Shamans, Supernaturals & Animal Spirits: Mythic Figures From the Ancient Andes

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Fringed Border from a Tunic
Cup-and Weapon-Bearer
Moche-Wari culture, Huarmey Valley
AD 750-1000
Cotton, camelid wool; interlocking and slit tapestry weave
2¼" x 9½"
Literature
Conklin 1979, 178, fig. 18.
Many of the designs featured in Moche-Wari style
tunics resemble architectural friezes, with deities and
supernatural characters inset between decorative blocks of
geometric patterning. The textiles seem to forge or project a
connection with the ceremonial and ritual compounds built
for the culture’s rulers and dynasties.
This textile “frieze” presents two figures on a beautiful blue
ground—the clarity of one (detail at left, above) offsetting
the prismatic form of the other, which is embedded in a
linear mosaic. Conceivably, the contrast distinguishes a "real"
personage from a supernatural or transfigured one.
The wing-caped ritualist or warrior holds a set of objects
that can be linked with earlier Moche pictorial myths. That
influence appears to have lingered in this regional art style,
even as Wari influence began to reshape iconographic modes
and themes.
The objects comprise a Moche-style club and beaker. Goblets
brimming with ritual liquids (possibly human or animal blood,
or the fermented corn beverage chicha) are an important motif
in the great Moche narratives describing the Presentation
and Sacrifice ceremonies. Clubs are prominent in imagery
depicting combat, as well as in motifs representing "captured"
weapon bundles. They are clearly warrior insignia.
This militaristic/sacrificial context illuminates the significance
of the second visually chaotic figure, which emerges when
the design is reversed (detail at left, below). Upside-down,
the image reveals a disembodied head (perhaps of the same
individual) bearing a supersized headdress with multiple
emanations terminating in abstract birds. The motif suggests a
form of transcendence achieved in death.
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