Monsters, Men, and the Afro-Andean Baroque: Slavery and the Sacristy Lintels of San Francisco Xavier de la Nasca (Peru)

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In May 2024, the Haciendas of Nasca Archaeological Project undertook a comprehensive registration of architectural and artistic features at the ruinous Jesuit hacienda chapel of San Francisco Xavier de la Nasca in Peru’s Ingenio Valley. Completed in 1745 in the Late Andean Baroque style, the hacienda chapel was intended to indoctrinate and serve the spiritual needs of the hacienda’s community of nearly 300 enslaved African descendants. Heavily obscured by calcification, new mural paintings were discovered on two lintels in the chapel’s sacristy. Angels, grotesque figures, and hybrid beings of classical antiquity contrast with realistic depictions of Afro-Andean hacienda laborers and are accompanied by floral decorations in vibrant polychrome. I interrogate these works of art together with my previous archaeological research at the colonial haciendas of Nasca to understand how diverse sensory experiences contributed to an ever-changing aesthetico-political regime and simultaneously resonated with a broader African diaspora.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow