Andean Expressions: Art and Archaeology of the Recuay Culture

7. Chiefly Worlds in Artworks and Imagery

chap ter seven Chiefly Worlds in Artworks and Imagery imagery is understood here broadly as the iconographic, decorative, and formal elements of objects, especially those which have representational effect or desire. Shared imagery was vital to Recuay social life, being pervasive in the look and practice of community ceremony and politics. In one sense, it is the fundamental element of a Recuay corporate art style. This is somewhat paradoxical since the imagery was crucial in fashioning social selves in Recuay society, distinguishing individual rank, identity, and authority within and between communities. On another level, because of the emphasis across multiple media, many of the analytical categories used in this evaluation (such as “sculpture,” “style,” “art,” “chiefship,” and “feasting”) can now be explored as intermingled elements of small but integrated cultural projects in which objects and their imagery were vital. My general proposal is that Recuay artworks—sculptures, figural ceramics , monuments, textiles—centered on chiefs and their social relations . They often adorned and represented chiefs but in doing so helped to make them as well. This proposal fuels a principal methodological assumption of this book: the interpretation of the individual objects of different media is enhanced when they are studied together. One of the bases for chiefly status in Recuay society was warfare. Leaders construed themselves as warriors (fig. 48). And a warrior or warfare “culture”—manifested in weapons, imagery, and fortified architecture —emerged among groups to negotiate identity within a political milieu rife with conflict. The rise of Recuay political complexity coincided with a warfare aesthetic. The Recuay also developed a concern for the human body and its capacity for action and symbolism. Much of the imagery was to commemorate specific individuals and their networks of social relations; the representations followed a number of shared formal conventions for portraying the human body and its potential for ancestorhood. Furthermore, 192 l ChieFLy worLds in artworks and imaGery FiGure 48. Modeled effigy jar of a chiefly warrior figure. The figure holds a weapon and shield and wears ear spools and a headdress adorned with trophy hands, all denoting his high warrior status. (Museo Nacional de Arqueolog ía, Antropología e Historia, Lima) complex surficial imagery covered or affiliated bodies, physical and symbolic , with a “social skin,” which extended forms of chiefly agency and helps to explain their ubiquity. In this chapter I focus on the miniature worlds represented on ceramics . The pots were not simply vessels for liquids. They were perceived as embodiments of chiefly leaders, their physical and symbolic houses, and containers for their potency. Recuay groups trusted in the notion that their chiefly leaders were the physical representatives of their community (house) and its prosperity. The chiefly imagery works in bold homologies , marking and promoting certain equivalencies among vessels, bodies, and buildings. This occurs both in formal terms and in the technology of making, which privileged key materials and special enriched surfaces. The final section of this chapter examines the imagery of animals and humans. We see intertwined relationships, especially between human and feline figures. It is an imagery of authority and transformation, of potent beings with mutable forms or beings who exert change to other subjects , often through violence. I contend that these are in essence chiefly metaphors. ChieFLy worLds in artworks and imaGery l 193 The veneration of ancestor effigies was central to the religion of Recuay groups. Their presence was vital, because political ideology, art production , and the products of labor mobilization were invested in leaders who drew legitimation and economic power from genealogy. What “made” a chief in Recuay culture was a special engagement with other social beings: subjects, women, animals, and divinities. The main venues for the use of Recuay artworks were funerary ceremonies and festive public events. Their imagery and objects mediated relations between people and things as well as between people and people. In examining the images, I attempt to explain the need and function of artworks in Recuay society and also the specific character of their forms and imagery. About Recuay Chiefs This chapter pivots on the discussion of chiefly representations, so it is useful to be explicit about what I mean here by the term “chief.” First, it is a contrivance derived from a number of comparative examples and personal choices to help understand Recuay archaeological patterns. Perhaps the most valuable comparisons are to be found in early colonial documents about the caciques and curacas (native lords) of Ancash...