Goldsmiths in Peru, Ecuador, and southern Colombia pro-
duced technologically advanced and aesthetically sophisticated work
in gold mostly by cutting and hammering thin gold sheets. The
Tairona smiths, however, who had to obtain gold by trade, used the
lost-wax processin part to preserve the scarce amount of the precious
metal available to them. Tairona pendants were not meant to be
worn simply as rich accessories for costumes but as amulets or talis-
mans representing powerful beings who gave the wearer protection
and status. The pendant shown here (FIG. 14-18) represents a bat-
faced man—perhaps a masked man rather than a composite being,
or a man in the process of spiritual transformation. In local mythol-
ogy, the first animal created was the bat. This bat-man wears an im-
mense headdress composed of two birds in the round, two great
beaked heads, and a series of spirals crowned by two overarching
stalks. The harmony of repeated curvilinear motifs, the rhythmic
play of their contours, and the precise delineation of minute detail
attest to the artist’s technical control and aesthetic sensitivity.South America
As in Mesoamerica, the indigenous civilizations of Andean South
America (MAP14-2) jarred against and stimulated one another, pro-
duced towering monuments and sophisticated paintings, sculptures,
ceramics, and textiles, and were crushed in violent confrontations
with the Spanish conquistadors. Although less well studied than the
ancient Mesoamerican cultures, those of South America are actually
older, and in some ways they surpassed the accomplishments of
their northern counterparts. Andean peoples, for example, mastered
metalworking much earlier, and their monumental architecture pre-
dates that of the earliest Mesoamerican culture, the Olmec, by more
than a millennium. The peoples of northern Chile even began to
mummify their dead at least 500 years before the Egyptians.The Central Andean region of South America lies between
Ecuador and northern Chile, with its western border the Pacific
Ocean. It consists of three well-defined geographic zones, running
north and south and roughly parallel to one another. The narrow
western coastal plain is a hot desert crossed by rivers, which create
habitable fertile valleys. Next, the high peaks of the great Cordillera of
the Andes hem in plateaus of a temperate climate. The region’s inland
border, the eastern slopes of the Andes, is a hot and humid jungle.
Andean civilizations flourished both in the highlands and on
the coast. Highland cave dwellers fashioned the first rudimentary art
objects by 8800 BCE. Artisans started producing sophisticated textiles
as early as 2500 BCE, and the firing of clay began in Peru before 1800
BCE. Beginning about 800 BCE, Andean chronology alternates be-
tween periods known as “horizons,” when a single culture appears to
have dominated a broad geographic area for a relatively long period,
and “intermediate periods” characterized by more independent re-
gional development. The Chavín culture (ca. 800–200 BCE) repre-
sents the first period, Early Horizon; the Tiwanaku and Wari cul-
tures (ca. 600–1000 CE) the Middle Horizon; and the Inka Empire
(see Chapter 32) the Late Horizon. Among the many regional styles
that flourished between these horizons, the most important are the
Early Intermediate period (ca. 200 BCE–700 CE) Paracas and Nasca
cultures of the south coast of Peru, and the Moche in the north.
The discovery of complex ancient communities documented
by radiocarbon dating is changing the picture of early South Amer-
ican cultures. Planned communities boasting organized labor sys-
tems and monumental architecture dot the narrow river valleys that
drop from the Andes to the Pacific Ocean. In the Central Andes,
these early sites began to develop around 3000 BCE, about a millen-
nium before the invention of pottery there. Carved gourds and
some fragmentary cotton textiles survive from this early period.
They depict composite creatures, such as crabs turning into snakes,
as well as doubled and then reversed images, both hallmarks of later
Andean art.
The architecture of the early coastal sites typically consists of
large U-shaped, flat-topped platforms—some as high as a 10-story
building—around sunken courtyards. Many had numerous small
chambers on top. Construction materials included both uncut field-
stones and handmade adobes (sun-dried mud bricks) in the shape
of cones, laid point to point in coarse mud plaster to form walls and
platforms. These complexes almost always faced toward the Andes
mountains, source of the life-giving rivers on which these commu-
nities depended for survival. Mountain worship, which continues in
the Andean region to this day, was probably the focus of early reli-
gious practices as well. In the highlands, archaeologists also have
discovered large ceremonial complexes. In place of the numerous
interconnecting rooms found atop many coastal mounds, the high-
land examples have a single small chamber at the top, often with a
stone-lined firepit in the center. These pits probably played a role in
ancient fire rituals. Excavators have found burnt offerings in the
pits, often of exotic objects such as marine shells and tropical bird
feathers.Chavín
Named after the ceremonial center of Chavín de Huántar, located in
the northern highlands of Peru, the Chavín culture of the Early
Horizon period developed and spread throughout much of the
coastal region and the highlands during the first millennium BCE.
Once thought to be the “mother culture” of the Andean region, the
Chavín culture is now seen as the culmination of developments that
began elsewhere some 2,000 years earlier.380 Chapter 14 NATIVE ARTS OF THE AMERICAS BEFORE 130014-18Pendant in the form of a bat-faced man, Tairona, from
northeastern Colombia, after 1000 CE. Gold, 5^1 – 4 high. Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York (Jan Mitchell and Sons Collection).
The peoples of the Intermediate Area between Mesoamerica and
Andean South America were expert goldsmiths. This pendant depicting
a bat-faced man with a large headdress served as an amulet.1 in.