Curriculum Materials: Amazing Animals in
Art
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Image 2 Peru, Nazca Essays: Questions: |
Background
The coastal river valleys of southern Peru were the settings for a succession of diverse cultures. The earliest clearly identifiable group was the Paracas civilization, whose tombs contain sophisticated examples of weaving and pottery. Following the Paracas, the Nazca civilization flourished from about 200 B.C. to A.D. 600. Since the Nazca people possessed no written language, much of their culture remains enigmatic. We know something about the Nazca, however, because they used art to communicate ideas visually, making textiles and ceramics of extraordinary technical and artistic quality. These objects offer clues to the everyday life, customs, and beliefs of this culture from long ago.
A country of geographic extremes, Peru is situated on the western edge of the continent of South America, bordered by the Pacific Ocean and dominated by the central Andean Mountain chain. Between the highlands and the ocean stretches a long, narrow coastal desert cut at intervals by river valleys. This is where the Nazca settled. Human habitation was possible in this arid and forbidding desert because of the natural features of the sea and a series of small rivers threading down from the Andes. Although these rivers often remained dry for months--even years--at a time, towns developed along their banks. The economy of the Nazca towns was based on agriculture, supplemented by the rich fisheries of coastal waters. The Nazca developed intricate irrigation systems with underground canals to transport and conserve water, attesting to their high level of engineering skills and their ingenuity in adapting to the desert environment.
Reflecting the natural environment, Nazca ceramics are adorned with subjects related to the people's primary means of subsistence--farming and fishing. Common motifs include fish, aquatic birds, and reptiles, as well as fruits and vegetables such as chili peppers, maize, and lima beans. Complex composite figures appearing in later works combine various human, animal, and bird attributes. The Nazca may have connected these figures to agricultural fertility and water. Because of scarce rainfall on the desert, and their dependence on the ECOLOGICAL balance of the natural environment, the Nazca were intensely concerned with their relationship to nature.
It is evident that burial of the dead was important to the culture since tombs have been found containing vast numbers of intricately woven textiles, colorful ceramics, and rich metal work. Many of the numerous tombs discovered in the river valleys were looted over the centuries by people searching for marketable artifacts. Enough, however, have been excavated scientifically by ARCHAEOLOGISTS to show that the dead, often interred in chambers with adobe-brick walls, were supplied with an array of tomb offerings. Thanks to the arid desert climate, large numbers of these offerings have been well preserved.
In addition to tomb artifacts, the region is marked by one of the most unique and puzzling archaeological phenomena of South America--the Nazca Lines. Extending for miles, these networks of LINES, spirals, geometric SHAPES, and animal figures, such as fish and birds, crisscross the desert in and around the Nazca area. They have been dated to the same period as the manufacture of Nazca ceramics. Because of their giant scale, the lines can only be seen without distortion from the air. They were made by removing the darkly weathered surface stones to expose the underlying lighter sand and gravel. While there has been much debate about their purpose and meaning, it is likely that they were made as markers for processional routes to places believed to be sacred. Many of these figures repeat the forms seen on painted ceramics and may be religious SYMBOLS connected with the sea, sky, and mountains. They are perhaps related to a set of rituals associated with the bringing of water to the Nazca Valley.1
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1 Craig Morris and Adriana Von Hagen, The Inca Empire and its Andean Origins (New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1993), 88.