The Life and Writings of Julio C. Tello: America's First Indigenous Archaeologist

9. The Feline God and Its Transformations in Chav

the feline god and its transformations || 165 aboriginal art reaches its maximum degree of development in the North Andean region. Chavín art, characterized by its perfection of line, its richness of fantasy, the symbolism of its representations, the proportion and harmony of the whole, and the material used, which is nearly always hard stone, is the richest historical source and the best evidence of the high degree of civilization reached by the Peruvian race. The significance of its sculptural and pictorial works and the mastery with which they were executed all lead us to suppose that the culture of Chavín, illustrated in its art, is the product of a long process of gestation and elaboration, which must have been intimately bound to the material, emotive, and intellectual history of man, perhaps since his appearance on this part of the continent. The culture of Chavín, along with almost all the cultures of Peru, is only one of the better-developed phases of the Andean Archaic culture, and surely the most advanced of them all. The best-developed cultures of the North have at all times received the influence of Chavín. The best examples of Chimú pottery, including under this rubric Tallanes and Mochicas, conserve in all their clarity the characteristics typical of Chavín art. For this reason, the geographical area of Chavín culture is not limited to the space occupied by its ruins situated on the edges of the streams named Mariash, Mosna, and Tungurawa Wacheksa, but rather it extends over almost the entire region of the northern Andes. Engraved stones and those with figures in relief in the legitimate Chavín style have been found in numerous ruins in almost the entire The Feline God and Its Transformations in Chavín Art An Account of His Rise to Prominence in Peruvian Archaeology john v. murra chapter nine 175 165 166 || selected writings province of Huari and in the more distant provinces of Pomabamba and Pallasca. Ceramics with relief drawings of the same style have been found in some ancient cemeteries of Morropón and in almost all the non-Christian cemeteries of the North Coast of Peru. Almost all the material known from this culture was acquired during the work of archaeological exploration carried out at the beginning of 1919 by the author, who stayed in the Department of Ancash a very short time. New explorations and excavations in this important region surely hold great surprises for Peruvian archaeology. Given the monographic character of the present work, of all the numerous and interesting material gathered, only that which illustrates the theme in question will be included here. As in cultures studied previously, the fundamental motif of almost all artistic representations, sculptural as well as the pictorial, is the jaguar . The jaguar appears illustrated in its three principal aspects: realistic representations, those idealized or conventionalized to a lesser degree, and those conventionalized or idealized to a greater degree and anthropomorphic. These, in turn, give rise to more complex representations of symbolic and decorative character. Realistic Representations These include representations of the entire body or only the head of the animal sculpted in high relief or in three dimensions. Sculptured portrayals of the feline are not rare; they appear generally in high, low, or flat relief. It has already previously been said that feline representations in high relief generally adorn porticoes of temples and entrances to fortified towns. Statues of felines are sometimes found in the Andean region, such as the two which form part of Sra. Centeno de Romanville ’s collection of antiquities in Cuzco, which Squier1 made known and which still today remains in that city. Much more frequent are the statuary representations of the animal’s head. Feline heads, in the form represented in figure 9.1, are found in profusion in almost all the ruins of the Andean North, and in Tiawanako , Cuzco, Huánuco Viejo, and other archaeological centers of the highlands. They always appear decorating the walls of buildings, principally interior and exterior walls of temples. These heads are made up of two parts: the first part, the head proper, squared or rounded in form, carved more or less realistically, with the different parts of the face well defined; and the other part, corresponding to the neck, elongated, prismatic , or conical in form, which is inserted into the wall. Feline heads the feline god and its transformations || 167...