Chavín de Huántar
Chavín de Huántar
Chavín de Huántar, an archaeological site in the Mosna Valley in Peru's northern highlands. From 900 bce until 200 bce Chavín de Huántar was an important religious and economic center. At its height, it played a key role within a sphere of interaction that included cultures distributed nearly to the current Ecuadorian border on the north and to the highlands of Ayacucho and the coast of Ica in southern Peru.
In 1919 the pioneering Peruvian archaeologist Julio C. Tello initiated investigations at Chavín de Huántar. Over the next three decades he argued that the developments there had provided the cultural matrix out of which later Andean civilization developed. More recent investigations have demonstrated that many of the distinguishing features of the site's art and monumental architecture had been based on earlier cultural traditions from the coast and highlands. Nevertheless, the distinctive blend of these older styles constitutes a major artistic accomplishment, and the Chavín style is considered by many to have been among the greatest artistic achievements of indigenous South America.
The public constructions consist of a series of pyramid-platforms arranged in a U-shaped ground plan. Their exteriors were faced in cut and polished masonry, and decorated with stone carvings of tropical forest animals like the jaguar, caiman, harpy eagle, and anaconda. The largest of these structures reached a height of 52.5 feet. They were catacombed with subterranean passageways and chambers, some of which were used for religious rituals. The principal cult object, a large granite sculpture of a fanged anthropomorphic figure (known as the Lanzón), can still be found in situ in the center of the oldest temple structures. While many of the religious rites were held on building summits and in the subterranean chambers, most of the ceremonial activities probably took place in the open-air, semisubterra-nean, rectangular and circular courts built at the foot of the platforms.
At the outset, a small residential population was associated with Chavín's ceremonial complex, but after 400 bce this settlement grew to a considerable size (104 acres, including the public architecture), and the population may have reached two thousand or more. Located at the intersection of two natural routes of communication, the center at Chavín de Huántar became an important focus of interregional trade and religious pilgrimage. While the local subsistence economy was based on a mixed agro-pastoral system of high-altitude crops (such as potatoes), maize, and llama herding, substantial amounts of exotic utilitarian items and ritual goods were acquired from distant sources. There is evidence of socioeconomic stratification at Chavín de Huántar by 300 bce, and it is likely that the center of Chavín de Huántar served as the focus of one of the first complex societies to develop in the Central Andes.
See alsoCupisnique Culture; Kotosh; Tello, Julio César.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A synthesis on the archaeology of Chavín de Huántar and its significance for Andean prehistory may be found in Richard L. Burger, Chavín and the Origins of Andean Civilization (1992). More detailed descriptions of excavations in the temple sector are provided in Julio C. Tello, Chavín: Cultura Matriz de la Civilización Andina (1960), and Luis Lumbreras, Chavín de Huántar en el Nacimiento de la Civilización Andina (1989). The best-known studies of the Chavín art style are John H. Rowe, Chavín Art: An Inquiry into Its Form and Meaning (1962), and Peter Roe, A Further Exploration of the Rowe Chavín Seriation and Its Implications for North Central Coast Chronology (1974).
Additional Bibliography
Burger, Richard L. Excavaciones en Chavín de Huántar. Peru: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Fondo Editorial, 1998.
Campana D., Cristóbal. El arte chavín: Análisis estructural de formas e imagines. Lima: Universidad Nacional Federico Villarreal, 1995.
Druc, Isabelle C. Ceramic Production and Distribution in the Chavín Sphere of Influence (North-central Andes). Oxford: J. and E. Hedges: Distributed by Hadrian Books, 1998.
Vaughn, Kevin, Dennis E. Ogburn, and Christina A, Conlee. Foundations of Power in the Prehispanic Andes. Arlington: American Anthropological Association, 2005.
Richard L. Burger