Gallery of the Condor: The Earlier End of Chavín’s Underground Structures

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Chavín de Huántar’s Contribution to Understanding the Central Andean Formative: Results and Perspectives" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In 2019 a new gallery was detected by the Programa de Investigación Arqueológico y Conservación en Chavín de Huántar in Chavin’s Building D, which was explored in 2022 and excavated in 2023. Named for a sculptural stone vessel depicting a condor left during gallery closure, the compact gallery differs notably from others in its planning and construction, and unusually was intentionally closed well before the end of the Chavín era. The gallery originated as a small surface structure that became a gallery as Building D grew horizontally and vertically, engulfing a space not initially intended for subterranean use. Access to the structure was maintained by the later addition of an entrance corridor and long ventilation duct, costly measures to retain the use of a very small, if already ancient chamber. Excavations reveal gallery use across an extended time, with earliest layers lacking ceramics, correlating with unusual features of early construction including banquettes and corbelled ceilings. Overall, the contents and features of the gallery suggest an early stage of gallery conceptualization, construction, and usage ancestral to both the standardization of the numerous later phase Chavin galleries and the apparent need to access past ritual spaces.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Chavín de Huántar’s Contribution to Understanding the Central Andean Formative: Results and Perspectives   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39658.0