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

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Band or Belt
A Procession of Felines
Tiwanaku or Pukara style
AD 100-400
Camelid wool; tapestry weave
2½" x 25"
The crouching pumas depicted in this narrow band are reminiscent of Pukara
feline-shaped effigies and sculptural incense vessels that were used for burning
ritual offerings. The cross motif apparently derives from the jaguar's pelt markings
(as in Chavín feline mortars), but in the southern sierra it seems to have become a
widely employed sign or cosmogram. The “raining" or “weeping" eye is similarly
ubiquitous and symbolically charged.
The composition is an undulating play of interlocking blues and greens. These
harmonious hues surely had special connotations for being redolent of a greentinted
gravel that was obtained from riverbeds in the sacred Quimsachata mountains
and used to surface the terraces of the Akapana temple. 1 The meandering white
outline separating these two colors, which are so close in chromatic value, leads the
eye through the pattern field of geometric shapes.
1 Alan Kolata, "The Flow of Cosmic Power," in Tiwanaku: Ancestors of the Inkas, ed. Margaret Young-Sanchez
(2004): 100.
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