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The Stone Ancestors: Idioms of Imperial Attire and Rank among Huari Figurines

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Anita G. Cook
Anita G. Cook*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC 20064
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Abstract

Two caches were recovered at Pikillacta, the largest Huari state installation (A. D. 550-1000) in the southern Andean highlands; each contained 40 richly garbed votive turquoise figurines. The figurines are analyzed in terms of their production, use, and deposition as well as their overall morphology. To the extent possible, the rank associated with the costumes worn by each figure is also considered. Reference is made to Inca apparel and its potential for interpreting Huari official garments. Because the number 40 also held special importance in Inca state organization as an administrative unit or division, the Inca example provides concepts of administration vital to the interpretation of the figurines. A more unusual source—origin myths associated with the Chimor Kingdom—supports the relation between turquoise figurines and ancestor worship. I argue that the stone figurines embody qualities and convey concepts that are central to Andean political administration, and that they are intimately tied into the web of ancestral cults through which kinship, hierarchy, and inheritance were determined.

Pikillacta es la más grande instalación estatal huari (A. D. 550-1000) ubicada en la sierra sur peruana. En este sitio se encontraron dos depósitos de ofrenda, cada uno conteniendo 40 figurillas humanas talladas en turquesa, con prendas de vestir grabadas. El análisis de estas ofrendas se hace en términos de los contextos de producción, uso y deposición de las figurillas, de su morfología, y hasta donde es posible, del rango asociado con las prendas representadas en cada figurina. No obstante que se mencione las prendas incas y que estas tienen buenas posibilidades para la interpretación de las prendas oficiales huari; el número 40 tambien habría tenido una importancia especial en la organización estatal inca como una unidad de división administrativa. El ejemplo inca provee conceptos de administración críticos para la interpretación de las figurillas; mientras que un recurso poco comúnmitos de origen del estado chimor—apoya la relación entre figurillas de turquesa y los cultos ancestrales. Aquí se argumenta que éstas figurillas contienen cualidades y proyectan conceptos centrales sobre la administración andina, y serían estas figurillas las que están íntimamente ligadas al complejo sistema de cultos ancestrales, mediantes los cuales se sustentaron las relaciones de parentesco, diferenciación social y la herencia.

Type
Articles
Information
Latin American Antiquity , Volume 3 , Issue 4 , December 1992 , pp. 341 - 364
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1992

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