Andean Expressions: Art and Archaeology of the Recuay Culture

1. Toward a Recuay Prehistory

chap ter one Toward a Recuay Prehistory in this book I offer a prehistory of the Central Andes. By “prehistory” I mean the archaeological record of social and cultural developments before the written sources of the early sixteenth century. I also refer to the broad and potent spectrum of disciplines which informs our knowledge and narrative of the Andean past. This book centers on the archaeology of northern Peru but is not limited to archaeology. The insights provided by scholars in fields such as anthropology, art history, environmental and geological studies, and history are integral to advancing the current state of knowledge of developments in the prehistoric record of northern Peru. This book proceeds with the conviction that we can advance our interpretations of ancient Andean society by developing a more generous approach to how things and spaces were complicit with humans in the events of the past. As Borges would have it, these do not necessarily regard aesthetics or function but are nevertheless provocative and informative and manage to form a complex whole, which I understand broadly as culture. In the contemplation of single facts, we can intuit some patterns and experience of their collective being. Like the observer in the epigraph, I hope to recognize in the complexities of the past—as located in ruins, statues, and urns—an enduring order and intelligence. In recent years the pace of research for Central Andean prehistory, specifically of the first millennium a.d., has resulted in exciting and significant discoveries, many of which have revolutionized our understanding of the ancient Americas. But for various reasons the archaeology has concentrated on developments that occurred in cultures on the coast of Peru, of which Moche, Nasca, and Paracas are among the best known. A coeval but less well-known culture, the Recuay of Peru’s north highlands , forms the focus of this study (fig. 1). Like their coastal contemporaries , the Recuay people are best known for their unique art style, also 2 l toward a reCuay prehistory FiGure 1. The Central Andes and places mentioned in the text. associated with funerary pottery found in museum collections. Yet I wish to move beyond the study of the appeal of Recuay artworks to characterize the history of Recuay groups on the basis of their interaction with their distinctive environment. Recuay’s most celebrated developments occurred at the foot of Peru’s Cordillera Blanca, the highest and most extensive ice caps in the New World tropics and one of the most picturesque places on earth. The ecological diversity and a central geographic position in northern Peru were instrumental in the economic prosperity of Recuay groups. Ecology and geography were also instrumental in shaping the look and distribution of the culture—“Recuayness,” if you will. The rich but fragmented zones of production sustained unique centers of Recuay development and contributed to the formation of stylistic areas and boundaries that scholars are only now beginning to disentangle. Together, the M a r a ñ ó n U cayali H u a l l a g a M antaro Apurímac Cha n cay • • • • •   Cuzco LakeTiticaca Lima  Recuay  Chachapoyas  Chiclayo  Cajamarca  modern settlement  Huaraz Huamachuco  Ayacucho  Piura Chavín de Huántar Moche Paracas Pachacamac  Huarochirí  Cajatambo Huari • Pukara • Gallinazo Group • archaeological site •Kotosh •Pashash Nazca  • Chinchawas • Quispisisa •Vicús San José de Moro • •Yayno 0 200 400 km P A C IF I C O C E A N toward a reCuay prehistory l 3 groups shared similar material styles and ways of doing things, especially styles of making. The notion of Recuayness holds a series of important implications. First, a long history of fairly insular cultural development forms the crux of the Recuay cultural tradition—patterned developments characterizing highland Ancash over the greater part of the first millennium a.d. (Lau 2004b). It is this Recuayness, in the style of material culture, which also lets us perceive interaction with other groups and, just as important, cultural changes through time. These dispositions were sometimes purposefully instantiated or employed by the Recuay to distinguish themselves from others. To be sure, the manifestations of the tradition varied substantially. Yet Recuay’s coherence was expressed as shared culture, community, and corporate identity. I reveal its diversity through time and space in order to challenge the generalized, monolithic characterizations of Recuay pervasive in the literature today. Since its identification in the late nineteenth century (Macedo 1881), Recuay has been recognized as...