network of shared economic, political and ideological
dimensions.

Arts and crafts

The material culture of the Middle Sican Period was a vibrant

expression of its vigorous cultural, religious and ideological con¬
fidence, stemming, as already observed, from a mix of previous
Moche and Wari influences. Yet Sican culture also defined itself
independently. Its pottery, for example, eschewed the fascination
with brightly coloured designs that so characterised Moche and
Wari in favour of a virtual obsession with blackware. That the well-
made, single-spouted Middle Sican black ceramics were of high
status can be seen from their wide distribution during this time -
from Piura in the north to the great shrine of Pachacamac near
modern Lima in the south.
Middle Sican Period potters also elaborated an age-old ceramic
production process known as paddle-and-anvil whereby the walls of
raw and unfired vessels were given tensile strength by being struck
with a wooden paddle on the outside while a stone was held on the
inside as the anvil. Sican master potters decorated their paddles (and
thus the ceramics made with them) with small designs, either
geometric or miniatures of such cultural images as tumi knives and
various animals.
While Sican pottery was a new departure from what had gone
before, what crystallised and embodied the civilisation were its
advances in metalworking. Hitherto, pure copper had been added to
gold to make the tumbaga alloy, but Middle Period Sican metal-
smiths mastered the skill of using arsenical copper and thereby
heralded what Shimada calls a ‘Bronze Age’ for the north coast.
From a technological point of view, this development may have
made metal items easier to cast and shape, as well as making them
harder and more resistant to corrosion. It certainly led to a signifi¬
cant increase in the quantity of metal objects produced, such as tumi
knives, headdresses and elaborate death-masks, often decorated with
inlays of shell and semi-precious minerals.
190 Ancient Americas

In typically Amerindian fashion, the sacredness of such ‘magical’

technologies, and the supernatural transformative abilities they
possessed, was illustrated by offerings of animals and pottery made
during the construction and subsequent abandonment of smelting
furnaces. Furthermore, the mystical qualities of the finished artefacts
symbolised the powers of Sican rulers who presumably claimed
divine or semi-divine status and displayed this connection by the
amount of shimmering metal regalia they wore during life and
death. The sheer visual magnificence of the gold-alloy paraphernalia
they wore in such great quantities must have had an impressive
psychological impact not only on commoners, but the elites of other
contemporary societies as well.
Sican rulers presided over a creative explosion of outstanding
metalworking, but it was also a multi-media tradition, incorporating
semi-precious and precious minerals, several species of presumably
sacred seashells, textiles, and exotic bird plumage. While some items
were local, such as cotton textiles, other raw materials were
obtained through an extensive trading system that plied the coastal
strip and Andean Valleys north into modern-day Ecuador and
Colombia. The presence in these distant areas of Sican blackware
pottery, and two kinds of arsenical copper segments called naipes
and axe-monies, suggests that these objects formed part of the
exchange mechanism by which Sican rulers obtained their exotic
luxury items. The multi-media skills of Sican craftsmen working for
their status-obsessed patrons perhaps created, or at least elaborated,
a system of prehispanic trade networks that bound together
northern Peru with other diverse cultures and regions on the
northern Andes around AD 1000.
Perhaps the most intriguing of these trade connections involved the
acquisition of the sacred Spondylus shell from the warm waters of
Ecuador. The responsibility of Fonga Sigde to cast crushed Spondylus
shell dust in his master’s path may be taken to represent a constellation
of duties that included obtaining and preparing the shells.
Recent innovative investigations have identified thirteen examples
of Middle Sican Period depictions of divers collecting Spondylus
shells underwater, typically tied by a cord around their waist to the
boat above. These images adorn gold ornaments, silver ear spools,
textiles and a wooden bowl decorated with mosaic'inlay. Clearly, the
shell itself, its shiny brilliance when crushed, its associations with
the sea, and perhaps also the difficulty of obtaining it were some of
 Sican and Chimu 191

the reasons why it was chosen as a royal (and probably super¬

natural) symbol. That there was a symbolic connection, perhaps
equivalence, between Spondylus shell and metalwork, is indicated by
the finding of small metal items placed within a complete shell and
buried as a unit. The presence of vast quantities of Spondylus shell
dust in later Chimu burials has been interpreted as the Sican practice
having been imported to Chan Chan after the Chimu conquest.

The demise of Sican

In about AD 1100, the culture that had worked so well for several
hundred years went into steep decline. Significantly, this is seen most
dramatically by the burning of the ceremonial buildings at Sican
itself. Yet, at the same time, ordinary non-monumental buildings
and ways of life seemed to continue as before, extending into the so-
called Late Sican Period (AD 100-1350). As at the great metropolis
of Teotihuacan in Mesoamerica, destruction seems to have focused
on the buildings that symbolised the elite and their religio-
ideological motif the Sican Deity, which now disappears from
material culture. Why this happened is unclear, although it is
possible that it resulted from an internal revolt prompted by climatic
changes the effects of which the elite were unable to predict or
control.
With the demise of the religious centre at Sican, the focus of
political activity shifted to a new capital known as El Purgatorio
(and sometimes as Tucume), situated at the junction of the
Lambayeque and La Leche Valleys. Covering an area of over 200ha,
the new centre was built around a central section known as La
Raya. Construction at the site continued beyond the Sican period
into the new era dominated by the Chimu empire expanding from
the south, and then the subsequent Inka period. The end of a
politically independent Sican state occurred in about AD 1375 with
the arrival of the Chimu.

CHIMU

In about AD 1200, the Chimu civilisation emerged in the same

Moche river Valley as the previous Moche civilisation, and became
the most powerful state on Peru’s north coast. The Chimu were a
hierarchical and imperial society, ruled by god-like kings who
192 Ancient Americas

created an extensive coastal empire, but who ultimately fell to the

advancing Inka armies in about AD 1470.
Despite the prehistoric antiquity of Chimu civilisation’s origins,
there are several surviving Spanish historical accounts that have
preserved an earlier oral tradition of the founding of the state. As
with the accounts of Naymlap’s founding of a royal dynasty in the
Lambayeque Valley, some experts regard these as pure myth, while
others consider a careful reading of them provides a useful outline of
these early events.
A fragmentary document from the early seventeenth century
relates how the founding figure, called Tacaynamo, arrived offshore
of the mouth of the Moche river sailing a balsa-wood raft. It con¬
tinues, telling how the Moche Valley is conquered by his son
Guacricaur and grandson Nan^enpinco, the latter of whom also
begins to conquer river valleys north and south of Moche. Between
five and seven anonymous rulers follow until the ruler named
Minchangaman appears who conquers new areas in the north before
himself falling to the Inka armies of Tupac Yupanqui in about AD
1470 and is taken to Cuzco as a prisoner, whereupon a puppet ruler
was installed at the Chimu capital of Chan Chan.
A literal reading of this account infers that the Chimu state was
established in AD 1225, but like other later documents it seems that
myth and history were interwoven with political expediency and
ideology, and that this unique historical document is probably little
more than propaganda. This in turn has led to scholarly dis¬
agreements and not a little confusion as to when the Chimu
civilisation really began. Different archaeologists make different
estimates ranging from c. AD 800 to c. 1100. Even scientific dating
methods such as radiocarbon have so far been unable to establish an
accurate sequence for the construction of the city’s major buildings,
the great compounds known as ciudadelas. The only generally
accepted dating sequence is the agreement that the earlier com¬
pounds were built of flat bricks, while the later ones were construc¬
ted of tall bricks.

Chan Chan

In many ways, our knowledge of the Chimu is tased on archae¬

ological investigations of their capital - the great desert city of Chan
Chan, located near the mouth of the Moche Valley. At its height,
 Sican and Chimu 193

Chan Chan sprawled over some 25sq. km, and had a population of
between 25,000 and 30,000. Hence, it was the largest pre-
Columbian city in South America at the time, though whether it was
truly urban, or perhaps a city dedicated solely to servicing the needs
of the royal elite is still a matter of debate. Interestingly, its resident
population is small compared to the earlier, but similarly sized
Mesoamerican city of Teotihuacan, which had around two hundred
thousand inhabitants.
The heart of the city was composed of ten giant compounds,
ciudadelas, that appear to have functioned as royal palaces during
the lifetime of the rulers to whom they belonged, and as mau¬
soleums dedicated to their cult after death. Archaeologists have
examined also a number of lesser compounds identified as belonging
to the elite, barrios (neighbourhoods) of specialist workers, and the
remains of temple platforms presumably used for public ceremonial.
Despite Chan Chan’s overall size and evident sophistication, there
appears to have been no city centre, no identifiable central core -
only a ribbon-like development along a north-south axis that
developed over time.
Nevertheless, there is a marked difference in the size of the capital
and its outlying regional settlements, communities that presumably
articulated its centralised political and economic control in far-flung
areas. Typifying this is Manchan, a small administrative centre
located in the Casma Valley several hundred kilometres south of
Chan Chan. The lack of large buildings and storehouses at Manchan
indicates that whatever wealth was generated in this region was
funnelled straight back to the capital.
The ciudadela compounds, like most ancient Peruvian coastal
buildings, were made of sun-baked mud bricks (adobes). The
compounds vary in size, with floor areas ranging from 80,000sq. m
to some 200,000sq. m. Most experts agree that the ciudadelas are
an architectural expression of the deep social divisions of Chimu
society, with their high walls up to 10m tall, and a single narrow
entrance giving access to a labyrinthine interior composed of cor¬
ridors, courts and passageways and, in some, a large, centrally
located burial platform.
Investigations of these unusual interiors have given rise in the past
to different interpretations as to their use - as storehouses, work¬
shops and as the habitations of different segments of a royal family.
However, today most archaeologists agree that they were probably
194 Ancient Americas

built by succeeding Chimu emperors as their own personal palace-

mausoleums, and that the complex internal divisions reflect a
multitude of uses associated with the ideology of Chimu rulership,
economic specialisation and social control.
The earlier and smaller ciudadelas are called Chayhuac, Tello and
Uhle and these typically have storehouses whose total space was
around 3,000sq. m. However, as time passed and the larger
compounds known as Laberinto, Velarde and Gran Chimu were
built, storage space doubled to 6,000sq. m, only to decline to
3,000sq. m with the last four compounds, known respectively as
Rivero, Squier, Tschudi and Bandelier. In the later compounds also, a
new kind of layout appears, based on a three-part division of
internal space. This seems to have increased the overall storage area
available. Although these storage areas were ‘clean’ when archaeo¬
logists investigated them, it seems likely they once contained craft-
work such as cloth, metalwork, featherwork, pottery and perhaps
other exotic items as well as perhaps food, gathered as tribute and
representing the personal wealth of the royal family within whose
compound it was stored.
Further insight into the almost obsessively hierarchical nature of
Chimu society is provided by the architectural features of
compounds known as audiencias. These are raised U-shaped plat¬
forms that take their name from their presumed function as places
where Chimu administrators held audiences with those who came to
pay tribute, and/or display their political and perhaps religious alle¬
giance to the Chimu state. Sometimes, several hundred audiencias
existed within a great ciudadela, whose artistic adobe friezes and
apparently dedicatory human sacrifices interred beneath their floors
suggested a typically Andean mix of politics, economics and
religion.
At the centre of several large compounds have been found the
remains of a great T-shaped burial structure which it is thought
would have been the mausoleum of a deceased ruler and the centre
of a royal cult administered by his extended family and retinue -
presumably as much for their benefit as that of the spirit of the
deceased. When archaeologists partially excavated the Huaca Las
Avispas tomb platform they found the remains of almost a hundred
young women presumably sacrificed during the ruler’s funerary
ceremony, rolls of cotton textiles, pottery and the sacred Thorny
Oyster shell otherwise known as Spondylus.
 Sican and Chimu 195

There are different interpretations for the shape of the city in

terms of the building and spacing of the ciudadelas. While the
commonly accepted idea is that each new king built his own palace-
mausoleum, another view is that Chan Chan’s great ciudadelas were
built in pairs, one each on the western and eastern halves of the city.
This would accord well with typically Andean ideas about dual¬
kingship and the symbolic splitting of physical space into two halves
or moieties, a practice followed by the later Inka in their capital
at Cuzco.

Society

Chimu society was sharply ranked, its leaders probably regarded as

divine or semi-divine beings, the social distance between rulers and
ruled being expressed by the intimidating size and design of the
ciudadelas. Supporting this hierarchical structure were those who
made the goods which the elite then requisitioned and deployed as
visual displays of their superior, and perhaps divinely sanctioned
wealth and power. Some estimates suggest that over ten thousand
full-time craft specialists lived and worked at Chan Chan, mainly
engaged in metalworking and textile production. During the earlier
period of the city’s history, some of the higher-class specialist
workers lived adjacent to the ciudadelas, probably working directly
for the elite inhabitants within. Also in the central part of the city
were two caravanserais, the final destination of long-distance traders
and their llama caravans bringing in a variety of products such as
coca, metal ingots and probably various foodstuffs.
By the end of Chan Chan’s life, craft specialisation appears to
have focused almost exclusively on production in two specially
designated neighbourhoods on the city’s boundaries, each of which
had its own cemetery. These quasi-industrial suburbs had houses
and workshops mingled together and seem to have been concerned
mainly with producing everyday metalwork and textiles in a way
which suggests the manufacture then assemblage of different
components, with woodwork and shellwork being brought in from
elsewhere.
Apart from the craftworkers, it seems that Chimu society used the
typically Andean labour-tax system known as the mita, bringing in
workers from surrounding areas to manufacture millions of adobe
bricks and then using them to build the ciudadelas and elite
196 Ancient Americas

compounds. Food and raw materials also were brought into Chan
Chan from the hinterlands, probably by the llama caravans already
mentioned. The impression gained by careful analysis of the nature
of the Chimu political economy is one of a strictly monitored society
whose elite kept tight control over all resources and then redis¬
tributed them as they saw fit.
The archaeological investigations of Chan Chan reveal a unique
combination of factors that probably influenced the shifting of the
city’s population, or parts of it, from one area to another over time.
This was based on the availability and supply of water, both for
irrigated fields and everyday use. In the early stages, it seems that
the focus of agricultural activity was on the north side of the city but
that El Nino events and geological uplift upset the hyrdraulic
regime, despite the construction of several large canals. The most
impressive of these was the La Cumbre Canal which stretched some
70km, bringing water from the Chicama Valley to the fields of Chan
Chan in the Moche Valley. Eventually, irrigation shifted to focus on
the eastern side of Chan Chan, though water supply was a recurring
problem towards the end of the city’s independent life. Not only was
there a lack of water, but sometimes also, a surfeit. Archaeologists
believe they have identified the traces of a serious El Nino event
with its associated flooding dating to between AD 1300 and 1350
which would also have seriously affected the dependable supply
of water.

Arts and crafts

Chimu arts and crafts did not aspire to the individual excellence of
its Moche or Middle Period Sican predecessors. Reflecting the
nature of its social, political and economic organisation, Chimu
craftwork emphasised standardisation and mass production over
artistic creativity.
Designs, shapes and decoration of ceramics were simple, stylised
and seemingly endlessly repeated. Some motifs appear to have been
based on Moche originals but changed over time to accord with
Chimu styles. Other examples - often the most life-like ceramic
representations - are believed to be Chimu revivals vof earlier Moche
pieces. What exactly this pre-Columbian retro style meant is
unknown; perhaps it harked back to ancestral ideas and beliefs, the
power of ceramic imagery to conjure new meanings for an
 Sican and Chimu 197

ideologically reconfigured society where most pottery had perhaps

ceased to carry a religious symbolic load.
Whatever the true reason for these revivals of Moche ceramic
style, most typical Chimu pottery was black to dark grey in colour,
usually made in moulds that divided into two parts and often with
little attention paid to detail. Shapes were sometimes effigies of
people or animals, with a handle - inherited from the Moche - of a
typical North Coast stirrup-spout kind. Particularly notable are the
so-called whistling pots, double-bodied vessels whose hidden
interior design produced a distinctive sound when water (or perhaps
originally cbicha beer) was poured out. Given the multi-sensual
nature of pre-Columbian Amerindian societies, where sound, touch
and smell combine to represent spiritual qualities - if not to signify
actual spirit presence - it is impossible to know whether whistling
pots were just an amusement or held a deeper significance.
While Chimu pottery was not particularly well made, consider¬
ably more effort seems to have been put into kinds of material
culture which could have been displayed in public - textiles
(sometimes feathered) and metalwork. Ceremonial clothing and
feather headdresses are intricately designed and coloured, adorned
with shells, bird feathers and glittering metals which must have
shimmered and tinkled as their wearer moved. These were elaborate
multi-media creations, colourful and highly visible signs of social
status and, perhaps, of ethnic identity. Chimu master weavers also
made large-scale textiles as wall hangings, some measuring up to
10m long and 3m wide, and produced in llama or alpaca wool and
cotton into which were woven (sometimes painted) colourful
stylised images of humans, gods and animals such as birds, serpents
and felines.
The Chimu evidently were master metalsmiths - a skill they
shared with their northerly neighbours the Sican people. In fact,
after the AD 1375 Chimu conquest of the Sican culture, many of its
finest metalsmiths seem to have been taken to Chan Chan where
they created Chimu-style objects that appear as hybrids of the two
civilisations. Many items of metalwork once identified as Chimu are
now recognised as being either Sican or made by Sican workers at
Chan Chan.
Nevertheless, whatever their exact identity, Chimu-period metal¬
workers specialised in casting gold figures, often from alloys of gold
and silver, and sometimes with copper and arsenic. They embellished
198 Ancient Americas

these with such techniques as gilding and embossing, and then inlaid
minerals such as turquoise and lapiz lazuli. Chimu metalworkers
also employed the ‘lost wax’ technique to great effect; this involved
the making of a model in wax which was then covered in clay and
fired in a kiln - the wax then melted and ran out through several
holes, whereupon gold was poured into the cavity. After cooling, the
clay surround was removed, leaving a golden replica of the original
wax shape. Gold or gold-alloy items were used to make a variety of
bodily adornments, from elements decorating headdresses and
clothing to jewellery such as bracelets, necklaces, earrings and nose
ornaments. All were symbols of high social status, associating rank
with the sacred qualities attributed to the raw materials from which
the items were made, and their ‘magical’ production processes. The
spiritual dimension of these items is hinted at also by the fact that
many accompanied their deceased owner into the afterlife by being
interred in the tomb as grave offerings.

Empire

The Chimu empire spread across large swathes of Peru’s northern

coastal valleys and deserts, and seems to have been the result of
some two hundred years of expansion and consolidation. By far the
most significant aspect of their imperial expansion appears to have
been to the north, and involved the conquest and incorporation of
the Jequetepeque Valley in about AD 1200. Some sources attribute
this event to the Chimu general called Pacatnamu who ruled the
area from the site of Farfan, where he built a Chimu-style ciudadela
complete with a central burial platform. The impulse for this
conquest may have been the disastrous aftermath of an El Nino
event thought to have occurred in about AD 1100 and which
destroyed the agricultural network adjacent to the northern part of
Chan Chan and which led to a reconfigured policy based on
conquest and the expropriation of resources from hitherto foreign
(and politically independent) areas.
Further expansion took place in valleys north of Jequetepeque
between AD 1350 and 1400. Typical Chimu material culture in
architecture and pottery appears in the Lambayecjue and La Leche
Valleys at this time and political influence may have extended as far
north as the area around Tumbes and Piura. Interestingly, and in
some ways similar to what occurred in later Inka times, this increase
 Sican and Chimu 199

in territorial expansion may have led to pressures on the Chimu

elite’s administrative abilities to control the empire. Changes in
Chan Chan’s architecture at the time indicate an increase in middle-
level elite compounds which could best be accounted for by Chimu
royalty bringing in non-Chimu individuals to help administer the
expanding state.
As we have previously seen, much of this northern area was the
heartland of the Sican civilisation. The La Leche and Lambayeque
Valleys were agriculturally rich, representing perhaps one third of all
of ancient Peru’s cultivated coastal area. Their tribute of foodstuff
would have more than offset the decline in Chan Chan’s own
agricultural fortunes. Equally important was the fact that Sican
culture had developed an astonishingly advanced metallurgical
tradition, their metalsmiths masters of working with arsenical
copper and other precious metals. These specialists would now have
been working for the imperial Chimu state, an interpretation
supported by the apparent increase in the number of metalsmith
workshops at the Sican centre of Cerro Huaringa after the Chimu
conquest.
It seems that the richness of these northern valleys reoriented
Chimu society back in Chan Chan and, indeed, their whole imperial
enterprise. The northern provinces probably doubled the wealth of
the Chimu, not just by adding agricultural produce and expert
metalwork, but by tapping into Sican sources of raw materials and
their trade networks up into the Andes. Conquered areas also
yielded a supply of local rulers who were incorporated into the
administrative apparatus of the Chimu state. The close-knit political
and economic structures that formed the underpinning of Chimu
state policy can be seen in the presence in conquered areas of
typically Chimu features, such as the U-shaped audiencias and
ceramics of Chimu style but locally made. Sometimes local people
were moved from their own towns and villages and gathered
together in newly built Chimu-style settlements. Again, as with the
later Inka policy, the Chimu elite did not dismantle previous
practices but simply brought them into the larger Chimu system.
At its height, between AD 1400 and 1450, the Chimu empire
probably extended some 500km north-south along Peru’s northern
coast, from Tumbes in the north to the Chillon Valley in the south,
though the nature of its political and military control was variable.
Many valleys had their own cultures and material culture styles in
200 Ancient Americas

architecture, pottery and textiles, and while Chimu control seems

comprehensive in some valleys, it appears intermittent in others. In
about AD 1470, the Inka empire caught up with the Chimu - its
only imperial competitor - subjugated Chan Chan and, perhaps
learning from the latter’s example with Sican, took its metalsmiths
back to Cuzco.
 TWELVE

Inka

•nr^he Inka empire was the last great pre-Columbian civilisation of

A South America, destroyed in its prime by Spanish conquistadors
under Francisco Pizarro in 1532. While the scale of the Inka
imperial achievement was unparalleled, the building blocks of their
success were the accumulated cultural traditions, technological
achievements, spiritual beliefs and worldviews not only of their con¬
temporaries such as the Chimu, but of their predecessors, stretching
back millennia into the Andean past.

MYTHS OF ORIGIN

For the Inkas, as with all native Andean peoples, mythology was a
living reality, a way of seeing the world and of understanding and
celebrating how things had come to be as they are. Mythology
illuminated the mysteries of life and death, and the language used to
recount individual myths was vivid and memorable. Recurring
themes were the origins of human beings, the magical role of
ancestors and the continued well-being and fertility of livestock,
land and people.
In mythological accounts of their own origins, the Inka were
influenced and inspired by the stories and traditions of their neigh¬
bours, as well as by the spectacular, though violent and unpredictable
Andean world. Lake Titicaca was an important place in Inka
mythology, and they built temples on the Island of the Sun in the
middle of the lake. For the Inkas and the local Kolia peoples, Lake
Titicaca was a cosmic ‘place of emergence’, a metaphor for spiritual
rebirth with strong ties to the Pacific Ocean as the ‘mother of fertility’.
Inka creation myths take many forms and appear in different ver¬
sions. There is no single true account; each version preserves
shadings of meaning and history that reflect the conditions under
which it was created and later written down by the Spanish. The
202 Ancient Americas

half-Spanish, half-Inka chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega tells how the

world was at first nothing but mountains inhabited by uncivilised
and irreligious people who lived like wild beasts. They slept with
each other’s wives, lived in caves, and preferred human flesh to
cultivating the land.
Garcilaso recounts how the sun pitied these creatures and sent
two of his children, a boy and a girl, to civilise them and instruct
them how to worship the sun as their god. The cosmic siblings
appeared on earth near Lake Titicaca and were told to thrust a
golden rod into the soil wherever they stopped to rest. Wheresoever
the rod sank easily into the earth, there they were to build the sacred
city of the sun. They were to feed, organise and protect the people
whom they civilised, and to treat them as their own beloved
children. In return, they would become the rulers and lords of all
whom they instructed.
At last, brother and sister arrived at Pacariqtambo, or the ‘Inn of
the Dawn’, and at the place called Huanacauri the golden rod
slipped easily into the soil. The pair gathered all the people they
could find, impressing them with their fine clothing and civilised life.
As numbers swelled, the heavenly pair were worshipped as living
gods and obeyed as rulers, and in this way, so Garcilaso says, the
great city of Cuzco became filled with people.
Another Inka creation myth relates how three brothers and three
sisters were the ancestors of the Inkas, and how they emerged into
the world from three caves at Pacariqtambo. One brother, Ayar
Cachi, made the others jealous by performing miraculous feats of
strength, hurling great slingstones and shaping the Andean
landscape. His brothers tricked him into returning to Pacariqtambo
where they sealed him up in the cave. Ayar Cachi escaped, and told
his brothers to wear golden earrings as a sign of their royal status.
At the mountain called Huanacauri, Ayar Cachi turned himself and
a brother into stone. The remaining brother, Manco Capac, then
founded the city of Cuzco on the site later occupied by the Temple
of the Sun God Inti.
In yet another myth, the supreme Inka deity Viracocha made
people out of clay, painting them with clothes whose colourful
designs distinguished one nation from another. He gave each group
its own language and customs, then blew his life-giving breath into
them. He sent them to earth and commanded they emerge from
caves, lakes and mountains. At each place they were to honour him
 Inka 203

by making shrines for his worship. Heartened by his success,

Viracocha then made light from the darkness - order from chaos -
so that his creations could thrive. He made the sun, moon and stars
rise into the sky from the Island of the Sun in Lake Titicaca. As the
sun ascended, Viracocha called out, prophesying that the Inka and
their leader Manco Capac would conqueror many nations.
Viracocha gave Manco Capac a beautiful headdress and a great
battle-axe as signs of his royal status among men. Manco then led
his brothers and sisters into the earth from where they re-emerged
into the daylight world at Pacariqtambo.
Inka creation myths served many purposes. They established the
royal prerogatives of the ruling dynasty and offered dramatic and
memorable accounts of the supernatural origins of the world. They
explained how and why mountains, lakes, rivers and shrines were
located in particular places and how they came to be full of super¬
natural power. In this way, Inka myths made use of age-old Andean
ideas, especially beliefs in ancestor worship and transformation. The
ability of culture heroes to change magically into rocks and stones
or of these inanimate objects to adopt human form is a recurring
and distinctively Andean theme.

RELIGION

Mythology and religion were never far apart in the pre-Columbian

world. Adapting ancient beliefs and inventing new ones, the Inkas
created a religion appropriate for empire, with an elaborate ritual
calendar of festivals for the veneration of gods, the mummies of past
emperors and the reigning monarch.
Inka mythology established that the land was alive, infused with
spirituality, animated by the ancestors. Consequently, springs, lakes,
rocks, caves, mountains and the tombs of ancestors were all sacred
places known as buacas, and each could become the focus of
religious activity. A common kind of huaca was the apacheta, a pile
of small stones placed on mountain paths and at crossroads.
Travellers could add another stone, offer coca leaves, deposit a sea-
shell, or deliberately spill cbicha (maize beer) as an offering to local
spirits and Pacha Mama (Mother Earth).
At the opposite end of the scale, the largest buacas were the
mountains themselves. Each was linked to the other in a system of
sacred peaks which tied the empire together ideologically and
204 Ancient Americas

spiritually as well as geographically. Overlooking Cuzco, the two

prominent mountains Salcantay and Ausangate were considered
brothers and the fathers of all mountains. This view of landscape as an
animated sacred geography influenced the practical matters of
everyday life. Granite blocks used to construct monumental buildings
in Inka style were hence quarried from the flanks of what were
believed to be living mountains. Temples, fortresses and palaces were
all made from these sacred raw materials, and constructed in a fashion
which defied the earthshaking tremors of the region.
The meshing of sacred and physical geographies is evident at
Machu Picchu, perhaps the most famous Inka city and dominated
by temples, palaces, houses, terraced fields, water conduits and
fountains. At the city’s centre, the carved stone pillar known as the
Intihuatana or Hitching Post of the Sun may have served an
astronomical purpose, though it might also have been associated
with mountain worship, located at a point where sacred peaks were
in alignment with the cardinal directions.
In Inka worldview, celestial phenomena were seen as closely linked
to earthly events. The star group known as the Pleiades was called
Collca (the granary), and considered the celestial guardian of seeds
and agriculture. Inka priests used the Pleiades to calculate a lunar
calendar and for divination in rituals of agricultural fertility and
animal husbandry. In 1571, the Spanish chronicler Polo de
Ondegardo observed that all terrestrial animals and birds had their
celestial counterparts who were responsible for their fertility and
well-being. For the Inka state, astronomical knowledge was critical in
calculating two important religious festivals in Cuzco - the December
and June solstices. The December solstice was Capac Raymi - the
‘royal feast’ - the main purpose of which was to initiate royal Inka
boys into adulthood. Equally elaborate celebrations took place at the
June solstice festival of Inti Raymi, dedicated to the sun god Inti.
A unique feature of imperial Inka religion tied earth to sky,
spirituality to landscape and architecture, and ancestors to the
living. This was the system of imaginary straight ‘lines’ radiating out
from the Coricancha sun temple in Cuzco and known as ceques.
They traversed the city, the valley of Cuzco, and reached out to the
empire beyond, dividing land and space and imposing order on the
lives of everyone. Each line had huacas along its length, with a total
of some 328 huacas dotted along 41 ceques in the immediate area of
the capital. Sometimes these huacas were royal tombs, while
 Inka 205

elsewhere they might be springs, caves, or rocky outcrops. Prayers,

processions and sacrifices were associated with buacas and ceques.
The Inka had a pantheon of gods - powerful supernaturals who
took the form of sky deities. While Viracocha reigned supreme over
this pantheon, he was distant from everyday human affairs. Having
set the universe in motion he retreated into the cosmic background
and left day-to-day events to more active deities who presided over
the heavens or dwelt atop snow-capped mountain peaks. They sent
rain, hail, lightning, drought and earthquakes and had to be
appeased if disaster was to be avoided.
Inti, the sun god, was the main one of these deities and the divine
ancestor of Inka royalty. He was worshipped in his golden temple,
the Coricancha, in the heart of Cuzco. His shimmering solar image
was flanked by the mummies of dead emperors and surrounded by
walls covered in hammered sheets of gold. Outside the temple was
the sacred garden - a miniature landscape where every kind of life
form known to the Inkas was modelled in gold, silver and precious
jewels. Serpents, llamas, human beings and even the soil were all
fashioned from these precious metals, and regarded as sacred
prototypes for all earthly forms of life.
The weather god Ilyap’a was venerated for rain. He combined the
sound of thunder with the power of thunderbolts and the flash of
lightning. The Inkas saw rainstorms as Ilyap’a drawing water from
the celestial river of the Milky Way which was kept in a huge water
jug and released when he shattered it with a thunderbolt. Thunder
was the crack of his slingshot, and lightning the sparkle of his
brilliant clothing as he advanced across the sky.
The third-ranking deity was Mama Kilya the moon goddess, the
sister-wife of Inti, and mother of the Inka race. This incestuous
relationship was the sacred precedent for brother-sister marriage
practised by the Inka emperor. Mama Kilya measured the passing
time and regulated the festivals of the ritual calendar. During a lunar
eclipse a great serpent or mountain lion was believed to be devour¬
ing Mama Kilya’s celestial image, and the Inkas made as much noise
as possible to scare it away. Mama Kilya’s image in the Coricancha
was flanked by mummies of previous Inka queens or Coyas, and
her shrine was covered in silver - the colour of the moon in the
night sky.
Many lesser gods also figured in Inka religion, including Cuichu,
the rainbow, and a group of female supernaturals of whom the two
206 Ancient Americas

most prominent were Pacha Mama the earth-mother, and Mama

Coca, the sea-mother. All of these deities were served by a full-time
priesthood, the highest office of which had a title which translates as
‘slave of the sun’. Inka spirituality was not the sole preserve of
priests however, and there were other lesser individuals who made
sacrifices, interpreted oracles and cured illness.
The most famous group of individuals associated with Inka
religion were the acllas or ‘chosen women’ - sometimes called the
‘Virgins of the Sun’. These were young Inka maidens who served the
cult of Inti, and tended the royal mummies as well as the present
royal family. Selected for their physical beauty in their youth, they
lived in convents called aclla huasi. Some prepared the clothing, food
and drink for the emperor and for state occasions, while others took
a vow of chastity in honour of Inti and guarded the sacred fire. Some
acllas became royal concubines for the emperor, and could be given
by him to foreign dignitaries to cement political marriage alliances.
Inka religious ritual was accompanied on almost every occasion
by some kind of sacrifice. These were usually burnt offerings of
maize cobs or coca leaves, and could be accompanied by the spilling
of chicha on the ground for Pacha Mama. Animal sacrifices were
also common, especially of llamas and guinea pigs. Most valuable
were child sacrifices known as capac hucha, or ‘royal obligation’.
These were made on special occasions, such as times of war, famine,
or the death of one emperor and the coronation of his successor.
Buried alive or strangled, some two hundred children could be
sacrificed when a new emperor came to power.
The capac hucha ritual also had political and ideological
dimensions, as the sacrificed embodied and integrated ideas of sacred
time and space in the imperial Inka vision of the world. Children of
outstanding beauty were sent from the empire’s villages to Cuzco,
where they were honoured by the emperor, symbolically married, led
in procession around the capital’s great plaza, and then returned to
their villages. After being welcomed back they were intoxicated with
chicha and buried alive on the summit of a nearby mountain. These
deaths were believed to restore spiritual well-being and maintained the
balance of religious and political obligations between the far-flung
corners of empire and Cuzco. In recent years, frozen mummies have
been discovered on snow-capped Andean peaks and volcanoes, where
they are accompanied by miniature human and animal figurines in
gold, silver and coral-coloured seashell.
 Inka 207

Such sacrifices were part of Inka religious practices that included

the cult of royal mummies, and this in turn was a development of
the ancient Andean tradition of ancestor worship. The Inkas
believed that emperors never died. While their bodies might fail,
their spirits infused their mummified remains, and could be fortified
by acts of worship and sacrifice. Mummies were washed, fed and
clothed by their own lineage groups (or panaqas). All royal
mummies attended state occasions, where they sat in order of
seniority, adding sanctity to the ruling families and authority to the
living emperor.

SOCIETY

Inka society was strictly hierarchical, and this was both its strength
and its weakness. The emperor, the Sapa (unique) Inka, ruled by
divine right as the ‘Son of the Sun’. He was revered as a living god,
and his official wife was his full-blooded sister, the Coya. He had a
harem of concubines made up of the most beautiful acllas or ‘chosen
women’, whose royal offspring filled positions of power in the state
administration. The male descendants of each emperor formed a
royal ayllu or panaqa responsible for serving the emperor and
guarding his wealth and estates.
The Sapa Inka was divine, his sacred body enveloped in elaborate
ritual. His food, drink and clothing were specially prepared by the
acllas and mama cunas, and every scrap of uneaten food, soiled
clothing and even hairs from his head was burnt to prevent the
possibility of sorcery. Entry into the imperial presence was strictly
controlled, and all who sought an audience had to approach bearing
a symbolic burden. Seeing the god-emperor’s face was a great honour,
and for most audiences he attended behind a screen. For those who
did see him, the emperor sat on a low wooden bench on top of a
raised platform (usnu), dressed in finely woven cloth, golden earrings
and the royal fringe of red tassels around his forehead.
When the emperor died, his spirit lived on. His remains were
preserved and the royal mummy placed in his palace which now
became a mausoleum. He was treated as in life, and made grand
visits to the mummies of other deceased emperors, or those friends
who had outlived him. Such activities illustrate Inka views on death,
but also served the ends of the deceased’s panaqa, which was
charged with perpetuating his memory and cult. In this way, they
208 Ancient Americas

Early seventeenth-century drawing by Guaman Poma showing a royal Inka mummy

being paraded around Cuzco. (© Author’s collection)
 Inka 209

also ensured their own privileged positions in the power relations of

imperial Inka society.
Beneath the Sapa Inka was the nobility, divided into ‘Inkas by
Blood’, ‘Inkas by Privilege’ and curacas. The most powerful were the
hereditary aristocracy who belonged to eleven royal ayllus. Early in
Inka expansion, the emperor Pachacuti had been forced to increase
the nobility to fill new offices of state. He did so by extending the
privileges of Inka status to able and gifted individuals. These owed
their promotion solely to the emperor and so were fiercely loyal, as
were the yana - individuals in personal service to the emperor or
state who had been elevated to high status. This meritocratic
aristocracy ruled the empire, and were rewarded with insignia
similar to those of the emperor - coloured headbands and the large
earplugs which led to the Spanish calling them orejones (big ears).
The lower echelons of the nobility were the curacas, who filled
administrative offices of state and also connected the imperial
bureaucracy with older pre-Inka traditions of social obligations and
ancestor worship. Native rulers of conquered peoples could become
curacas though many were the hereditary chiefs of local commun¬
ities. There were two curacas for each Inka ayllu - one for each of
the two moieties, the symbolic halves into which traditional Andean
societies were divided and which the Inka incorporated into their
own social organisation.
Ayllus were the bedrock of Inka society and remain so today. An
ayllu is a group of related individuals and families who share their
labour, lands and herds and have a founding ancestor. Each is
composed of lineages which belong either to the upper or lower moiety,
and membership is traced through female lines for women and male
lines for men. Ayllus hold rights to water, in springs, lakes and canals.
Curacas managed the ayllu’s resources, oversaw the agricultural
calendar, resolved disputes and provided cbicha for ceremonial
occasions. In return, their lands were tilled and herds tended. Curacas
were organised in a decimal system: a pacaka koraka was a chief of
100 people, a warahqa of 1,000 and a bono koraka of 10,000.
Apart from long-established specialised groups such as the famous
merchants from Chincha who traded highland copper for the
ritually important Spondylus shell from coastal Ecuador, the lower
levels of Inka society were composed of several kinds of commoners.
While the highest were those who worked gold and silver, or were
master potters or textile workers, the mass of unskilled labourers
210 Ancient Americas

were the hatun runa, farmers and herders, below whom were only
the pina or prisoners of war.
The success of Inka society as an imperial enterprise was partly a
result of an efficient bureaucracy organising a huge multi-ethnic
population and perfecting the record-keeping system of knotted
strings invented by the earlier Wari people and known as the quipu.
Some quipus were more than 10 feet long with 2,000 individual
strings, and were kept and ‘read’ by specialists known as quipu
camayoc or ‘Keepers of the quipu’. These men, a human library of
Inka knowledge and traditions, were supported by the state. The
intricate code of their profession disappeared with them in the wake
of the conquest and the introduction of the Spanish language.
Inka society was organised around work - each person was classi¬
fied according to physical strength, condition and their ability to
perform different activities. Children were called ‘those who played’,
but between the ages of nine and twelve, boys graduated to hunting
birds while girls picked flowers and dyed cloth. It was from this age
group that the empire’s most beautiful girls were chosen to be the
human sacrifices known as capac hucba. Between eighteen and
twenty years old, young men were responsibile for guarding llama
and alpaca flocks, and could become the imperial messengers or
chasqui. Girls could now find themselves dedicated to the sun as
acllas. After a hard physical life, a commoner would undertake only
light work between sixty and seventy, and once over eighty little or
nothing was expected of those called the ‘old deaf ones’.
Daily life for women centred on the home, where they prepared
food and spent much time spinning and weaving the family’s
clothing. Men wore a long sleeveless tunic over a breechclout and a
large cloak in bad weather. They carried a small bag in which coca
leaves, tools and magic charms were kept. Women also dressed
conservatively, wearing long rectangular pieces of cloth fastened at
the shoulder with copper, silver or gold pins. As was to be expected
in such a multi-ethnic imperial society, clothing and hairstyles varied
from one part of the empire to another and were an effective form
of identification and social control.
Marriage was taken seriously by the Inkas as it had ritual and
economic as well as social importance. Marriage beyond the local
community was forbidden - partners had to be from the opposite
moiety of their own ayllu. The best partners were those with large
families because everyone was born with rights to land and water,
 Inka 211
• OOIO O •!••• |0 • &!%•<»

Early seventeenth-century drawing by Guaman Poma showing the Quipu Camayoc

or ‘Keeper of the Quipu’. (© Author’s collection)
212 Ancient Americas

and thus the more relatives, the more wealth. Royal Inka men could
marry their half-sisters, a gesture perhaps adopted from the emperor
who always took a full-blooded sister as his principal wife. For the
aristocracy, possession of many wives advertised a man’s wealth and
prestige, but the common man could usually afford only one partner.
When he married he became a full member of the community with its
attendant duties and obligations, and the couple were rewarded with
enough land for a house and to support themselves.
Agriculture was the economic mainstay of the Inka empire. The
Andes are one of the world’s great centres of plant domestication, the
vertical arrangement of its different ecological zones fostering innova¬
tion, exchange and trade. This key feature of Andean life became an
important characteristic of the Inka economy. Cold high valleys
produced varieties of potato and the grain quinoa, while at lower
altitudes maize, chilli peppers and squash predominated. From the even
lower hotter valleys came the sweet root acira, gourds and the sacred
coca leaf. (The coca leaf was a stimulant which deadened feelings of
hunger and thirst.) Although heavily dependent on vegetables, meat
also figured in the Inka diet in the shape of deer and guanaco, as well
as fish, llamas and the ubiquitous household guinea pigs. Llama meat
and potatoes could be dried and stored.
The Inkas ate these foods in stews and soups, flavoured with
herbs and chillis. Maize was especially versatile, and could be
boiled, toasted, steamed or baked as a kind of bread, and made into
chicba beer. While an everyday beverage, it was drunk to excess only
on religious occasions. At the great festival of Inti Raymi, partici¬
pants fasted for three days on a meagre diet of raw white maize, a
few herbs and water. The night before the feast, Inka priests pre¬
pared llamas for sacrifice and gathered food as offerings to the sun.
Acllas made huge quantities of maize dough as a sacred food.
Every aspect of daily life was strictly controlled, and there were rules
and regulations for everyone and every occasion. Laws had religious
sanction, and so civil disobedience was sacrilege as well as social
offence. The smallest infringements of the law were harshly punished
by hanging, stoning, and being pushed off cliffs. Nevertheless, the
Inkas recognised class differences, and the educated upper classes were
punished more severely than commoners; adultery meant death for a
noble, but only torture foraa commoner. ,
In death, special ceremonies saw relatives dressed in black and
women cutting their hair in mourning rituals that could last a year
 Inka 213

in the case of the nobility. The dead person’s belongings were burnt
and the body wrapped in cloth and buried. For the aristocracy,
funerals sometimes involved secondary wives and servants being
sacrificed to accompany their master, and offerings of food and
drink being regularly made at the tomb. These Inka practices were
part of the age-old tradition of ancestor worship in the Andes.

EMPIRE

Before about AD 1400, little had distinguished the Inkas from many
other small groups living in the valley of Cuzco, though, much later,
the Inka emperors rewrote these humble beginnings. In about AD
1438, the powerful Chanca people attacked and defeated the
Quechuas who were allies of the Inkas. When the Chanca finally
attacked them, many Inka nobles advised the elderly Inka leader
Viracocha to abandon Cuzco. Two sons, Yupanqui and Roca,
refused to leave, fortified the city and repulsed the Chanca attacks.
They also created a powerful myth that magical stones had turned
into men to help them defeat the enemy. Yupanqui was crowned the
new Inka ruler and took the title Pachacuti or ‘cataclysm’.
This official version probably conceals a more complicated story
of political intrigue and factionalism. Nevertheless, Pachacuti
emerged victorious and began on the path to empire. The new ruler
was an extraordinary and talented man - a brilliant general and a
gifted administrator. The Inka empire was his vision and creation,
and he was fortunate in having an equally talented son in Tupac
Yupanqui. Together they forged the empire known as Tawantinsuyu
or ‘Land of the Four Quarters’ that extended from Ecuador in the
north to Argentina and Chile in the south.
The size and efficiency of Inka armies proved irresistible from the
coastal deserts to Lake Titicaca, though rebellions were frequent and
reconquests necessary. As he grew older, Pachacuti handed over the
armies to Tupac Yupanqui, and concentrated on overhauling the
empire’s administration. He began rebuilding Cuzco, transforming it
into an imperial capital.
Tupac Yupanqui reinforced the areas previously won and pushed
the northern frontier towards Quito. He then marched west,
conquering the land between the highlands and the coast, stopping
only long enough to voyage out into the Pacific on a large sea-going
balsa-wood raft. His next move was to outmanoeuvre and defeat the
214 Ancient Americas

last great independent kingdom of Peru - the Chimu empire of the

north coast, then sweep south bringing the whole of coastal Peru
into the empire. These brilliant victories have led to Tupac Yupanqui
being dubbed the Alexander the Great of South America.
In 1471, Pachacuti stepped down after thirty-three years as Sapa
Inka. Tupac Yupanqui inherited the throne and immediately
launched new military expeditions into the eastern tropical rain¬
forests, put down another rebellion of the Kolia people of Lake
Titicaca, and conquered large parts of north-west Argentina and
Chile, where he established the southern boundary of the empire by
the banks of the River Maule. In some fifty years, and with astonish¬
ing speed, Pachacuti and Tupac Yupanqui had created the largest
empire ever seen in the Americas.
Tupac Yupanqui died in 1493 and was succeeded by his son
Huayna Capac. The new emperor seemed endlessly to be engaged in
putting down revolts, and repulsed an invasion by the Chiriguano
people from Argentina. The Chiriguano had a strange hostage - a
Spaniard named Alejo Garcia who had been captured on the
Atlantic coast. Garcia was the first and only European to see the
Inka empire at the height of its power. Huayna Capac established a
new northern boundary for the empire at the Ancasmayo river near
the modern border between Ecuador and Colombia.
Huayna Capac died unexpectedly in 1527. Just before his death
he heard of strangers from the sea - an early sighting of Francisco
Pizarro, the eventual conqueror of the Inka empire, on an earlier
voyage of exploration. The emperor’s sudden death left a power
vacuum. His official son Huascar should have taken the throne, but
while recognised by the Cuzco nobility the succession was contested
by Atahualpa, a son of one of Huayna Capac’s concubines in Quito.
Huascar had official backing and held most of the empire, but
Atahualpa had command of most of the army and two seasoned
generals, Quisquis and Chalcuchima. In five years of disastrous civil
war, Atahualpa’s generals outwitted and outfought Huascar’s army
and captured Huascar himself. It was in the northern town of
Cajamarca in 1532 that Atahualpa received news of his final victory,
but this was accompanied by the reappearance of the strangers - the
Spanish conquistadors of Francisco Pizarro.
The success of the Inka empire was due in equal measure to their
skill in administration as to their prowess on the battlefield.
Organising a mosaic of ethnic groups, languages and religious
 Inka 215

traditions was social engineering on a grand scale. Unlike the Classic

Maya or Aztecs of Mexico, Inka military strategy had religious and
ideological components aimed at increasing the empire’s size,
prestige and wealth, rather than at acquiring prisoners for sacrifice.
The political mechanisms created by the Inkas drove their empire
forward. When an emperor died the empire was bequeathed to his
successor, but the income from the lands he had conquered was retained
by his panaqa or male descendants. The new emperor had to acquire his
own wealth by conquering new lands that became the source of wealth
for his panaqa when he died. Also, as the empire expanded so did the
number of local lords whose continued loyalty had to be bought with
regular gifts of food, clothing, women, gold and silver. The Inka empire
was locked into an unsustainable cycle of conquest.
The Inka army was composed of levies from all able-bodied male
citizens - peasant farmers whose labour tax or mita was rendered as
periods of military service. They were reinforced by special units
such as archers from the tropical rainforests and spear throwers
from the coast. They wore quilted cotton tunics and fought with
spears, slings, battle-axes and war clubs. War drums were made of
human skin and some warriors wore necklaces of human teeth.
Battlefield tactics were primitive, however, and the Inka relied on
superior numbers to overwhelm opponents.
Hand in hand with military force went subtle and intimidating
diplomacy. Once the Inka decided on an area to conquer they invited
native leaders to join the empire peacefully and become ‘Inkas by
Privilege’. If this failed, Inka armies were marched to a nearby strategic
point and last-minute offers were made. If these were rejected, the Inka
gods were invoked and their priests read the signs of entrails of
sacrificed llamas. If the auguries were good then fighting began.
The empire that resulted from such tactics was called ‘the Land of
the Four Quarters’ or Tawantinsuyu. The largest quarter was
Collasuyu and stretched over the mountains and coast to the south,
Antisuyu was the smallest part to the north-east, Cuntisuyu included
all areas to the southwest, and Chinchasuyu incorporated the moun¬
tains and coast to the north. Each quarter, or suyu, was governed by a
royal prefect and was divided into provinces under an imperial
governor. Mobilising their vast resources of manpower, the Inkas
transformed the landscape through large-scale terracing, road¬
building, bridge construction and hydraulic engineering. These pro¬
jects possessed religious and ideological dimensions as terrace systems
216 Ancient Americas

produced maize not only for food but to make huge quantities of
cbicha beer given free to the people during religious festivals.
The arteries of Tawantinsuyu were the 30,000km of imperial roads
built and maintained by local people under Inka supervision. They
crossed rivers and gorges with suspension bridges in the mountains,
and were wide avenues on the coasts. Along their lengths were
regularly spaced way-stations and storehouses called tambos in which
supplies of food, drink, weapons and clothing were kept. These roads
were only for official business, the emperor and his armies, and the
imperial runners or chasqui, who ran in relays up to 250km a day.
Beyond their heartland, the Inkas imposed administrative centres
on subject peoples. These were built in the impressive and psycho¬
logically intimidating polygonal Inka style, and were designed to
replicate in miniature the capital at Cuzco. One such centre was
Huanuco Pampa, which housed a small number of Inka adminis¬
trators but whose size - four thousand buildings spread over 200ha
- suggests that several thousand people could have been accommo¬
dated during elaborate state-sponsored festivals. Huanuco Pampa
had a great central plaza, a palace for Inka Tupac Yupanqui, an area
for cooking and feasting, and an aclla huasi where the ‘chosen
women’ brewed cbicha beer and made clothing for local Inka
officials. Five hundred storehouses were also built nearby.
More famous is the mountain-top city of Machu Picchu, redis¬
covered only in 1911. Never found (or damaged) by the Spanish, it
was built by Pachacuti first as a fortress then redesigned as a royal
estate. The quality of the architecture and workmanship is impres¬
sive, as seen in the sophisticated system of water channels and
fountains that still work today. The architectural highlights include
the semi-circular ‘observatory’, the cave known as the ‘Royal
Mausoleum’, and the carved stone block of the Intihuatana or
‘Hitching Post of the Sun’.
A masterstroke of Inka political organisation was the instigation
of a system whereby local populations were transferred wholesale
from one place to another. These people were called mitmaq, and by
moving thousands of families at a time the Inkas secured their
borders, ensured stability and removed the focus of insurrection.
Mitmaq colonists could be moved thousands of miles from their
native areas yet retained their traditional costumes and their own
leaders. They propagated Inka values and fostered the adoption of
the official language of Quechua. *
 Inka 217

In the complex and cleverly administered Inka state, money was

unknown. Food, clothing and housing were provided by the ayllus
under government control. Taxes were levied but paid in goods and
services such as the mita labour tax. Unless excused by the emperor,
all able-bodied men contributed to mita service - whether in the
fields, maintaining the imperial highways and infrastructure, or
serving in the army. For agricultural workers, mita service was
divided into three kinds. First to be cultivated was land allotted to
the state religion and local gods and which supported the priest¬
hood. Next to be worked was the emperor’s land whose yields
supported the Cuzco aristocracy and fed the armies. Last to be
tended was land which belonged to the local community. The sheer
scale of the mita’s success as an organisational system is visible
today in the vast terraces which cover large areas of the Andes.
All roads in Tawantinsuyu led to Cuzco, the great city at the
sacred heart of empire and the focus of religious and political
activity. Cuzco was the embodiment of Inka myth, history and
cosmic identity - the place where earth, sky and rivers met. It was
laid out in the shape of a giant puma, the predatory feline that was
the royal symbol of the Inka. Overlooking the city was the temple-
fortress of Sacsayhuaman with its massive zig-zag walls. Cuzco and
its royal lineages were divided into two sacred halves or moieties,
upper or hanan Cuzco, and lower or hurin Cuzco.
The most important temple was the Coricancha or ‘House of the
Sun’, whose inner walls were lined with sheets of gold. Flanked by
the palace-mausoleums of earlier emperors was the great plaza
dominated by a ceremonial platform - the centre of creation. The
floor of the plaza was covered with sand brought from the Pacific
coast as a symbolic statement of the far-reaching power of the Sapa
Inka, and linked Cuzco with the sea as the ‘mother of fertility’.
Cuzco was the mirror of heaven - its layout, monumental buildings
and royal inhabitants were all organised by the principles of religion
and ideology.

The Spanish Conquest

The Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro arrived at the edge of the

Inka empire at Easter 1532, and found it wracked by years of civil
war. In September, he advanced to the mountain town of Cajamarca
where he was met by a 30,000 strong Inka army. On Saturday
218 Ancient Americas

16 November 1532, Pizarro hid his soldiers and cavalry in the

buildings of the town and ambushed the Sapa Inka who, confident in
his superiority, paid him a visit with an unarmed entourage.
The Spaniards slaughtered the Inkas and took Atahualpa prisoner.
The unexpected victory had several benefits for Pizarro. He had
captured the enemy leader in his first military action. In addition,
Atahualpa was an absolute ruler whose orders would be obeyed
even though he was held captive. Also, the Inka emperor had
surrounded himself with a bodyguard not of soldiers but of his most
important counsellors and officials - the administrators of the
empire. Now, all were dead. Atahualpa had misjudged the new¬
comers and the most powerful ruler in the Americas had been
captured by a handful of brave but reckless adventurers.
The Sapa Inka soon realised that the Spanish were greedy for gold
and silver. He offered to fill the room in which he was kept prisoner
once with gold, then twice over with silver within two months.
Pizarro accepted this astounding offer and soon llama caravans were
making their way to Cajamarca laden with the ransom. As each load
of priceless objects arrived they were broken so that more could be
squeezed into the chamber. Six months later, the great treasure was
melted down into ingots - 11 tons of gold and 26,0001b of silver -
stamped and weighed, then distributed to every Spanish soldier
according to rank.
Once the booty had been allocated, arguments began about
Atahualpa’s fate, and it was judged too dangerous to honour their
word and set him free. On the evening of Saturday 26 July 1533,
Atahualpa was put to death. He should have been burnt at the stake
but was offered a more civilised death by garotting if he converted
to Christianity. In Inka belief, the body had to remain intact so it
could be mummified and join past emperors as a deified ancestor.
Maybe for this reason Atahualpa agreed to convert, but after strang¬
ulation his body was burnt anyway and given a Christian burial.
Not long after, his remains were spirited away, mummified, and
hidden in the surrounding mountains.
Atahualpa’s death left the empire open and defenceless. Pizarro
moved quickly, taking advantage of the splits between Huascar’s
faction in Cuzco and Atahualpa’s supporters. A member of
Huascar’s royal line, Tupac Huallpa, became Pizarro’s puppet ruler,
and accompanied by the new emperor and his entourage, Pizarro
finally left Cajamarca and marched south towards Cuzco. Tupac
 Inka 219

Huallpa died mysteriously en route whereupon Pizarro appointed an

Inka prince called Manco to replace him. After one last fruitless
battle with the Spanish the remainder of Atahualpa’s men under the
general Quisquis retreated north to Quito and Pizarro and his
conquistadors finally entered Cuzco.
The Spaniards immediately indulged their appetite for treasure,
sacking the city, stripping its golden temples and plundering tombs.
They robbed the Coricancha, and melted down its priceless art¬
works. But even this did not satisfy their greed and they soon set
about ravaging the country, torturing and burning alive those whom
they thought might reveal the whereabouts of more treasure. They
also abused the acllas with Pizarro himself, though not a young
man, setting a precedent by taking a teenaged Inka princess and hav¬
ing an illegitimate daughter by her.
After several years of abuse and humiliation, Manco escaped to
the mountains and joined a gathering army which had been raised in
secret. This new Inka force surrounded Cuzco and the 200
Spaniards within. The Inka soon attacked, fighting their way
through the city’s narrow streets, and within a few days were in
almost total control. The Spanish sent fifty horsemen out of the city
and with the help of Amerindian allies recaptured the great temple-
fortress of Sacsayhuaman overlooking Cuzco. The Inka seige of their
own imperial capital continued for another ten months, and Spanish
rescue missions were wiped out, but the Inka army could not break
back into the city. In April 1537 the siege was lifted.
Manco remained defiant at the town of Ollantaytambo north of
Cuzco, but soon retreated to the distant forests of Vilcabamba and
established a base at Vitcos. A punitive expedition by the conquist¬
ador Rodrigo Orgonez came close to capturing the fugitive emperor
and so the Inkas built the new city of Vilcabamba even deeper in the
jungle. For six years the small Inka kingdom at Vilcabamba was left
in peace as the Spanish factions fought among themselves. Pizarro
and his former ally-turned-enemy Diego de Almagro were killed and
control of Peru was taken by the Spanish Crown after the victory of
a royal army over the remnants of Almagro’s supporters. Tragically,
even these internal Spanish squabbles spelled disaster for Manco
who was murdered by five of Alamagro’s men to whom he had
given sanctuary at Vilcabamba.
Resentment against the Spanish grew among the native people of
the Andes. After many attempts, the Spanish lured one of Manco’s
220 Ancient Americas

sons from Vilcabamba but in typical Inka fashion another son, Titu
Cusi Yupanqui, ruled in his place and so the Spanish gained nothing.
Yupanqui died of natural causes in 1571 and was succeeded by his
brother Tupac Amaru. In June 1572, the new Spanish viceroy
Francisco de Toledo marched north and captured Tupac Amaru in the
forests near Vilcabamba. The expedition returned to Cuzco dragging
the emperor behind them in chains, along with a golden statue of Inti
and the sacred mummies of Manco Inka and Titu Cusi Yupanqui.
Like Atahualpa before him, Tupac Amaru converted to Christi¬
anity but was tried and sentenced to death. On the day of his execu¬
tion, grieving Inkas gathered on the hills surrounding Cuzco and
watched as Tupac Amaru was decapitated and all the city’s church
bells began to toll. So ended the final act in the tragedy which
engulfed the successors of Pachacuti and Tupac Yupanqui.

LEGACY OF CONQUEST

The Inka empire collapsed under the weight of Spanish military

victories, maltreatment of the natives, and the effects of European
disease. The Inkas and other indigenous groups did not disappear
from history, however. In the years following 1532, the Spanish
created a colonial society within which a mosaic of native peoples
accommodated themselves in a variety of ways to the new social,
economic and religious conditions. Changes could be dramatic, as
with Viceroy Toledo’s forced regrouping of 1.5 million natives into
600 communities, a process which facilitated Spanish administration
but dismantled many traditional social structures that had survived
the trauma of the conquest.
In the hard years that followed, native Andean ideas and beliefs
meshed with Christian ones and produced a hybrid or syncretic view
of the world that owed as much to the pre-Columbian past as it did
to the new Spanish order. As with all conquests, the defeated influ¬
enced the victors as much as the victors changed the defeated. This
can be seen most clearly in the ways in which native Andeans
retained their worldview but infused it with elements from Christian
theology and European society.
Typical of this was the natives’ reaction to their harsh treatment
by the Spanish which saw them searching for signs that their new
masters would soon be driven out. Natural disasters, such as the
volcanic eruption near Arequipa in 1600 and the Cuzco earthquake
 Inka 221

of 1646, were interpreted in this way. More subversive were native

messiahs like the ‘Christ of Tacobamba’ who advocated drinking
chicha and eating the hallucinogenic San Pedro cactus, and countless
shamans who proclaimed themselves Saint James the Apostle or the
Virgin Mary. These events were part of a wider sense of insurrection
which climaxed around 1780 with the appearance of the native
leaders Tupac Amaru II and Tupac Catari.
While these overt rebellions failed to shake Spanish control, other
kinds of resistance proved more effective. Native peoples often
affected to adopt Christianity while in reality preserving ancient
beliefs. In the mid-1600s, a clandestine ritual took place in the town
of San Pedro de Hacas. During the Christian festival of Corpus
Christi, devotees talked to the ancient huacas in an attempt to
convince them that despite their forced devotions to Catholic saints,
the festival was really in honour of them. They then scattered coca
leaves in the town plaza, sang, chanted, remembered the deeds of
their sacred mummies and drank until dawn. When the Spanish
discovered these pagan rites they burnt the mummies, but the
villagers gathered up the resulting ashes and made them into a new
kind of holy relic which they called the ‘burned fathers’.
Typical of the post-conquest mixing of pre-Columbian and
Christian ideas and values was the way in which native artists
blended Spanish styles of religious painting with their own native
ones to create something new. In seventeenth-century Cuzco, ele¬
ments of Inka iconography were freely combined Catholic imagery
by native artists to form the School of Cuzco which flourished
between 1688 and 1800. Here, images of jewels, feathers and
elaborate gold-leaf played a prominent role, and Christ and the
Virgin Mary were associated variously with Inka deities such as Inti,
Mama Coya and Pacha Mama.
Exemplifying the work of these artists is the so-called Virgin of
the Andes, in fact a series of stunning and colourful seventeenth-
and eighteenth-century paintings of the Virgin Mary in various
guises. In such masterpieces as ‘The Virgin Mary of the Mountain of
Potasiama’ and ‘Our Lady of Lake Titicaca’, the European style of
painting represents the virgin in the shape of a mountain and
incorporates flowers, feathers, colours and motifs of pre-Columbian
origin. Such artworks clearly draw on ideas of anthropomorphic
sacred landscapes and identify Christian figures with their Inka
predecessors.
222 Ancient Americas

Roman Catholic festivals such as Corpus Christi were especially

fertile ground for native Andeans to express and legitimate their new
status. Particularly notable was the way colonial Inka chiefs
recombined and displayed old Inka symbols in their new regalia.
Feathered collars, gold chestplates, crowns and standards that
incorporated the image of the rainbow, and coats of arms that
included the sun and moon were all hybrid statements through
which Andean elites recreated themselves with old ideas in the style
of European heraldry.
Beyond Cuzco, in the rural hinterland of the old Inka empire,
traditional celebrations also became syncretic events. The festival of
Qollur Rit’i (‘Snow Star’) originated as an Inka ritual focused on the
appearance of the Pleiades star group. This ancient ceremony was
Christianised in 1780, and became identified with Corpus Christi.
During the modern festivities, pilgrims climb to the base of a nearby
glacier, and at dawn, as sunlight hits the snowfield, they pray to
mountain deities. They descend bearing crosses and carrying chunks
of sacred ice on their backs - part of a ritual which guarantees
fertility and rebirth during the coming year.
Today, traces of the Inka past are still found in the Andes. At the
Quechua village of Misminay, near Cuzco, modern inhabitants
regard animal constellations and the Milky Way as exerting a
powerful influence on local mythology and cosmology, as well as on
important cycles of earthly fertility. The Vilcanota (Urubamba) river
is seen as an earthly reflection of the Milky Way, and together they
are responsible for the recycling of water from earth to sky, whence
it eventually falls again to earth as rain.
Modern visitors to Peru are overwhelmed by the splendours of
Inka civilisation built in a harsh and breathtaking landscape.
Through their arts, crafts and economic activity, Native Andean
peoples are re-establishing (and recreating) themselves in the new
globalised tourist economy. Cuzco’s streets have regained Inka
names, and in countless markets, colourful textiles and pottery are
sold alongside fertility charms, maize, coca and potatoes. In subtle
ways, the souvenirs sold at such places are hybrid fragments of an
Inka past that now travel far beyond the borders of Tawantinsuyu.
It is perhaps the ultimate irony that after five hundred years, the
descendants of the Inkas are only now benefiting from the
architectural wonders created by their ancestors.
 Glossary of Terms
MAYA

Ahau Term for lord

Bacabs Four gods who supported the four quarters of the sky
Balam Jaguar (Panthera onca), America’s largest feline, and the sacred
animal of Maya royalty and warriors
Balche Intoxicating drink made from fermented honey and the bark of
the balche tree. Consumed on ritual occasions
Ceiba Ceiba or silk-cotton tree (Ceiba pentandra). As the great
cosmic tree it stands in the centre of the earth, penetrating
all three levels - its roots in the underworld, its trunk in the
earthly world and its top piercing the sky. It is called yaxche
in Maya
Cenote Called tz’onot in Maya, cenotes were underground water
sources in the limestone geology of the Yucatan, and were
formed when the cavern roof collapsed
Chilam High-ranking Maya priests of the Yucatan, famous in late Post¬
classic times for writing down their prophecies known today as
the Books of Chilam Balam (‘Books of the Jaguar Priest’)
Copal Called pom in Maya, copal was a naturally occurring resin
obtained from conifer trees and burnt as a purifying incense
during rituals
Corbelled arch Typical lowland Classic Maya architectural feature, also
known as the ‘false arch’ as it lacks a keystone
Gucumatz Creator deity in the Popol Vuh of the Quiche Maya. Identified
as the equivalent of the Aztec Quetzalcoatl and Yucatec Maya
Kukulkan
Haab The Maya solar calendar of 360 days plus 5 unlucky days
Halach uinic The ruler or supreme lord of a Yucatecan Maya city
Huipil Typical Mayan woven-cotton blouse
Kinich Ahau Name of the Sun god, literally ‘sun-faced’
Kukulkan Yucatec Maya term for ‘feathered serpent’, the equivalent to
the Aztec Nahuatl name Quetzalcoatl
Lacandon Maya group who wear white shifts and their hair long
Moan bird Symbol of the aged God L, associated with the underworld,
whose prototype was the Yucatecan screech owl
Nacom Maya war chief
Pop Maya word for mat, the seat and symbol of authority, some¬
times interpreted as ‘royal throne’
Popol Vuh The eighteenth-century AD Book of Council of the Quiche
Maya of highland Guatemala
Puuc Name of a range of low hills in the Yucatan; name given to
Maya architectural style typified by the city of Uxmal
 224 Glossary of Terms

Putun Maya group from Tabasco and Campeche regions, also called
the Chontal Maya
Sacbe Maya name signifying ‘white road’, given to great ceremonial
causeways that connected different parts of a city, and often
different cities in the Yucatan
Tun The period of 360 days
Tzeltal Maya linguistic group of Chiapas, Mexico
Tzolkin Maya sacred calendar of 260 days
Tzotzil Maya linguistic group of Chiapas, Mexico
Uayeb Five ‘unlucky days’ at the end of the solar year of 360 days.
For the Postclassic Maya it was a time of great ritual
importance since they believed it was when the evil of the
underworld escaped into the earthly world
Uinal Maya month of 20 days

AZTEC

A catl Reed
Altepetl Aztec name for a city-state and surrounding territory
Amanteca Professional featherworkers
Atl-atl Spear-thrower
Calmecac Aztec school for children of the nobility
Calpulli Group of between 100 and 200 families which served as an
administrative unit or neighbourhood in cities
Chichimec Semi-civilised hunting and gathering peoples from northern
Mexico
Cbinampa Raised field, usually made from mud dredged up from lake or
swamp beds
Cihuacoatl Fiterally ‘Snake Woman’, most important office in the Aztec
state second only to the emperor
Coatl Snake, as in Quetzalcoatl - ‘feathered snake’
Codex Name given to indigenous Mesoamerican painted books that
date either from the pre-Columbian period, or the colonial
period
Cuauhtli Eagle
Macebualtin Commoners
Metate Stone slab used to grind maize (corn); usually paired with the
mano or cyclindrical grinding-stone
Nahuatl Name of the Aztec language
Ocelotl Jaguar
Patolli An Aztec gamblers’ game of chance similar to pachesi
Pipiltin The lower rank of Aztec nobility
Pochteca Full-time Aztec traders
Pulque Alcoholic drink made from the fermented sup of the maguey
plant
Tecuhtli Noble, who served as a high-ranking official
 Glossary of Terms 225

Telpochcalli Aztec school for commoner children

Teocalli Literally ‘God House’; common name for temple
Teotl Literally ‘deity’, conceptually the spiritual power that animated
gods and the universe
Tlachtli The Aztec rubber ball-game
Tlatoani Literally ‘the speaker’, a title of city-state rulers. The Aztec
emperor was Huey Tlatoani, ‘Great Speaker’
Tollan/Tula Literally ‘place of reeds’, a metaphorical term applied to any
populous and sophisticated city; also the name of the capital of
the Toltecs
Tonalpobualli Literally the ‘count of days’, the 260-day ritual calendar used
in divination and whose codex form was the tonalamatl (sacred
book)
Tzompantli Skull-rack
Xochitl Flower

INKA

aclla A ‘chosen woman’

aclla buasi House of the ‘chosen women’
Apu Inka lord, or ruler of one of the empire’s four administrative
regions
ayllu Lineage group or kin-based community
Cacique Spanish term for curaca
Camayoc An official or craftsman
Capac Wealthy or influential person
Capac bucha Human sacrificial victim
Ceque Sacred lines of spiritual power radiating out of the Coricancha
(Temple of the Sun) in Cuzco
Cbasqui Official Inka messenger
Coya Inka queen or high ranking woman
Cumbi Fine woollen cloth
Curaca Amerindian chief, principal chief of a village
Huaca Sacred place or thing, which could be a mountain, spring, or
mummy bundle
Mama cuna Literally ‘mothers’, women who had taken a vow of chastity
and dedicated themselves to the Inka religion, sometimes called
the Virgins of the Sun
Mita System of labour tax
Mitmaq People sent by the Inkas to colonise newly conquered areas and
aid integration into the empire
Moiety Symbolic half or division into which Inka society was divided
Nusta The emperor’s daughter or a young woman of noble Inka birth
Pachacamac Pre-Inka oracle site and pilgrimage centre on Peru’s central
coast, later integrated into the Inka empire
Panaqa Royal ayllu of male descendents
226 Glossary of Terms

Quipu System of multi-coloured knotted strings used to record

information and possibly historical events and songs
Quipu camayoc The Keeper of the Quipu, the administrative record keeper
Sapa Inka Great Inka, i.e. the emperor
Sinchi War chief
Suyu Region or division, a quarter, as in Tawantinsuyu
Tambo Way station/storehouse or inn sited along an Inka highway
Tawantinsuyu Literally ‘the Land of the Four Quarters’, the Inka name for
their empire
Ushnu Stone throne used by the emperor on ceremonial occasions
Yana Servant, often directly responsible to the emperor
 Bibliography
Finding one’s way through the tens of thousands of books and articles that have
been published on pre-Columbian America can be a daunting and frustrating task.
The aim of this bibiliography, therefore, is to provide a comprehensive, balanced
and up-to-date guide to what I consider the most important and accessible publica¬
tions on the prehistoric archaeology of ancient Middle and South America. There is
a vast specialist literature in many languages spread across many international
publications, much of it difficult for non-specialists to obtain. Here, I have focused
on books published in English, although where necessary I have included chapters
in edited volumes and articles in academic journals. There is also the occasional
publication in Spanish. Many of the books listed below are edited volumes within
which are numerous specialist chapters, and all have their own detailed biblio¬
graphies, as do the journal articles. Keen readers will have no problem finding their
way to several lifetimes’ reading on almost any culture, theme, or topic mentioned
in this book.

General

Adams, R.E.W. and MacLeod, M.J. (eds), The Cambridge History of the Native
Peoples of the Americas, Volume II, Mesoamerica Parts 1 and 2, Cambridge
University Press, 2000
Benson, E.P. (ed.), Death and the Afterlife in Pre-Columbian America, Washington,
DC, Dumbarton Oaks, 1975
-, Birds and Beasts of Ancient Latin America, Gainesville, University Press of
Florida, 1977
-(ed.), The Sea in the Pre-Columbian World, Washington DC, Dumbarton
Oaks, 1977
Bercht, F., Brodsky, E., Farmer, J.A. and Taylor, D. (eds), Taino: Pre-Columbian Art
and Culture from the Caribbean, New York, The Monacelli Press, 1997
Berrin, K. (ed.), The Spirit of Ancient Peru, Thames & Hudson, 1997
Brotherston, G., Book of the Fourth World: Reading the Native Americas Through
their Literature, Cambridge University Press, 1994
Bruhns, K.O., Ancient South America, Cambridge University Press, 1994
Carrasco, D. (ed.), Oxford Encyclopaedia of Mesoamerican Cultures, 3 vols,
Oxford University Press, 2000
Coe, M.D., Mexico, Thames & Hudson, 2002
Conrad, G.W. and Demarest, A.A., Religion and Empire: The Dynamics of Aztec
and Inca expansionism, Cambridge University Press, 1984
Descola, P., In the Society of Nature: A Native Ecology in Amazonia, Cambridge
University Press, 1994
Edgerton, S.Y., Theaters of Conversion: Religious Architecture and the Indian
Artisans in Colonial Mexico, Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 2001
 228 Bibliography

Emmer, P.C. (ed.), General History of the Caribbean: Volume II, New Societies: The
Caribbean in the Long Sixteenth Century, London, UNESCO and Macmillan,
1999
Hill Boone, E. and Cummins, T. (eds), Native Traditions in the Postconquest
World, Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks, 1998
-and Mignolo, W.D. (eds), Writing Without Words: Alternative Literacies in
Mesoamerica and the Andes, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 1994
Joyce, R.A. Gender and Power in Prehispanic Mesoamerica, Austin, University of
Texas Press, 2000
Keatinge, R.W., Peruvian Prehistory, Cambridge University Press, 1988
Levenson, Jay A. (ed.), Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration, Washington DC
National Gallery of Art, and New Haven, Yale University Press, 1991
McEwan, C. (ed.), Pre-Columbian Gold: Technology, Style and Iconography,
British Museum Press, 2000
-, Barreto, C. and Neves, E., Unknown Amazon, British Museum Press, 2001
Miller, M.E., The Art of Mesoamerica from Olmec to Aztec, Thames & Hudson, 1986
-and Taube, K., The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya,
Thames & Hudson, 1993
Olsen, D.A., Music of El Dorado: The Ethnomusicology of Ancient South
American Cultures, Gainesville, University Press of Florida, 2002
Roosevelt, A. (ed.), Amazonian Indians from Prehistory to the Present, Tucson,
University of Arizona Press, 1994
Saloman, F. and Schwarz, S.B. (eds), The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples
of the Americas, Volume III, South America, Parts 1 and 2, Cambridge
University Press, 1999
Saunders, N.J., People of the Jaguar: The Living Spirit of Ancient America,
Souvenir, 1989
-(ed.), Ancient America: Contributions to New World Archaeology, Oxford,
Oxbow Books, 1993
-(ed.), Icons of Power: Feline Symbolism in the Americas, Routledge, 1998
and Montmollin, O. de (eds), Recent Studies in Pre-Columbian Archaeology,
2 vols, Oxford, British Archaeological Reports International Series 421, 1988
Smith, M.E. and Masson, M.A. (eds), The Ancient Civilizations of Mesoamerica -
A Reader, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 2000
Steward, J.H. (ed.), Handbook of South American Indians, 7 vols, Washington DC,
Smithsonian Institution/U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946-59
Stone-Miller, R. (ed.), To Weave for the Sun: Ancient Andean Textiles, Thames &
Hudson, 1994
Sullivan, L.E., Icanchu s Drum: An Orientation to Meaning in South American
Religions, Macmillan, 1988
Townsend, R.F. (ed.), The Ancient Americas: Art from Sacred Landscapes, Chicago,
University of Chicago Press, 1991
Von Hagen, A. and Morris, C., The Cities of the Ancient Andes, Thames &
Hudson, 1998

Chapter One

Allaire, L., ‘Archaeology of the Caribbean’ in F. Salomon and S.B. Schwartz (eds),
The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas: Volume III, South
America, Part 1, Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 668-733
Arens, W., The Man Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy, New York,
Oxford University Press, 1979
 Bibliography 229

Bedini, S.A. (ed.), The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia, 2 vols, New York,
Simon & Schuster, 1992
Boucher, P.B., Cannibal Encounters: Europeans and Island Caribs 1492-1763,
Baltimore, MD, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992
Bray, W. (ed.), The Meeting of Two Worlds: Europe and the Americas 1492-1650,
The British Academy, 1994
Brecht, F., Brodsky, E. Farmer, J.A. and Taylor, D. (eds), Tamo: Pre-Columbian Art
and Culture from the Caribbean, New York, The Monacelli Press, 1997
Columbus, C., The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus, Harmondsworth,
Penguin, 1969
Crosby, A.W., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of
1492, Westport, Conn., Greenwood Press, 1972
Dacal Moure, R. and Rivero de la Calle, M., Art and Archaeology of Pre-
Columbian Cuba, Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996
Deagan, K. and Cruxent, J.M., Columbus’s Outpost among the Tainos: Spain and
America at La Isabela, 1493-1498, New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press,
2002
Denevan, W. (ed.), The Native Population of the Americas in 1492, Madison,
University of Wisconsin Press, 1976
Gerbi, A., Nature in the New World: From Christopher Columbus to Gonzalo
Fernandez de Oviedo, tr. J. Moyle, Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985
Greenblatt, S. (ed.), New World Encounters, Berkeley, University of California
Press, 1993
Hulme, P. and Whitehead, N.L., Wild Majesty: Encounters with Caribs from
Columbus to the Present Day, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1992
Johnson, K., The Fragrance of Gold: Trinidad in the Age of Discovery, School of
Continuing Studies, University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad,
1997
Keegan, W.F., The People who Discovered Columbus: The Prehistory of the
Bahamas, Gainesville, University Press of Florida, 1992
Las Casas, B. de, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies,
Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1992
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and Guanin Power among Taino Elites’, in, C. McEwan (ed.), Pre-Columbian
Gold: Technology, Style and Iconography, British Museum Press, 2000,
pp.196-219
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Arrom, Durham, NC and London, Duke University Press, 1999
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Sale, K., The Conquest of Paradise, Macmillan, 1992
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being, c. AD 1492’, World Archaeology 32 (2) (1999), pp. 243-57
-, An Encyclopcedia of Caribbean Archaeology and Traditional Culture,
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-and Gray, D., ‘Zemis, trees and symbolic landscapes: three Taino carvings
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Stevens-Arroyo, A.M., Cave of the Jaguar: The Mythological World of the Tamos,
Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1988
230 Bibliography

Sued-Badillo, J. (ed.), General History of the Caribbean: Volume 1, Autochthonous

Societies, London and Paris, UNESCO and Macmillan, 2003
Wilson, S.M., Hispaniola: Caribbean Chiefdoms in the Age of Columbus,
Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press, 1990
-(ed.), The Indigenous People of the Caribbean, Gainesville, University Press of
Florida, 1997

Chapter Two

Arqueologfa, Olmecs (special edition), Mexico City, Arqueologfa Mexicana, n.d.

Art Museum, The, The Olmec World: Ritual and Rulership, Princeton, Princeton
University Press/The Art Museum, 1996
Benson^ E.P., The Olmec and their Neighbors, Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks,
1981
-(ed.), Dumbarton Oaks Conference on the Olmec, Washington DC,
Dumbarton Oaks, 1968
-and de la Fuente, B. (eds), Olmec Art of Ancient Mexico, Washington DC,
National Gallery of Art, 1996
Bernal, I., The Olmec World, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1969
Brush, C.F., ‘Pox Pottery: Earliest Identified Mexican Ceramic’, Science 149 (1965),
pp.194-5
Byers, D.S., Prehistory of the Tehuacan Valley, 5 vols, Austin, University of Texas
Press, 1967
Clark, J.E. and Blake, M., ‘The Power of Prestige: Competitive Generosity and the
Emergence of Rank Societies in Lowland Mesoamerica’, in E. Brumfiel and J.
Fox (eds), Factional Competition and Political Development, Cambridge
University Press, 1994, pp. 17-30
-and Pye, M.E. (eds), Olmec Art and Archaeology in Mesoamerica, New
Haven, Conn., Yale University Press, 2000
Coe, M.D., America’s First Civilization: Discovering the Olmec, New York,
American Heritage Publishing, 1968
-, ‘Olmec Jaguars and Olmec Kings’, in E.P. Benson (ed.), Cult of the Feline,
Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks, 1972, pp. 1-12
and Diehl, R., In the Land of the Olmec, 2 vols, Austin, University of Texas
Press, 1980
Diehl, R.A., ‘The Precolumbian Cultures of the Gulf Coast’, in R.E.W. Adams and
M.J. MacLeod (eds), The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the
Americas, Volume II, Mesoamerica Part 1, Cambridge University Press, 2000
pp.156-96
Drucker, P., Heizer, R.F. and Squier, R.J., Excavations at La Venta Tabasco, 1955,
Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 170, Washington
DC, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1959
Flannery, K.V. (ed.), The Early Mesoamerican Village, Academic Press, 1976
-(ed.). Guild Naquitz: Archaic Foraging and Early Agriculture in Oaxaca,
Mexico, New York, Academic Press, 1986
Fowler Jr, W. (ed.), The Formation of Complex Society in Southeastern
Mesoamerica, Boca Raton, FI., CRC Press, 1991
Gillespie, S., ‘Llano del Jlcaro: An Olmec Monument Workshop’, Ancient
Mesoamerica 5 (1994), pp. 223-42 ,
Grove, D., ‘The Formative Period and the Evolution of Complex Culture’, in J.A.
Sabloff (ed.), The Handbook of Middle American Indians, Supplement 1:
Archaeology, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1981, pp. 373-91
 Bibliography 231

-, Chalcatzingo: Excavations on the Olmec Frontier, Thames & Hudson, 1984

-(ed.), Ancient Chalcatzingo, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1987
-, ‘The Preclassic Societies of the Central Highlands of Mesoamerica’, in R.E.W.
Adams and M.J. MacLeod (eds), The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples
of the Americas, Volume II, Mesoamerica Part 1, Cambridge University Press,
2000,pp.122-55
-and Joyce, R.A. (eds), Social Patterns in Pre-Classic Mesoamerica, Washington
DC, Dumbarton Oaks, 1999
Hirth, K.G. (ed.), Trade and Exchange in Early Mesoamerica, Albuquerque,
University of New Mexico Press, 1984
Joralemon, D., A Study of Olmec Iconography, Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and
Archaeology 7, Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks, 1971
Justeson, J.S. and Kaufman, T., ‘A Decipherment of Epi-Olmec Hieroglyphic
Writing’, Science 259 (1993), pp. 1703-11
Nicholson, H.B. (ed.), Origins of Religious Art and Iconography in Preclassic
Mesoamerica, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1976
Porter, M.N., Tlatilco and the Pre-Classic Cultures of the New World, Viking Fund
Publications in Anthropology 19, New York, 1953
Sanders, W.T., Parsons, J.R. and Santley, R.S., The Basin of Mexico: Ecological
Processes in the Evolution of a Civilization, New York, Academic Press, 1979
Sharer, R. and Grove, D. (eds), Regional Perspectives on the Olmec, Cambridge
University Press, 1989
Soustelle, J., The Olmecs: The Oldest Civilization in Mexico, Norman, University
of Oklahoma Press, 1985
Taube, K., ‘The Olmec Maize God: The Face of Corn in Formative Mesoamerica’,
RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 29-30 (1996), 39-82
Voorhies, B., The Chantuto People: An Archaic Period Society of the Chiapas
Littoral, Mexico, Papers of the New World Archaeological Foundation 41,
Provo, 1976
Zeitlin, R.N. and Zeitlin, J.F., ‘The Palaeoindian and Archaic Cultures of
Mesoamerica’, in R.E.W. Adams and M.J. MacLeod (eds), The Cambridge
History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, Volume II, Mesoamerica Part 1,
Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 45-121

Chapter Three

Bernal, I., ‘Archaeological Synthesis of Oaxaca’, in R. Wauchope (ed.), Handbook

of Middle American Indians, vol. 3, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1965
Blanton, R.E., Monte Alban: Settlement Patterns at the Ancient Zapotec Capital,
Academic Press, 1978
Blanton, R.E., Feinman, G.E., Kowaleski, S.A. and Nicholas, L.M., Ancient
Oaxaca, Cambridge University Press, 1999
Calloway, C.H., ‘The Church of Nuestra Senora de la Soledad in Oaxaca, Mexico’,
PhD dissertation, University of Maryland, Ann Arbor, Mich., University
Microfilms, 1989
Caso, A., Las estelas zapotecas, Monografias del Museo Nacional de Arqueologia,
Historia y Etnografia, Mexico City, Talleres Graficos de la Nacion, 1928
-, ‘Sculpture and Mural Painting of Oaxaca’, in R. Wauchope (ed.), Handbook
of Middle American Indians, vol. 3, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1965, pp.
849-70
-and Bernal, I., Urnas de Oaxaca, Memorias de Instituto Nacional de
Arqueologia e Historia, II, Mexico City, Secretaria de Educacion Publica, 1952
 232 Bibliography

-,-and Acosta, J.R., Le Ceramica de Monte Alban, Memorias de Instituto

Nacional de Arqueologia e Historia, 13, Mexico City, Secretaria de Educacion
Publica, 1967
Chance, J.K., Conquest of the Sierra: Spaniards and Indians in Colonial Oaxaca,
Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1989
Flannery, K.V. (ed.), The Early Mesoamerican Village, New York, Academic Press,
1976
-and Marcus, J. (eds), The Cloud People: Divergent Evolution of the Zapotec
and Mixtec Civilisations, Academic Press, 1983
Marcus, J., ‘Archaeology and Religion: A comparison of the Zapotec and Maya’,
World Archaeology 10 (1978), 172-89
-, ‘Zapotec Writing’, Scientific American 242 (1980), 50-64
-, ‘Zapotec Chiefdoms and the Nature of Formative Religions’, in R. Sharer and
D. Grove (eds), Regional Perspectives on the Olmec, Cambridge University Press,
1989, pp. 148-97
-and Flannery, K.V., ‘Ancient Zapotec Ritual and Religion’, in C. Renfrew and
E. Zubrow (eds), The Ancient Mind: Elements of Cognitive Archaeology,
Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 55-74
-, Zapotec Civilization, Thames & Hudson, 1996
-, ‘Cultural Evolution in Oaxaca: The Origins of the Zapotec and Mixtec
Civilizations’, in R.E.W. Adams and M.J. MacFeod (eds), The Cambridge
History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, Volume II, Mesoamerica Part 1,
Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 358-406
Paddock, J. (ed), Ancient Oaxaca, Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press, 1966
Parmenter, R., Four Lienzos of the Coixtlahuaca Valley, Washington DC,
Dumbarton Oaks, 1982
Romero Frizzi, M. De Eos A., ‘Indigenous Mentality and Spanish Power: The
Conquest of Oaxaca’, in J. Marcus and J.F. Zeitlin (eds), Caciques and their People:
A Volume in Honor of Ronald Spores, Anthropological Papers, Museum of
Anthropology No. 89, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1994, pp. 227-44
-, ‘The Indigenous Population of Oaxaca from the Sixteenth Century to the
Present’, in R.E.W. Adams and M.J. MacLeod (eds), The Cambridge History of
the Native Peoples of the Americas, Volume II, Mesoamerica Part 2, Cambridge
University Press, 2000, pp. 302-45
Scott, J.F., The Danzantes of Monte Alban, 2 vols, Washington DC, Dumbarton
Oaks, 1978
Smith, M.E., Picture Writing from Ancient Southern Mexico: Mixtec Place Signs
and Maps, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1973
Spores, R., The Mixtec Kings and their People, Norman, University of Oklahoma
Press, 1967
Whitecotton, J.W., The Zapotecs: Princes, Priests, and Peasants, Norman,
University of Oklahoma Press, 1977
Winter, M., Oaxaca: The Archaeological Record, Mexico City, Minutiae Mexicana
1990

Chapter Four

Acosta, J.R., El palacio de Quetzalpapalotl, Mexico City, Instituto de Antropologla

e Historia, 1964 %
Barbour, W., ‘The Figurines and Figurine Chronology of Ancient Teotihuacan,
Mexico’, unpublished PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University
of Rochester, Newe York, 1976
 Bibliography 233

Berio, J.C., Teotihuacan Art Abroad: A Study of Metropolitan Style and Provincial
Transformation in Incensario Workshops, British Archaeological Reports,
International Series 199, Oxford, 1984
-(ed.), Art, Ideology, and the City of Teotihuacan, Washington DC, Dumbarton
Oaks, 1992
Bernal, I. (ed.), Teotihuacan: Descubrimiento, reconstrucciones, Mexico City,
Instituto de Antropologia e Historia, 1963
Berrin, K. (ed.), Feathered Serpents and Flowering Trees: Reconstructing the Murals
of Teotihuacan, San Francisco, The Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, 1988
-and Pasztory, E. (eds), Teotihuacan: Art from the City of the Gods, Thames &
Hudson, 1993
Cabrera, Castro, Sugiyama, R.S. and Cowgill, G., ‘The Temple of Quetzalcoatl
Project at Teotihuacan’, Ancient Mesoamerica 2 (1991), 77-92
Cowgill, G., ‘State and Society at Teotihuacan, Mexico’, Annual Review of
Anthropology 26 (1997), 129-61
Cowgill, G., ‘The Central Mexican Highlands from the Rise of Teotihuacan to the
Decline of Tula’, in R.E.W. Adams and M.J. MacLeod (eds), The Cambridge
History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, Volume II, Mesoamerica Part 1,
Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 250-317
Diehl, R. and Berio, J.C. (eds), Mesoamerica after the Decline of Teotihuacan: A.D.
700-900, Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks, 1989
Heyden, D., ‘Caves, Gods, and Myths: World View and Planning in Teotihuacan’,
in E.P. Benson (ed.), Mesoamerican Sites and Worldviews, Washington DC,
Dumbarton Oaks, 1981, pp. 1-39
Kolb, C.C., Marine Shell Trade and Classic Teotihuacan, Mexico, British
Archaeological Reports International Series 364. Oxford, 1987
Kubler, G., The Iconography of the Art of Teotihuacan, Studies in Pre-Columbian
Art and Archaeology 4, Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks, 1967
Langley, J.C., Symbolic Notation at Teotihuacan: Elements of Writing in a
Mesoamerican Culture of the Classic Period, British Archaeological Reports
International Series 313, Oxford, 1986
Linne, S., Archaeological Researches at Teotihuacan, Mexico, Ethnographic
Museum of Sweden Publication 1, Stockholm, 1934
Matos Moctezuma, E. Teotihuacan, the City of the Gods, New York, Rizzoli, 1990
Miller, A.G., The Mural Painting of Teotihuacan Washington DC, Dumbarton
Oaks, 1973
Millon, R., ‘Teotihuacan: City, State, and Civilisation’, in J. Sabloff (ed.),
Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, Austin, University of
Texas Press, 1981, pp. 198-243
-, Drewett, B. and Cowgill, G. (eds), Urbanization at Teotihuacan, Mexico. Vol.
1. The Teotihuacan Map, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1973
Pasztory, E., The Iconography of the Teotihuacan Tlaloc, Studies in Pre-Columbian
Art and Archaeology 15, Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks, 1974
-, The Murals of Tepantitla, Teotihuacan, New York, Garland Press, 1976
-, Teotihuacan: An Experiment in Living, Norman, University of Oklahoma
Press, 1997
Sejourne, L., Arquitectura y pintura en Teotihuacan, Mexico City, Siglo XXI, 1966
Spence, M., ‘Obsidian Production and the State in Teotihuacan’, American
Antiquity 46 (4) (1981), 769-88
Storey, R., Life and Death in the Ancient City of Teotihuacan: A Modern
Paleodemographic Analysis, Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press, 1992
234 Bibliography

Sugiyama, S., ‘Burials Dedicated to the Old Temple of Quetzalcoatl at Teotihuacan,

Mexico’, American Antiquity 54 (1) (1989), 85-106
Taube, K.A., ‘The Teotihuacan Spider Woman’, Journal of Latin American Lore 9
(2) (1983), 107-89
-, ‘The Temple of Quetzalcoatl and the Cult of Sacred War at Teotihuacan’, Res:
Anthropology and Aesthetics 21 (1992), 53-87
Von Winning, H., La tconografia de Teotihuacan: Los dioses y los signos, 2 vols,
Mexico City, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, 1987

Chapter Five

Adams, R., Rio Azul: A Classic Maya City, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press,
1998
Bassie-Sweet, K., From the Mouth of the Dark Cave, Norman, University of
Oklahoma Press, 1991
Benson, E.P. and Griffin, G.G. (eds), Maya Iconography, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1988
Boone, E.H. (ed.), Ritual Human Sacrifice in Mesoamerica, Washington DC,
Dumbarton Oaks, 1984
Brady, J.E. and Prufer, K.M., ‘Caves and Crystalmancy: Evidence for the Use of
Crystals in Ancient Maya Religion’, Journal of Anthropological Research 55
(1999), 129-44
Bricker, V.R., The Indian Christ, The Indian King: The Historical Substrate of
Maya Myth and Ritual, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1983
Coe, M.D., Breaking the Maya Code, Thames 8c Hudson, 1992
-, The Maya, 5th edn, Thames 8c Hudson, 1993
-, The Art of the Maya Scribe, Thames 8c Hudson, 1997
Farriss, N., Maya Society under Colonial Rule, Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1984
Fash Jr, W.L., Scribes, Warriors, and Kings: The City of Copan and the Ancient
Maya, Thames 8c Hudson, 1991
Folan, W.J., Kintz, E.R. and Fletcher, L.A., Coba: A Classic Maya Metropolis,
Academic Press, 1983
Freidel, D.A. and Sabloff, J.A., Cozumel: Late Maya Settlement Patterns, Academic
Press, 1984
Freidel, D.A., Scheie, F. and Parker, J., Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on
the Shaman’s Path, New York, William Morrow, 1993
Hammond, N. (ed.), Social Process in Maya Prehistory, Academic Press, 1977
-, ‘The Maya Rowlands: Pioneer Farmers to Merchant Princes’, in R.E.W.
Adams and M.J. MacFeod (eds), The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples
of the Americas, Volume II, Mesoamerica Part 1, Cambridge University Press,
2000, pp. 197-249
Houston, S., Hieroglyphs and History at Dos Pilas: Dynastic Politics of the Classic
Maya, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1993
Jones, G.D., Maya Resistance to Spanish Rule, Albuquerque, University of New
Mexico Press, 1989
Fooper, M.G., Lightning Warrior: Maya Art and Kingship at Quirigua, Austin,
University of Texas Press, 2003
McAnany, P., Living with the Ancestors: Kinship and Kingship In Ancient Maya
Society, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1995
Marcus, J., Emblem and State in the Classic Maya Lowlands: An Epigraphic
Approach to Territorial Organisation, Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks, 1976
 Bibliography 235

Martin, S. and Grube, N., Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens, Thames &
Hudson, 2000
Miller, Mary Ellen, The Murals of Bonampak, Princeton, Princeton University
Press, 1986
-, Maya Art and Architecture, Thames & Hudson, 1991
Orellana, S., The Tzutujil Mayas: Continuity and Change, 1250-1630, Norman,
University of Oklahoma Press, 1984
Reents-Budet, Dorie, Painting the Maya Universe: Royal Ceramics of the Classic
Period, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 1994
Robicsek, F., The Smoking Gods: Tobacco in Maya Art, History, and Religion,
Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1978
Roys, R.L., The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel, Norman, University of
Oklahoma Press, 1967
Sabloff, J.A., The New Archaeology and the Ancient Maya, New York, Scientific
American Library, 1990
Scarborough, V., ‘Ecology and Ritual: Water Management and the Maya’, Latin
American Antiquity 9 (2) (1998), 135-59
Scheie, L. and Freidel, D., A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient
Maya, New York, William Morrow, 1990
-and Mathews, P., The Code of Kings, Thames & Hudson, 1998
-and Miller, M.E., Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art, Fort
Worth, Kimbell Art Museum, 1986
Sharer, R., The Ancient Maya, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1994
Taube, K.A., The Major Gods of Ancient Yucatan, Studies in Pre-Columbian Art
and Archaeology 32, Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks, 1992
Tedlock, D., Popol Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life, New York, Simon
&c Schuster, 1985
Thompson, J.E.S., Maya History and Religion, Norman, University of Oklahoma
Press, 1970

Chapter Six

Berdan, F., The Aztecs of Central Mexico: An Imperial Society, New York, Holt,
Rinehart & Winston, 1982
-and Anawalt, P., The Essential Codex Mendoza, London, University of
California Press, 1997
Bray, W., Everyday Life of the Aztecs, Batsford, 1968
Brotherston, G., The Painted Books of Mexico, British Museum Press, 1995
Burkhart, L.M., ‘Pious Performances: Christian Pageantry and Native Identity in
Early Colonial Mexico’, in E.H. Boone and T. Cummins (eds), Native Traditions
in the Postconquest World, Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks, 1998, pp. 361-81
Diaz del Castillo, B. ,The Conquest of New Spain, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1976
Diehl, R., ‘Tula’, in J.A. Sabloff (ed.), Supplement to the Handbook of Middle
American Indians, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1981, pp. 277-95
Carrasco, D., To Change Place: Aztec Ceremonial Landscapes, Niwot, University of
Colorado Press, 1991
Clendinnen, I., Aztecs: An Interpretation, Cambridge University Press, 1991
Cline, S.L., ‘Native Peoples of Colonial Central Mexico’, in R.E.W. Adams and M.J.
MacLeod (eds), The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas,
Volume II, Mesoamerica Part 2, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 187-222
Cowgill, G., ‘The Central Mexican Highlands from the Rise of Teotihuacan to the
Decline of Tula’, in R.E.W. Adams and M.J. MacLeod (eds), The Cambridge
236 Bibliography

History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, Volume II, Mesoamerica Part 1,
Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 250-317
Davies, N., The Aztecs, Macmillan, 1973
-, The Toltecs until the Fall of Tula, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press,
1977
Diehl, R., Tula, The Toltec Capital, Thames &c Hudson, 1983
-and Berio, J.C. (eds), Mesoamerica after the Decline of Teotihuacan A.D.
700-900, Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks, 1989
Edgerton, S.Y., Theaters of Conversion: Religious Architecture and the Indian
Artisans in Colonial Mexico, Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 2001
Gillespie, S., The Aztec Kings: The Constitution of Rulership in Mexican History,
Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 1989
Gruzinski, S., Painting the Conquest: The Mexican Indians and the European
Renaissance, Paris, Flammarion, 1992
-, The Conquest of Mexico: The Incorporation of Indian Societies into the
Western World, 16th-18th Centuries, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1993
Hassig, R., Aztec Warfare: Imperial Expansion and Political Control, Norman,
University of Oklahoma Press, 1988
Hill Boone, E. (ed.), The Art and Iconography of Late Postclassic Central Mexico,
Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks, 1982
-(ed.), The Aztec Templo Mayor, Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks, 1987
Leon-Portilla, M., Aztec Thought and Culture, Norman, University of Oklahoma
Press, 1978
-, The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico, Boston,
Beacon Press, 1990
Matos Moctezuma, E., The Great Temple of the Aztecs, Thames &c Hudson, 1988
-Aztecs, Royal Academy of Arts, 2002
Pasztory, E., Aztec Art, New York, H.N. Abrams, 1983
Saunders, N.J., ‘The Day of the Jaguar: Rainmaking in a Mexican Village’,
Geographical Magazine 55 (1983), 398-405
-, ‘A Dark Light: Reflections on Obsidian in Mesoamerica’, World Archaeology
33 (2) (2001), 220-36
Smith, M., The Aztecs, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1996
Thomas, H., Conquest: Montezuma, Cortes, and the Fall of Old Mexico, New
York, Simon & Schuster, 1993
Todorov, T., The Conquest of America, New York, Harper & Row, 1984
Townsend, R., The Aztecs, Thames & Hudson, 1993

Chapter Seven

Benson, E.P. (ed.), Dumbarton Oaks Conference on Chavm, Washington DC,

Dumbarton Oaks, 1971
Bird, J.B. and Hyslop, J., The Preceramic Excavations at Huaca Prieta, Chicama
Valley, Peru, American Museum of Natural History Anthropological Papers 62
(1), 1985
Burger, R.L., The Prehistoric Occupation of Chavin de Huantar, Peru, Berkeley,
University of California Press, 1984
-, ‘Unity and Heterogeneity within the Chavm Horizon’, in R.W. Keatinge (ed.),
Peruvian Prehistory, Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 99-144
-, Chavin and the Origins of Andean Civilization, Thames & Hudson, 1995
Conklin, W.J., ‘Chavin Textiles and the Origins of Peruvian Weaving’, Textile
Museum Journal 3 (92) (1971), 13-19
 Bibliography 237

Cordy-Collins, A., ‘Chavin Art: its Shamanic Hallucinogenic Origins’, in A. Cordy-

Collins and J. Stern (eds), Pre-Columbian Art History, Palo Alto, Calif., Peek
Publications, 1979, pp. 353-62
Donnan, C.B. (ed.), Early Ceremonial Architecture in the Andes, Washington DC,
Dumbarton Oaks, 1985
Feldman, R., ‘From Maritime Chiefdom to Agricultural State in Formative Coastal
Peru’, in R. Leventhal and A. Kolata (eds), Civilization in the Ancient Americas:
Essays in Honor of Gordon Willey, Cambridge, Mass., Peabody Museum of
Archaeology and Ethnology, 1983, pp. 289-310
Grieder, T., Bueno, A., Smith Jr, C. Earle and Malina, R. La Galgada, Peru:
A Preceramic Culture in Transition, Austin, University of Texas Press,
1988
Kano, C., The Origins of the Chavin Culture, Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and
Archaeology 22, Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks, 1979
Lathrap, D., The Upper Amazon, Thames &C Hudson, 1970
-, Collier, D. and Chandra, H. Ancient Ecuador: Culture, Clay and Creativity
3000-300 BC, Chicago, Field Museum of Natural History, 1975
McEwan, C., Barreto, C. and Neves, E. Unknown Amazon, British Museum Press,
2001
Moseley, M., The Maritime Foundations of Andean Civilization, Menlo Park,
Calif., Cummings Publishing, 1975
-and Watanabe, L., ‘The Adobe Sculpture of Huaca de Los Reyes’, Archaeology
2 (1974), 154-61
Quilter, J., Life and Death at Paloma: Society and Mortuary Practices in a
Preceramic Peruvian Village, Iowa City, University of Iowa Press, 1989
Roosevelt, A. (ed.), Amazonian Indians from Prehistory to the Present, Tucson,
University of Arizona Press, 1994
-, Moundbuilders of the Amazon, Academic Press, 1991
Rowe, J.H., Chavin Art: An Enquiry into its Form and Meaning, New York, The
Museum of Primitive Art, 1962
Willey, G., Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the Viru Valley, Peru, Washington DC,
Smithsonian Institution, 1953
-and Corbett, J., Early Ancon and Early Supe Culture, Columbia Studies in
Archaeology and Ethnology 3, 1954

Chapter Eight

Alva, W. and Donnan, C.B., Royal Tombs of Sip an, Los Angeles, Fowler Museum
of Cultural History, 1994
Bawden, G., The Moche, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1996
Benson, E.P., The Mochica: A Culture of Peru, Thames &C Hudson, 1972
-, A Man and a Feline in Mochica Art, Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and
Archaeology 14, Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks, 1974
-, ‘Death-associated Figures on Mochica Pottery’, in E.P. Benson (ed.), Death
and the Afterlife in Pre-Columbian America, Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks,
1975, pp. 105-14
Bourget, S., ‘Children and Ancestors: Ritual Practices at the Moche Site of Huaca
de la Luna, North Coast of Peru’, in E.P. Benson and A.G. Cook (eds), Ritual
Sacrifice in Ancient Peru, Austin, University of Texas Press, 2001, pp. 93-118
Cordy-Collins, A., ‘Blood and the Moon Priestesses: Spondylus Shells in Moche
Ceremony’, in E.P. Benson and A.G. Cook (eds), Ritual Sacrifice in Ancient Peru,
Austin, University of Texas Press, 2001, pp. 35-54
238 Bibliography

Donnan, C.B., Moche Art and Iconography, Los Angeles, Latin American Studies
Publications, University of California, Los Angeles, 1976
-, Moche Portraits from Ancient Peru, Thames & Hudson, 2004
-and Mackey, C.J., Ancient Burial Patterns of the Moche Valley, Peru, Austin,
University of Texas Press, 1978
-and McClelland, D., The Burial Theme in Moche Iconography, Studies in Pre-
Columbian Art and Archaeology 20, Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks, 1979
-, Moche Fine Line Painting: Its Evolution and its Artists, Los Angeles, UCLA
Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1999
Jones, J., ‘Mochica Works of Art in Metal’, in E.P. Benson (ed.), Pre-Columbian
Metallurgy of South America, Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks, 1979, pp.
53-104
Pillsbury, J. (ed.), Moche Art and Archaeology in Ancient Peru, Washington DC,
Washington Studies in History of Art, 2002
Quilter, J., ‘The Moche Revolt of the Objects’, Latin American Antiquity 1 (1990),
42-65
Shimada, I., Pampa Grande and the Mochica Culture, Austin, University of Texas
Press, 1994

Chapter Nine

Aveni, A.F., Between the Lines: The Mystery of the Giant Ground Drawings of
Ancient Nasca, Peru, Austin, University of Texas Press, 2000
-(ed.), The Lines ofNazca, Philadelphia, Pa., The American Philosophical
Society, 1990
Browne, D., Silverman, H. and Garcia, R., ‘A Cache of 48 Nasca Trophy Heads
from Cerro Carapo, Peru’, Latin American Antiquity 4 (3) (1993), 274-94
Clarkson, P., ‘The Archaeology and Geoglyphs of Nazca, Peru’, unpublished PhD
dissertation, University of Calgary, 1985
Dwyer, E. and Dwyer, J.P., ‘The Paracas Cemeteries: Mortuary Patterns in a
Peruvian South Coastal Tradition’, in E.P. Benson (ed.), Death and the Afterlife in
Pre-Columbian America, Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks, 1975, pp. 145-61
Hadingham, E. Lines to the Mountain Gods: Nazca and the Mysteries of Peru,
New York, Random House, 1987
Johnson, D.W., Proulx, D.A. and Mabee, S.B., ‘The Correlation between Geoglyphs
and Subterranean Water Resources in the Rio Grande de Nazca Drainage’, in H.
Silverman and W.H. Isbell (eds), Andean Archaeology II, Art Landscape, and
Society, New York, Kluwer Academic, 2002, pp. 307-32
Kosok, P. and Reiche, M., ‘The Mysterious Markings of Nazca’, Natural History
56 (1947), 200-7, 237-8
Kroeber, A.L. and Collier, D., The Archaeology and Pottery ofNazca, Peru, ed. P.
Carmichael, Walnut Creek, Calif., Altamira, 1998
Lumbreras, L.G., Formulacion de los lineamientos para la elaboracion de un Plan
de Manejo de Las Ltneas de Nasca: Vol. 1, Contexto Arqueologico, Lima,
UNESCO/Lluvia Editores, 2000
Morrison, T. and Hawkins, G.S., Pathways to the Gods: The Mystery of the Andes
Lines, Book Club Associates, 1979
Orefici, G., Nasca: arte e societa del popolo dei geoglifi, Milan, Jaca Books, 1993
-and Drusini, A., Nasca: Hipotesis y Evidencias de su Deiorrollo Cultural,
Lima, CISRAP, 2003
Paul, A. (ed.), Paracas Art and Architecture: Object and Context in South Coastal
Peru, Iowa City, University of Iowa Press, 1991
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Proulx, D.A., ‘Ritual Uses of Trophy Heads in Ancient Nasca Society’, in E.R
Benson and A.G. Cook (eds), Ritual Sacrifice in Ancient Peru, Austin, University
of Texas Press, 2001, pp. 119-36
Reiche, M., Mystery on the Desert, Stuttgart, Offizindruck AG, 1968
Reinhard, J., The Nazca Lines: A New Perspective on their Origin and Meaning,
Lima, Los Pinos, 1987
Schreiber, K. and Lancho, J., ‘The Puquios of Nasca’, Latin American Antiquity 6
(3) (1995), 229-54
Silverman, H., Cahuachi in the Ancient Nasca World, Iowa City, University of Iowa
Press, 1993
-and Proulx, D., The Nasca, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 2002

Chapter Ten

Cordy-Collins, A., ‘Longa Sigde, Shell Purveyor to the Chimu Kings’, in M.E.
Moseley and A. Cordy-Collins (eds), The Northern Dynasties: Kingship
and Statecraft in Chimor, Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks, 1990,
pp.393-417
Heyerdahl, T., Sandweiss, D.H. and Narvaez, A. (eds), Pyramids ofTucume: The
Quest for Peru’s Forgotten City, Thames & Hudson, 1995
Holstein, O., ‘Chan Chan, Capital of Great Chimu’, Geographical Review 27
(1927), 36-61
Keatinge, R.W., ‘Chimu Rural Administrative Centers in the Moche Valley’, World
Archaeology 6 (1974), 66-82
-and Conrad, G.W., ‘Imperialist Expansion in Peruvian Prehistory: Chimu
Administration of a Conquered Territory’, Journal of Field Archaeology 10 (3)
(1983), 255-83
Klymyshyn, A.M.U., ‘The Development of Chimu Administration in Chan Chan’,
in J. Haas, T. Pozorski and S. Pozorski (eds), Origins and Development of the
Andean State, Cambridge University Press, 1987, pp. 97-110
Mackey, C.J. and Klymyshyn, A.M.U., ‘Construction and Labor Organization in
the Chimu Empire’, flawpa Pacha 19 (1981), 99-114
Moseley, M., ‘Chan Chan: Andean Alternative to the Pre-Industrial City?’, Science
187(1975), 219-25
-and Cordy-Collins, A. (eds), The Northern Dynasties: Kingship and Statecraft
in Chimor, Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks, 1990
-and Day, K.C. (eds), Chan Chan: Andean Desert City, Albuquerque,
University of New Mexico Press, 1982
-and Mackey, C.J., Twenty-Four Architectural Plans of Chan Chan, Peru,
Cambridge, Mass., Peabody Museum Press, Harvard University Press, 1974
Ortloff, C.R., Moseley, M.E. and Feldman, R.A., ‘Hydraulic Engineering Aspects of the
Chimu Chicam-Moche Intervalley Canal’, American Antiquity 47 (3) (1982), 572-95
Pozorsky, T.G., ‘The Las Avispas Burial Platform at Chan Chan, Peru’, Annals of
the Carnegie Museum 48 (8) (1979), 119-37
Ravines, R (ed.), Chan Chan: Metropoli Chimu, Lima, Instituto de Estudios
Peruanos, 1980
Rowe, A.P., Costumes and Featherwork of the Lords of Chimor: Textiles from
Peru’s North Coast, Washington DC, The Textile Museum, 1984
Rowe, J.H., ‘The Kingdom of Chimor’, Acta Americana 6 (1948), 26-50
Shimada, I. Cultura Sican: Dios, Riqueza y Poder en la Costa Norte del Peru, Lima,
Banco Continental, 1995
-, ‘The Late Prehispanic Coastal States’, in L.L. Minelli (ed.), The Inca World:
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The Development of Pre-Columbian Peru, A.D. 1000-1534, Norman, University

of Oklahoma Press, 2000, pp. 49-110
-and Griffin, J.A., ‘Precious Metals in Middle Sican’, Scientific American 270,
no. 4 (1994), 60-7
-and Merkel, J.F., ‘Copper Alloy Metallurgy in Ancient Peru’, Scientific
American 265 (1991), 80-6
-, ‘A Sican Tomb in Peru’, Minerva 4(1) (1993), 18-25

Chapter Eleven

Albarracin-Jordan, J., Tiwanaku: Arqueologia regional y Dinamica Segmentaria, La

Paz, Editores Plural, 1996
Bandelier, A., The Islands of Titicaca and Koati, New York, The Hispanic Society
of America, 1910
-, ‘The Ruins at Tiahuanaco’, Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society
21 (1911), Part 1
Bennett, W.C., ‘Excavations at Tiahuanaco’, Anthropological Papers of the
American Museum of Natural History 34 (1934), 359-494
-, Excavations at Wari, Ayacucho, Peru, Yale University Publications in
Anthropology 49, New Haven, Conn., 1953
Bermann, M., Lukurmata: Household Archaeology in Prehispanic Bolivia,
Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1994
Browman, D., ‘New Light on Andean Tiwanaku’, American Scientist 69, no. 4
(1981), 408-19
Conklin, W.J., ‘The Information System of Middle Horizon Quipus’, in A.F. Aveni
and G. Urton (eds), Ethnoastronomy and Archaeoastronomy in the American
Tropics, New York, New York Academy of Sciences, 1982, pp. 261-82
-, ‘Huari Tunics’, in E. Hill Boone (ed.), Andean Art at Dumbarton Oaks,
Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks, 1997, pp. 375-98
Cook, A., ‘Aspects of State Ideology in Huari and Tiwanaku Iconography: the
Central Deity and the Sacrificer’, in D.H. Sandweiss (ed.), Investigations of the
Andean Past, Cornell University, Latin American Studies Program, Ithaca, NY,
1983, pp. 161-85
-, ‘The Stone Ancestors: Idioms of Imperial Attire and Rank among Huari
Figurines’, Latin American Antiquity 3, no. 4 (1992), 341-63
-, Wari y Tiwanaku: Entre el Estilo y la Imagen, Lima, Pontifica Universidad
Catolica del Peru, 1994
-, ‘Huari D-Shaped Structures, Sacrificial Offerings, and Divine Rulership’, in
E.P. Benson and A.G. Cook (eds), Ritual Sacrifice in Ancient Peru, Austin,
University of Texas Press, 2001, pp. 137-64
Czwarno, R.M., Meddens, F.M. and Morgan, A. (eds), The Nature of Wari: A
Reappraisal of the Middle Horizon Period in Peru, British Archaeological
Reports International Series 525, Oxford, 1989
Goldstein, P.S., ‘Tiwanaku Temples and State Expansion: A Tiwanaku Sunken-Court
Temple at Moquegua, Peru’, Latin American Antiquity 4, no. 1 (1993), 22^17
Isbell, W.H., The Rural Foundations for Urbanism, Illinois Studies in Anthropology
10, Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1977
-, Mummies and Mortuary Monuments, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1997
-and Cook, A., ‘A New Perspective on Conchapata and th'e Andean Middle
Horizon’, in H. Silverman and W.H. Isbell (eds), Andean Archaeology II: Art,
Landscape, and Society, New York, Kluwer Academic, 2002, pp. 249-306
-and McEwan, G.F. (eds), Huari Administrative Structure: Prehistoric
 Bibliography 241

Monumental Architecture and State Government, Washington DC, Dumbarton

Oaks, 1991
Kolata, A.L., The Tiwanaku: Portrait of an Andean Civilization, Oxford, Basil
Blackwell, 1993
-(ed.), Tiwanaku and its Hinterland: Archaeology and Paleocology of an
Andean Civilization. 1 Agroecology, Washington DC, Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1996
Lynch, T.F., ‘Camelid Pastoralism and the Emergence of Tiwanaku Civilization in
the South Central Andes’, World Archaeology 15, no. 91 (1983), 1-14
Menzel, D., ‘New Data on the Huari Empire in Middle Horizon 2A’, Nawpa Pacha
6 (1969), 47-114
Oakland, A., ‘Tiwanaku Textile Style from the South Central Andes, Bolivia and
North Chile’, unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Texas, Austin, 1990
Ortloff, C.R. and Kolata, A.L., ‘Climate and Collapse: Agro-Ecological Perspectives
on the Decline of the Tiwanaku State’, Journal of Archaeological Science 20
(1993), 195-221
Ponce, C., Tiwanaku: Espacio, Tiempo y Cultura: Ensayo de Sintesis Arqueologica,
La Paz, Academia Nacional de Ciencias, Publicacion 22, 1972
Posnansky, A., Tihuanacu, the Cradle of American Man, New York, J .J. Agustin, 1945
Protzen, J.-P., and Nair, S., ‘The Gateways of Tiwanaku: Symbols or Passages?’, in
H. Silverman and W.H. Isbell (eds), Andean Archaeology II: Art, Landscape, and
Society, New York, Kluwer Academic, 2002, pp. 189-224
Reinhard, J. ‘Underwater Archaeological Research in Lake Titicaca, Bolivia’, in N.J.
Saunders (ed.), Ancient America: Contributions to New World Archaeology,
Oxford, Oxbow, 1992, pp. 117-43
Schaedel, R.P., ‘Congruence of Horizon with Polity: Huari and the Middle
Horizon’, in D.S. Rice (ed.), Latin American Horizons, Washington DC,
Dumbarton Oaks, 1993, pp. 225-62
Schreiber, K., Wari Imperialism in Middle Horizon Peru, Anthropological Papers of
the Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, No. 87, Ann Arbor, 1992
Seddon, M.T., ‘Ritual, Power, and the Development of a Complex Society: The
Island of the Sun and the Tiwanaku State’, unpublished PhD dissertation,
Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, 1998
Stanish, C., Ancient Titicaca: The Evolution of Complex Society in Southern Peru
and Northern Bolivia, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2003
Wassen, H. A., Medicine-Man’s Implements and Plants in a Tiahuanacoid Tomb in
Highland Bolivia, Gothenburg, Goteborgs Etnografiska Museum, 1972

Chapter Twelve

Ascher, M. and Ascher, R., The Code of the Quipu: A Study in Media,
Mathematics, and Culture, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1981
Bauer, B.S., The Sacred Landscape of the Incas: The Cusco Ceque System, Austin,
University of Texas Press, 1998
-and Dearborn, D.S.P., Astronomy and Empire in the Ancient Andes, Austin,
University of Texas Press, 1995
-and Stanish, C., Ritual and Pilgrimage in the Ancient Andes, Austin,
University of Texas Press, 2001
Bingham, H., Machu Picchu: A Citadel of the Incas, New York, Hacker Books,
1970
Cieza de Leon, P. de, The Incas of Pedro de Cieza de Leon, Norman, University of
Oklahoma Press, 1959 [1553]
242 Bibliography

Classen, C., Inca Cosmology and the Human Body, Salt Lake City, University of
Utah Press, 1993
Cobo, B., History of the Inca Empire, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1983
[1653]
-, Inca Religion and Customs, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1990 [1653]
D’Altroy, T.N., Provincial Power in the Inca Empire, Washington DC, Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1993
Damian, C., The Virgin of the Andes: Art and Ritual in Colonial Cuzco, Miami
Beach, Grassfield Press, 1995
Dean, C., Inka Bodies and the Body of Christ, Durham, NC, Duke University Press,
1999
Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General History of
Peru, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1987 [1609]
Guaman Poma de Ayala, F., El primer cronica y buen gobierno, 3 vols, eds, J.V.
Murra and R. Adorno, Mexico City, Siglo XXI, 1980
Hemming, J., The Conquest of the Incas, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1983
Hyslop, J., The Inca Road System, New York, Academic Press, 1984
-, Inca Settlement Planning, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1990
Kendall, A., Everyday Life of the Incas, Batsford, 1973
MacCormack, S., ‘Demons, Imagination, and the Incas’, in S. Greenblatt (ed.), New
World Encounters, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1993, pp. 101-26
Morris, C. and Thompson, D.E., Huanuco Pampa: An Inca City and its Hinterland,
Thames & Hudson, 1985
Moseley, M.E., The Incas and their Ancestors, Thames &C Hudson, 1992
Patterson, T.C., The Inca Empire: The Formation and Disintegration of a Pre-
Capitalist State, Oxford, Berg, 1991
Quilter, J. and Urton, G. (eds), Narrative Threads: Accounting and Recounting in
Andean Khipu, Austin, University of Texas Press, 2002
Reinhard, J., ‘Sacred Peaks of the Andes’, National Geographic 181, no. 3 (1992),
84-111
-, ‘Peru’s Ice Maidens’, National Geographic 189, no. 6 (1996), 62-81
Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, M. History of the Inca Realm, Cambridge
University Press, 1999
Rowe, J.H., ‘Inca Culture at the Time of the Spanish Conquest’, in J.H. Steward
(ed.), Handbook of South American Indians 2, Washington DC, Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1946, pp. 186-330
Silverblatt, I., Moon, Sun, and Witches: Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca and
Colonial Peru, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1987
Spalding, K., Huarochiri: An Andean Society under Inca and Spanish Rule,
Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press, 1984
Urton, G., At the Crossroads of the Earth and Sky: An Andean Cosmology, Austin,
University of Texas Press, 1981
-, The History of a Myth: Pacariqtambo and the Origin of the Incas, Austin,
University of Texas Press, 1990
Wachtel, N., The Vision of the Vanquished, Brighton, Harvester Press, 1977
 Index

Acamapichtli (Mexican lord) 107 Azcapotzalco 102, 106 Cahuachi (Nasca capital, Peru) 154,
Acatlan (Mexican village) 114 Aztec: emperors 100; origins (in 160-2
Achitometl (Culhua leader, Mexico) myth) 93-95; origins (of culture) Cajamarca (town, Peru) 214, 217
106 106-7; relationship with Cakchiquel Maya 84, 88
acllas (Inka sacred women) 206 Teotihuacan 64; relationship with Calakmul (Maya city) 76, 80
adobe (mud) bricks 27, 124, 138, Toltecs 93; society 100—4; calendars 40, 42-3, 69-70, 77, 97,
192, 195 Spanish conquest 110-12; warfare 178,204
agouti 13 104-10; worldview 95-8 calmecac (Aztec school) 101
agriculture: Aztec 103; Inka 212; Aztlan (Mexico) 95, 106 Canary Islands 4
Taino 9, 12; Tiwanaku 179-80, cannibalism 5-7, 14
182; Wari 170 ‘baby theme’ (Olmec) 28 capac hucha (Inka human sacrifice)
Ah Chicum Ek (Maya god) 75 Bacabs (Maya supernaturals) 72 206
Ahuitzotl (Aztec emperor) 100,109 balche (Maya alcoholic drink) Capac Raymi (Inka festival) 204,
Akapana mound (Tiwanaku, 71 210
Bolivia) 175 ball-game 10, 21-2, 23, 25, 32, 45, Capilco (Aztec farming village) 103
alchemy 6 59-60, 67-8, 105 Caral (site, Peru) 123
alcohol 71, 97, 103 Bandurria (site, Peru) 122 Cardal (site, Peru) 125
All Saints Day (festival, Mexico) 114 Banwari Trace (site, Trinidad) 7 Caribbean: Archaic period see
Altar de Sacrificios (Maya city) 68 Batan Grande (site, Peru) see Sican preceramic period; ceramic period
altars (Olmec) 24, 28 Bay Islands (Honduras) 86 8-14; indigenous legacy today
Alva, Walter 142, 144 beads: Europeans exchange with 14-15; landscapes 7; preceramic
Alvarado, Pedro de 88-9, 111 Amerindians 4; indigenous use of period 7-8
Amazonian (imagery and myth) 34 38, 44, 55 Caribs 6, 12, 13-14
Amazons 5-6 Bennett Stela (Tiwanaku, Bolivia) Caso, Alfonso 22
amber 49 177-8 Caste War (Maya) 90
Angostura (site, Puerto Rico) 8 Beyer, Hermann 21 caves (sites and symbolism) 7, 11,
‘Anthropomorphic Mythical Being’ bird (symbolism) 23, 34, 39, 44, 67, 31, 52-3, 70-1, 95, 179
(Nasca, Peru) 154 99, 104,105, 112, 120, 121-2, cayman (imagery) 34, 72, 129, 132,
Antigua 8 133-4, 140, 146, 154, 157, 178, Cayo Redondo (site, Cuba) 8
Arawak see Taino Black and White Portal (Chavrn de Ceiba tree 72
Archaic Period (Caribbean) 8 Huantar, Peru) 133-4 celestial phenomena (and symbolism
Aspero (site, Peru) 122 Blom, Frans 21 of) 53, 66, 74, 76, 82, 96-7, 156,
Aspero cultural tradition (Peru) blood (symbolism of) 79-80, 82-3, 204-5, 222
122-3 100, 109, 114 ceques (imaginary lines, Peru) 157,
astronomy see celestial phenomena Bohlo (Hispaniola) 5 204-5
Atabey (Taino water goddess) 12 Bonampak (Maya city) 80, 82-3 ceramics: Chimu 196-197; Moche
Atahualpa (Inka emperor) 214, Bourget, Steve 145 139-42; Nasca 153-5, 161; Olmec
217-18 Breton, Father Raymond Guillaume 23, 25-26; preclassic
audiencia (architectural feature, 14 (Mesoamerica) 19, 23, 38-40;
Chan Chan, Peru) 194 Building X (Zapotec) 44 Sican 189; Teotihuacan 60; Wari
Axayacatl (Aztec emperor) 109 167-8, 171-2; Zapotec 46
axe-monies (Peru) 190 Caballo Muerto (site, Peru) 134 Cerro Baul (site, Peru) 170
ayllu (Inka kin group) 209 cacao beans 60, 61, 75, 86, 101 Cerro Cintepec (Olmec quarries at)
Aymara (people, South America) Cacaxtla (site, Mexico) 63, 91 24
179,183 Caguana (site, Puerto Rico) 10 Cerro Gordo (Teotihuacan) 52
 244 Index

Cerro Sechin (site, Peru) 125-6 Codex Dresden 73 Dedication Stone (Aztec) 100
Chaan Muan (Maya ruler) 82 Codex Madrid 73 deer (symbolism of) 44, 120, 140,
Chac (Maya rain gods) 74-5 Codex Mendoza 101, 102, 109 146
Chac Mool (Toltec and Aztec Codex Paris 73 desert drawings (Nasca, Peru) see
statues) 98 Codex Vindobonensis 48, 49 geoglyphs
Chalcatzingo (Olmec site) 25, 30-1, Codex Zouche-Nuttall 48 dog (hairless Mexican) 103
36 Coe, Michael 23, 73 Dominica 6, 13, 14
Chalchiuhtlicue (Aztec water/fertility cohoba (Caribbean hallucinogen and Donnan, Christopher 141
goddess) 94, 99-100, 102 ritual) 12 Dos Cabezas (site, Peru) 145
Champoton (Mexico) 87 Coixtlahuaca (Mixtec town) 48, 109 Dos Pilas (Maya city) 79, 83
Chamula (Maya town) 90 Columbus, Christopher 3-7, 86, Drucker, Philp 26-27
Chan Chan (Chimu capital, Peru) Conchapata (site, Peru) 168-9, duhos (ceremonial seats) 10, 11
192-196 171-2 Dumbarton Oaks (Washington DC)
Chanca people (Peru) 213 condor 121, 157 35
Chapultepec (Mexico) 106 ‘conquest slabs’ (Monte Alban, Duran, Diego (Spanish priest)
Chavin de Huantar (site, Peru) Mexico) 45 113
126-35; art 129-35; cultural contact (between Amerindians and
sequence at 127-9 Europeans) 3-7, 9, 50, 87, Eagle Warriors (Aztec) 105
Cheqo Wasi (Wari compound, Peru) 110-11,217-22 Early Horizon (Peru) 126-9
166-7 convents (Mexican) 113 Edzna (Maya city) 76
chicha (maize beer, South America) copal resin (Mesoamerica) 25 Ek Chuah (Maya god) 75
168, 171, 203, 206, 212, 216, 221 Copan (Maya city) 61, 80 El Azuzul (Olmec site) 25
Chichen Itza (Maya/Toltec city) coral 49 El Fraile (statue, Tiwanaku, Bolivia)
84-5, 87, 91 Coricancha (Inka Sun Temple, 177
Chicomecoatl (Aztec godess) 99 Cuzco) 205, 219 El Lanzon (figure, Peru) 128,
Chicomoztoc (Aztec caves of origin) Coronation War (Aztec) 100 131-2
95 Corpus Christi festival (Cuzco, Peru) El Manati (Olmec site) 25
Chilam Balam 71-2, 89 221 El Mirador (Maya city) 76
Chilpancingo (Olmec burials at) 32 Cortes, Hernan (Spanish conqueror El Nino (climatic event, Peru) 145,
Chimalpopoca (Aztec ruler) 107 of the Aztecs) 87, 88, 110-12 146, 148, 196,198
Chimu: art 196-7, 199; empire Coyolxauhqui (Aztec Moon El Paraiso (site, Peru) 123
198-200; origins in myth 192; goddess) 95, 98 El Purgatorio (site, Peru) 191
relations with Inka 192, 200; coyotes 63,113 ‘El Rey’ (Olmec rock carving)
society 195-6 Cozumel (Mexico) 74, 86, 110 30-1
China (Americas mistaken for) 5 crocodile see cayman Elenan culture 9
cbinampas (Mexican ‘floating Cruzob (Maya) 90 encomienda system 14
gardens’) 103, 107 Cuauhtemoc (Aztec emperor) 112 enemas (narcotic) 71
Cholula (Mexican city) 63, 105, 111 Cuba 7-8 Espinosa, Antonio Vasquez de 135
Chongayape (site, Peru) 134 Cuello (Maya site) 75 extraterrestials 156
Chotuna (site, Peru) 186 Cuexcomate (Aztec faming village)
‘Christ of Tacobamba’ (Peru) 221 103 Farfan (Chimu site, Peru) 198
Christianity and Amerindians 6, 14, Cuicuilco (site, Mexico) 51 feline imagery 24-5, 26, 27, 31,
50,88, 90, 113-15, 220-1 Cuilapan (site, Mexico) 48 34-5, 39, 47, 49, 53-4, 58,
Chupacigarro (site, Peru) 123 Cuitlahuac (Aztec emperor) 112 67-68, 70, 76, 81, 83, 85, 100,
Ciboney culture 8 Culhuacan (Mexican city) 92, 106, 105, 113, 114, 122, 130-1,
cinnabar 62 107 133-4, 154, 171, 175, 176, 178,
Cipangu 5 Cuzco (Inka capital): colonial period 217
Ciudadela complex (Teotihuacan) 220-2; significance and layout figurines: fired and unfired clay 20,
54-55, 62 217; origins in myth 202; sacred 23, 32, 37, 122, 125; gold 197;
ciudadela compounds (Chan Chan, aspects of 204-5; Spanish capture jade 21, 28, 35, 44, 54, 55;
Peru) 193-5 of 219 serpentine 28
Ciudad Hidalgo (Mexican town) Cyphers, Ann 23, 24 fire-pits (Peru) 120, 123
114 Flannery, Kent 38, 44, 45
coca leaf (Peru) 179, 212, 221 see Dainzu (Zapotec site) 45 ‘floating gardens’ (Mexico) see
also hallucinogens danzantes (Monte Alban) 41-2 Chinampas
Cocijo (Zapotec deity) 45, 50 Dark Sun (Maya ruler) 81 Florentine Codex 100
Codex Bod ley 48 ‘Day of the Dead’ 114-15 ‘Flowery War’ (Aztec) 105
 Index 245

Galindo (site, Peru) 149 Huaca Las Avispas tomb (Chan Jolly Beach (site, Antigua) 8
Gallinazo culture (Peru) 137 Chan, Peru) 194 Juxtlahuaca (Olmec site) 31, 32
Garagay (site, peru) 124-5 Huaca Loro East (Sican tomb, Peru)
Garcia, Alejo 214 187 Kalasasaya enclosure (Tiwanaku,
Garcilaso de la Vega (Inka Huaca Prieta (site, Peru) 121-2 Bolivia) 175-6
chronicler) 202 Huanuco Pampa (Inka site) 216 Kaminaljuyu (Maya city) 61
Gateway of the Sun (Tiwanaku, Huari (culture, Peru) see Wari kaolin (white clay) 23, 30, 36
Bolivia) 171, 177, 183 Huaricoto (site, Peru) 120-1 Karwa (site, Peru) 134
geoglyphs (Nasca, Peru) 156-8 Huarpa culture (Peru) 165-6 Kekchi Maya 84
God K (Maya) 75 Huascar (Inka emperor) 214 kero (flared-rim drinking cup, South
God L (Maya) 63, Huayna Capac (Inka emperor) 214 America) 175, 176, 177, 178, 181
gods: Aztec 98-100; Inka 205-6; Huexotzingo (Mexican town) 108, Killer whale imagery (Peru) 153,
Maya 73-5; Taino 12 110 154, 157, 159
gold 9, 85, 93, 112, 134, 143^1, Hueyapan (Mexico) 21, 22 and see Kinich Ahau (Maya Sun God) 74
155, 167, 190, 197-8, 205 Tres Zapotes Kolia (people, South America) 201
gourds (use and symbolism) 121, Huitzilopochtli (Aztec god) 95, Kosok, Paul 156
122 98-9,105, 106, 109, 111 Kotosh (site, Peru) 120-121, 130
Great Compound (Teotihuacan) 55 Huitzo (site, Mexico) 39 Kotosh religious tradition (Peru) 120
Great Goddess (Teotihuacan) 59 human sacrifice 25, 53, 55, 79-80, Krum Bay (site, St Thomas) 8
Great Temple (Aztec) 97-98, 100, 82-3, 99, 105, 109, 111, 125-6, Kukulkan (Maya version of
109 142, 144-6,158-60, 169, Quetzalcoatl) 93
Grijalva, Juan de 87 206 Kunz Axe (Olmec) 35
Guacanagari (Taino chief) 5, 10 hummingbird (symbolism) 104,
Guadeloupe (Caribbean) 6, 13 157 Lake Peten Itza 89
Guadeloupe, Our Lady of (Mexico) Lake Texcoco 95, 99, 106
115 incense 25, 44, 60, 178 Lake Titicaca 170, 174, 182, 183,
Guanahani (San Salvador island) 4 Initial Period (Peru) 124-6 201-3, 221
Guanahatabey people (Cuba) 8 Inka: colonial experience 220-2; Lambityeco (site, Mexico) 48
guanin (gold-copper-silver alloy) 9, empire 213-17; origins in myth Landa, Fray Diego de 86
13; and see gold 201-3; relationship with Chimu languages (Amerindian) 13, 44, 50,
Guarionex (Taino chief) 10 192, 200; relationship with 55-6, 63, 105
Tiwanaku 174, 183; religion lapis lazuli (South America) 176,
Haab (Maya solar calendar) 69-70 203-7; road system 216; society 198
hallucinogens (Amerindian use of) 207-13; Spanish conquest La Aleta (site, Dominican Republic)
12, 38, 71, 113, 124-5, 130, 154, 217-20 11
178-9, 181,221 Inti (Inka Sun God) 205 La Cumbre Canal (Chimu, Peru)
Harpy Eagle symbolism (Peru) 129 Isla Mujeres (Mexico) 74, 86 196
heads: colossal Olmec 21, 28-9; Itzamna (Maya god) 73-4 La Florida (site, Peru) 124
Olmec carved-wood 25; as Itzcoatl (Aztec ruler) 107, 108 La Galgada (site, Peru) 119-120
trophies 46, 145, 153, 162, 175 lx Chel (Maya goddess) 74, 86-7 La Navidad (site, Hispaniola) 5
headhunting 153, 158-9 Iximiche (Maya city) 88 La Venta (Olmec site) 26-9
Hero Twins (Maya) 65-9, 71 La Victoria (site, Guatemala) 19
hieroglyphic writing 40, 41, 43, 45, jade (objects and symbolism) 21, 22, Las Haldas (site, Peru) 126
46, 47, 74, 76-7 26, 28,31,33,35,38,41,46, 49, lienzos (linen maps, Mexico) 50
Hispaniola 5, 6 93,99 lightning (symbolism of) 38, 44, 45,
Honduras 86 jaguar (Panthera onca) see feline 75, 99, 205
Hope Estate (site, St Martin) 8 imagery Lithic Period (South America) 119
‘Horrible Bird’ (Nasca, Peru) 154, Jaguar God (Maya deity) 74 llamas 120, 144, 165, 180, 195
159 Jaguar Warriors (Aztec) 105 Loma del Zapote (Olmec site) see El
buaca (Inka sacred place) 203 Jalieza (site, Mexico) 48 Azuzul
Huaca de la Luna (Moche, Peru) Jamaica 9 ‘lost wax’ metalworking technique
138-9, 149 jewellery 9, 13, 26, 32, 38, 41, 46, 198
Huaca de los Idolos (site, Peru) 49, 55, 109, 125,128, 143-4, Lukurmata (site, Bolivia) 180
122 152, 170, 182 Lumbreras, Luis 132
Huaca de los Sacrificios (site, Peru) jet 49
122 Jivaro Amerindians (South America) Machu Picchu (Inka city) 204, 216
Huaca del Sol (Moche, Peru) 138-9 158 Malinalco (Aztec site) 105, 110
 246 Index

Malinche 110 Monument 3 (San Jose Mogote, 32-5; as ‘mother culture’ 22, 29,
Mama Kilya (Inka Moon Goddess) Mexico) 40 35; name 21-2; and see individual
205 Monument 19 (La Venta, Mexico) sites
Mamom (phase) 76 27 Omo (site, Peru) 181-2
Manchan (Chimu site, Peru) 193 Moon gods 205, onyx 32, 170
Manco Capac (Inka founding figure) Moxeke (site, Peru) 126 Orefici, Guiseppe 160
202-3 mummies (South America) 207-8, Ostionoid cultural tradition
Manco Inka (Inka emperor) 219, 221 (Caribbean) 9
220 mural painting 57-58, 78, 80, 82-3 owl imagery (Peru) 143
Marcus, Joyce 38, 44, 45 mushrooms (narcotic) 71 Oxtotitlan (Olmec site) 31, 36
Martinique 13 music 155
mathematics see calendars ‘Mythical Spotted Cat’ (Nasca, Peru) Pacariqtambo (Peru) 202
Maxtla (Tepanec ruler) 107-8 154 Pachacamac (site, Peru) 160, 173
Maya: art 76, 80-3; Caste War 90; mythology: Aztec 93-5; Inka Pachacuti (Inka emperor) 213
Classic period 77-83; collapse 84; 201-203; Maya 65-9; Moche 142; Pacheco (site, Peru) 163
first European contact 86; origins Taino 12 Pacific Ocean 201, 217
in myth 65-9; origins of culture Pacopampa (site, Peru) 134
75-7; Postclassic period 84—6; Nahuatl language: at Teotihuacan Painted Cave (site, Cuba) 8
Preclassic period 75-7; 56, 63; during Aztec period 105; Palmetto culture 9
relationship with Teotihuacan 61, today 114 Pampa Grande (site, Peru) 149
77-8; relationship with Toltecs naipes (copper segments) 190 Pampa Koani (region, Lake Titicaca,
84—5; religion 69-75; warfare Nanahuatzin (Aztec god) 94 South America) 179
79-83; Spanish conquest of 87-9 Naj Tunich (Maya cave site) 71 Panamarca (site, Peru) 147
Mayapan (Maya city) 73, 85-6 Nasca: art 153-8, 161; capital of panpipes: Moche (Peru) 144; Nasca
Meillacan culture 9 Cahuachi 160-2; chronology 151; (Peru) 155, 161
Melgar, Jose Maria 20-1 collapse 163; origins 152-3; Paracas (culture, Peru) 152-3, 158
merchants’ enclave (Teotihuacan) 62 relationship with Wari 163 Paso de la Amada (site, Mexico) 19
Merida 88 Nawimpukuyo (Huarpa capital, Patavilca valley (Peru) 122, 123
metalwork: Maya 86; Moche 142^1; Peru) 165-6 pearls 49
Chimu (culture, Peru) 197-200; Naymlap (mythical founder of Sican Pikillacata (site, Peru) 171
Sican (culture, Peru) 186, 188, culture, Peru) 186 pilgrimage (Peru) 135, 162
190 netted-jaguar imagery (Teotihuacan) Pinta 4, 5
mica 38 58 Piura (Peru) 146, 189, 198
Miller, Arthur 58 New Fire Ceremony (Aztec) 97 Pizarro, Francisco (Spanish
Miller, Mary Ellen 72-3 New Temple (Chavrn de Huantar, conqueror of the Inkas) 217-19
Mina Perdida (site, Peru) 124 Peru) 128-9, 132 Pleiades star group (symbolism of)
mirrors 20, 22, 28, 32, 38-9, 54, 55, Nezahualcoyotl (ruler of Texcoco) 97, 204, 222
99, 112, 176 108 Pochteca (Aztec merchants) 101
mita (labour tax, Peru) 195, 217 Nina 4, 5 Pojoc (site, Peru) 129
Mitla (site, Mexico) 48 Nino Korin (site, Peru) 179 Polo de Ondegardo (Spanish
mitmaq (Inka colonists) 216 nocbe triste (Mexico) 112 chronicler, Peru) 204
Mixcoatl (Central Mexican deity) Nohmul (Maya city) 76 Ponce Monolith (Tiwanaku, Bolivia)
92 Norte Chico (group of Peruvian 175-6
Mixtecs 48-9, 109 sites) 123 Popol Vuh 65-69,
Moche: art 139—44; chronology 140; Preceramic Period (Peru) 119-24
collapse 148—9; empire 146-7; obsidian 24, 29, 32, 36, 38, 44, 49, Puerto Rico 6
metalwork 142-4; origins 138-9; 54, 57, 61, 75, 99, 103,105, 114, Pukara (site and culture, Peru) 176
sacrifice 144-6 128, 176 pulque (Mexican intoxicating
Moctezuma I (Ilhuicamina, Aztec ocelot see feline imagery beverage) 103
emperor) 107, 109 Ocos culture 19 Pumapunku platform (Tiwanaku,
Moctezuma II (Xocoyotzin, Aztec Ocucaje pottery style (Peru) 152-3 Bolivia) 176
emperor) 110, 112 ‘Oculate Being’ imagery (Peru) 153 puquios (underground water
Monte Alban (Zapotec capital, Okros (pottery style, Peru) 166 galleries, Nazca, Peru) 157
Mexico) 40-8 ‘Old Temple’ (Chavin de Huantar, Putun Maya 84, 85, 86
Montejo, Francisco de (Elder) 87-8 Peru) 127-8, 132 Puuc (Maya architectural style) 84
Montejo, Francisco de (Younger) Olmec: discovery 20-2; archaeology Pyramid of the Moon (Teotihuacan)
87-8 22, 24-25; art 24-25, 28-29, 31, 54
 Index 247

Pyramid of the Sun (Teotihuacan) San Miguel de Ixmiquilpan ‘Street of the Dead’ (Teotihuacan)
52-3 (convent-church, Mexico) 113 53, 62
pyramids (Mesoamerica) 21, 52^t, San Pedro (hallucinogenic cactus, strombus shells (Peru) 133
76, 92 Peru) 124-5, 130, 133, 154, 178, St John Oropuche (site, Trinidad)
Pyramids (Peru) 138-9 221 7
San Pedro de Atacama (site, Chile) St Martin (Caribbean) 8
quail (sacrifice of) 44 180-181 St Thomas (Caribbean) 8
Qeremita (site, Bolivia) 180 San Salvador island 4 St Vincent (Caribbean) 13
quartz crystal (objects and Santa Cruz festival (Mexico) 14 Sun Gods 74, 94, 205
symbolism) 49, 121 Santa Maria 4, 5 Sun Stone (Aztec) 94
Quechua (Inka language) 216 Sapa Inka (Inka emperor) 207-9
quetzal bird feather imagery Saville, Marshall 21, 22 Tacaynamo (founder of Chimu
(Mesoamerica) 58, 93 Scheie, Linda 72-3 dynasty) 192
Quetzalcoatl (deity, symbolism of) School of Cuzco (painters) 221 Taino 6, 9-12
54-5, 94, 99, 112 sea lion 125, 146 Talking Cross (Maya) 90
Quetzalcoatl, Topiltzin 92-3 Seboruco (site, Cuba) 7 talud-tablero (architectural style) 53,
Quiche Maya (Guatemala) 65-9, 84, Sechin Alto (site, Peru) 125 61, 62, 64
88 Seibal (Maya city) 76, 83 Tancah (Maya town) 86
quipu (knotted-string, Peru): Inka serpent imagery 27, 54, 73, 122, Tarascans 109
210, 211; Wari 165, 168 126, 130-1, 133 Tawantinsuyu, ‘Land of the Four
Quirigua (Maya city) 80 serpentine 26, 28, 32, 35 Quarters’ see Inka: empire
shamans 10, 13, 129-130, 133, 154, Taximaroa (Ciudad Hidalgo) 114
rabbit 67, 97 179 Tayasal (Maya town) 84, 88, 89
Raimondi Stela (Chavfn de Huantar, shells (use and symbolism of) 39, 46, Tello Obelisk (Chavin de Huantar,
Peru) 132 55, 60, 121, 190-1 Peru) 132
rain (symbolism) see water shicras (net bags) 123 Temple of Crossed Hands (Kotosh,
Reiche, Maria 156 Shillacoto (site, Peru) 120 Peru) 120
religion: Aztec 95-100; Carib 13; Shield Jaguar (Maya ruler) 83 Tenochtitlan (Aztec capital) 95, 106,
Inka 203-7; Maya 69-75; Taino Shimada, Izumi 187 Teocalli Stone (Aztec monument)
10-12; Wari 169 Sican (culture, Peru): art 188, 106
Red Palace (at Olmec San Lorenzo) 189-91; collapse 191; metalwork Teopantecuanitlan (Olmec site)
24 188-90; origins in myth 186; 31-2, 36
Rimac Valley (Peru) 124 religion 187-9; society 187-9 Teotihuacan: apartment compounds
Rio Azul (Maya city) 78 Sican deity (Peru) 187 56-8; Aztecs and 64; collapse
Rfo Seco (site, Peru) 122 Silverman, Helaine 151, 160, 162 62—4; layout 53; mural painting
roads 78, 173, 216 Sipan (site, Moche) 142-4 58, 59-60; obsidian workshops
‘Room of the Posts’ (Cahuachi, smashing of pottery (South America) 57; relations with Gulf Coast 61;
Nasca, Peru) 162 171 relations with Maya 61, 77-8;
Rowe, John 130 snuffing equipment (South America) relations with Monte Alban
rubber (used in ball-game) 21-2, 25, 178-9 (Zapotecs) 47, 62
45, 67 spider (imagery) 34, 125, 143, 157 Teotitlan del Valle (town, Mexico)
spiritual beliefs (of Amerindians) 11, 50
sacbe (Maya roads) 78 13-14, teotl (Aztec spiritual force) 96-7, 98
‘Sacrifice Ceremony’ (Moche, Peru) Spondylus shell (use and symbolism Tepanecs 106-7
142 of) 32, 124, 120,133,139, 152, Tepantitla compound (Teotihuacan)
Sacrificer figure (Wari, Peru) 169 167, 188, 190-1, 194, 209 59-60
Saladero (site, Venezuela) 8 Staff God (imagery, Peru) 122, 124, Tepoztlan 110
Saladoid culture (Caribbean) 8-9 132-3, 167, 171, 176-7 Terminal Classic period (Maya)
Salinas de Chao (site, Peru) 122 ‘Step Motif Temple’ (Cahuachi, 83-4
salt 103, 120 Nasca, Peru) 160 Texcoco (Mexican city) 107
San Jacinto (site, Peru) 124 Stirling, Matthew 22, 35 textiles 121, 182, 134, 144, 152, 197
San Jose Mogote (site, Mexico) 20, stirrup-spout ceramics (Peru) 139—40 Tezcatlipoca (Aztec god) 93-4, 99,
23, 37-40, 44 stone (carving and symbolism): 105, 113
San Lorenzo (Olmec site) 20, 22, Maya 73, 77; Olmec 24, 26-8, 33, Tezozomoc (Tepanec ruler) see
23-6, 34 34 Tepanecs
San Martin Pajapan (Olmec site) Stone of Tizoc (Aztec monument) Tierras Largas (site and phase,
21 105 Mexico) 37, 40,
 248 Index

‘Tiger Claw’ or 8-Deer (Mixtec lord) Trinidad 7, 8 relationship with Tiwanaku

48 Triple Alliance 108 166-7, 169-71
Tikal (Maya city) 61, 69, 75, 77-8, Trophy heads see heads water (control and symbolism) 24-5,
81 Tucume (site, Peru) see El Purgatorio 30-1, 34, 52, 55, 71, 73, 76, 98,
Tilantongo (Mixtec town) 48-9 Tula (Toltec capital) 91-3 100, 114, 154, 157-8, 174, 179,
time (indigenous measurements of) Tulum (Maya town) 86 196,217
see calendars tumbaga (gold-copper alloy) 188; were-jaguars (Olmec) 22, 33-4, 35
Titu Cusi Yupanqui (Inka emperor) and see gold, and guanin whistling pots 140, 145
220 Tupac Amaru (Inka emperor) 220 wolf 54
Tiwanaku (site and culture, Bolivia): Tupac Huallpa (Spanish-appointed women 39, 144, 210
art 176-9; chronology 174; Inka puppet-ruler) 218-19 wood carvings 25,
collapse 182-3; empire 180-2; Tupac Yupanqui (Inka emperor) worldview (Amerindian) 6, 10-12,
origins 174; relationship with Inka 192,213-14 32-3, 70-3, 77, 96-7, 153-4; and
174, 183; relationship with Wari turquoise (objects and symbolism) see religion
166 49, 104,120, 176,198
Tizoc (Aztec emperor) 100, 105, 109 Tuxtla mountains (Mexico) 21, 24, Xesspe, Toribio Mejia 156
Tlacaelel (Aztec advisor) 107 29 Xibalba (Maya Underworld) 66-7
Tlacopan (Mexican city) 108 Tzolkin (Maya sacred calendar) 70 Xilonen (Aztec goddess) 99
Tlaloc (Aztec rain deity) 54, 60, 94, Tzutujil Maya 84, 88-9 Xipe Totec (Aztec god) 99
98-9 Xiu (Maya dynasty) 87-8
Tlaltecuhtli (Aztec earth monster) 94 unlucky days (in Mesoamerican xiuhpohualli (Aztec solar calendar)
Tlapacoya (site, Mexico) 19-20 calendars) 42, 69, 97 97
Tlatelolco (sister city of Aztec ‘U’-shape architectural feature (Peru) Xochicalco 63, 91
Tenochtitlan) 109 123-5, 174, 194 Xochipala (Olmec site) 32, 36
Tlatilco (site, Mexico) 20 Utatlan (Maya city) 84 Xochipilli (Aztec god) 99
Tlaxcala (Mexican city-state) 105, Xochiquetzal (Aztec goddess) 99
110, 112 Venus (symbolism) 66, 72, 82-83,
tobacco (smoking and symbolism of) 86, 96 Yanhuitlan (Mixtec town) 48
9, 12, 38, 71, 75 Vilcabamba (Inka refuge) 219-20 Yautepec (Aztec town) 104
Tollan (Toltec capital) see Tula Villahermosa (Mexico) 26 Yaxchilan (Maya city) 82-3
Toltecs: culture and history 91-3; Viracocha (Inka creator deity) 174, Yucahu (Taino fertility god) 12
relationsip with Aztec 93; 202-3, 205
relationships with Maya 84-5 Viracochapampa (site, Peru) 170 Zaachila (site, Mexico) 48, 49
Tomb 7 (Monte Alban, Mexico) 49 ‘Virgins of the Sun’ (Peru) see acllas Zacuala Palace (Teotihuacan) 59
Tomb 19 (Rio Azul, Mexico) 78 Zapotec: art 41-2, 45-7; capital of
Tomb 104 (Monte Alban, Mexico) Waira-jirca (site, Peru) 120 Monte Alban 40-8; hieroglyphs
46 Waman Wain (site, Peru) 129 40, 45-6; relations with
tonalpohualli (Aztec sacred warfare: Aztec 99, 104-10; Maya Teotihuacan 47, 62; ruler known
calendar) 97 79-83; Moche 146-7 as 12-Jaguar 47
Tonantzin (Aztec goddess) 115 Wari 170 Spanish conquest 49-50
Tonatiuh (Aztec sun god) 94 Zapotec 40-2 zemis (Caribbean spiritual objects
Tonina (Maya city) 84 Wari (city, Peru) 166-7 and places) 11-12
Totonacs: language and Teotihuacan Wari (culture, Peru): art 167-9; Zohapilco (site, Mexico) 19-20
55; and Spanish conquest 111 origins 165-166; empire 169-73; zoomorphic imagery 22, 80, 113,
trees (symbolism of) 49, 72 relationship with Moche 148-9; 125, 128, 131, 139, 141,
Tres Zapotes (Olmec site) 22 relationship with Nasca 163, 167; 186
NICHOLAS J. SAUNDERS is a leading
authority on ancient America. For over
twenty years he has been engaged in research
and teaching on Pre-Columbian civilisations,
specialising in art and symbolism. His most
recent publications include Icons of Power:
Feline Symbolism in the Americas,
contributions to the Oxford Encyclopedia of
Mesoamerica, and The Incas (Sutton, Pocket
History, 2000). He is Reader in Material
Culture in the Department of Anthropology,
University College London.

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