Enchanted Plazas: Monumental Art and Iconography in Early Horizon Coastal Ancash

Summary

This paper considers the spatial design of ritual gathering places and the iconographic content of associated sculpted friezes at Early Horizon centers in Nepeña, coastal Ancash, Peru. The Early Horizon marked a transition from representational art of the late Initial Period to abstract forms of public visual arts during the second half of the first millennium BC. This paper examines the context of the public visual arts within enclosed compounds – hypothesized as multi-functional residences – and evaluate their role in shaping social interactions during the Early Horizon. I argue that the visual and aesthetic properties of the public art “enchanted” visitors and rendered semi-public plazas “magical” to the gaze of outsiders. The shift from late Initial Period to Early Horizon iconographies marked both a democratization of religious practices and a revival of natural, animistic forces as powerful agents of social reproduction. It is argued that abstract visual arts have the capacity to associate human ritual actions with powerful natural and supernatural agents. This represents a radical shift from the therianthropic forms of Chavín, Cupisnique and Sechín arts.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Social Complexity in the Central Andean Region: Current Research on the Initial Period and Early Horizon Part 2

Keywords

Spatial Coverage