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

Artistry, splendor, and excellence of production were equally
social imperative and social prerogative. The abundance of state
and personal regalia, textiles, blackware pottery, featherwork,
gold and silver adornment, and ritual artifacts massed in
the storehouses and royal burial mounds of Chanchán was
legendary, even before the Spanish began extracting their
riches. Chimú artisans were so highly regarded, in fact, that
their new Inka overlords coopted this workforce, adopting
their technologies and employing many of the finest weavers
and metalsmiths in Cusco and other outposts of their empire.
The Chimor state style favored surface complexity, a
proliferation of texture, and a multiplicity of techniques and
materials. While ritual and burial garments and hangings
were lightweight and sheer, their openwork or gauze weave
cotton foundations were generally elaborated with brocaded
or tapestry-woven medallions or roundels and thickly sewn
with luxurious tufts and tiers of tassels and fringes. Many
of these three-dimensional elements are worked with faces
and figures, as if the wearer was embodying a network of
human relationships such as a clan or lineage. The emphasis on
cochineal red and pink dyes reflected special access to camelid
wools, which are particularly receptive to this insect-derived
colorant. As in the case of Spondylus shell, these vivid red hues
probably connoted royalty and prestige. The copious amount
of wool used for such ceremonial textiles was a bold statement
of status, as were the tunics, tabards, fans, ear ornaments, and tall
crowns embellished with multihued Amazonian bird feathers
or layers of delicately wrought gold ornamentation.
Conquest, political dominance, and prestige, together with
the widespread distribution of luxury goods, account for the
diffusion of a broadly “Chimú style” of design and representation
over the entire north and central coast region. This Chimú-
Chancay cultural sphere is perhaps best understood as a
synthesis of locally derived and imported iconographic themes
driven by the needs of a powerful, rich aristocracy. A common
symbolic and visual language prevailed in all media. This is
especially marked in textile art, even as particular weaving and
surface design techniques, or forms of dress or ritual cloth,
came to be favored by one society or another. Under Chimú
hegemony, textiles woven across a spectrum of time and place
reveal a general formal similarity (of color scheme, styles of
depiction, motifs).
That visual and cultural overlap hinders our ability to
locate the cultural sources of most textiles without specific
knowledge of their archaeological context. The picture is
further complicated by the relocation of Chimú weavers and
textile artists during the Chimú-Inka period. That event,
as well as the mechanisms of Inka trade, likely explains an
enigmatic group of textiles that seemingly blend north coast
motifs with south and south-central coast weaving techniques.
(Indeed, according to Ann Rowe, the greatest numbers of
Chimú textiles have been found in the Chancay, Ica, and Nasca
valleys, where the climatic conditions for textile preservation
were more favorable.)
All Andean coastal societies celebrated the vitality of the
Pacific Ocean, which along with sophisticated irrigation
works and agricultural practices, enabled their survival in
an arid and challenging terrain. Even so, the profusion of
marine symbolism in Chimú art and cosmology (and related
traditions) is exceptional. It signals a fundamental iconographic
shift from the visionary themes of Paracas art, for example,
or the Wari fixation on the Staff-bearer and the Sacrificer,
and the Moche obsession with ritualized warfare and human
sacrifice. One that gradually makes room for the depiction of
more “folkloric” content featuring ordinary people (including
female effigies) and naturalistic fauna and flora, in addition to
spirit animals and the extra-ordinary denizens of a supernatural
realm. That development is conspicuous among the smaller,
more self-contained societies inhabiting the Chancay, Huaura,
Lurin, Rimac, Chillon and Chincha valleys (which generally
comprise the “Chancay” artistic tradition).
Seabird and fish imagery dominated the painted, low relief,
geometric friezes decorating the clay lattice openwork walls
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