Page 265 - Perú indígena y virreinal

texts pre-hispanic peru
Luis Guillermo Lumbreras
This exhibition catalogue presents a carefully-chosen selection of Ancient Peruvian works of art. Visitors will have the opportunity to appreciate the beauty and details of items dating from various periods throughout the extensive history of Peruvian art. In this respect, we believe it would be better to present the historical context in which these works were created rather than simply describing aspects that visitors will observe by studying the works themselves.
In 1532, when the Spanish reached Peru, this was a country measuring more than 5,000 kilometres in length, known as Tawantinsuyo, a land that occupied almost two-thirds of the western border of South America. It was ruled by the Incas, natives of Cusco, who throughout the 15th Century had developed an expansive political strategy which placed former states, lordly dominions and peoples of unequal development under their control.
The high level of prosperity achieved by this country attracted the attention of Europeans. Beginning with the Discovery of the Americas, they fought to discover the means by which this civilization sustained itself, the source of its material prosperity and the characteristics of a State that governed a country replete with densely populated cities and efficient agricultural and cattle-raising production, which enabled the Incas to maintain an excellent manufacturing activity and develop a spectacular and well-built architecture for the élite classes.
It was during this period that a Spanish colonial viceroyalty was established that occupied a large part of the territory, and this area was re-christened with the name “Peru” or “Pirú”, a term used by the sailors who reached these lands to refer to the port known as “Viru”. Thus, the name Tawantinsuyo (“country of the four regions”) was abandoned and the country’s political and economic development was noted down in history as part of the process of Spanish colonial expansion. Spain set up viceroyalties, governorships and captaincy posts throughout an immense territory we now known as Hispanic America or Latin America.
The image of Peru prior to 1532 was established by the “Inca Empire”, a perspective that was restricted to news and speculation based on descriptions and stories related by the chroniclers who observed the Incas or heard about them. The truth is that this successful and complex civilization was the culmination of a very long process of development that began more than twelve or perhaps even fifteen thousand years ago and continued throughout the various periods recorded by archaeologists.
THE STONE AGE
Archaeologists have discovered that Man reached Peru over twelve thousand years ago, during the last few millennia of the “Ice Age”. Whether he reached the region slightly before or afterwards is of little importance compared to the stage of development at which he stood. He had come from the Old World, before he discovered agriculture and cattle grazing and he limited himself to appropriating natural resources that were already fully formed, taking no part in their production. His life was based on hunting and gathering, which presupposes a form of social organization based on numerically limited groups—of the type known as a “band”—and he inhabited naturally sheltered areas such as caves, overhanging rocks, coves or artificially constructed camps, depending on the weather.
Many of these primitive inhabitants must have resorted to transhumance and a semi- nomadic way of life, changing camps in the most extreme seasons of summer and winter, although the climatic conditions would not have varied so drastically as to make the nomadic life a condition of survival.
Archaeologists are discovering an increasing number of remains of these primitive
inhabitants, enabling us to form an increasingly clear picture of their way of life and customs. Changes in subsistence, owing to changes in weather or the discovery of new technological resources, are physically reflected in the type of tools they used, which developed through various stages that also tell us about changes in population, migrations and other events typical of the period. They led to stages of specialization that are reflected in elaborate tools made of stone and bone, including arrowheads, scrapers, knives and other even more specific items. Based on these findings, it has been possible to sketch out a sequence that covers the period stretching from the almost hypothetical date of twelve thousand years ago to six or seven thousand years before our era, a moment in which Man’s accumulated experience in the Peruvian Andes enabled him to gradually discover new ways of appropriating resources by domesticating plants and animals and discovering fishing techniques and collecting shell-fish.
THE ARCHAIC PERIOD
The various steps which enabled Man to advance from a hunter-gatherer existence to a subsistence based on farming and livestock are still not clearly defined. However, around 6000 to 5000 BC, almost all the inhabitants of the Andes had already discovered some kind of agriculture and many had livestock at their disposal. The crops and livestock were not always the same. Stretching from the meseta of Junín up to that of Titicaca, the inhabitants mainly lived off grazing animals of the genus Camelidae, a practice that would later spread throughout the entire territory; in the north, they raised ducks and guinea pigs close to their homes. This process was the result of Man’s mastery of his environment.
The immediate effects of this domestication of plants and animals were sobering. First of all, we can observe a distinct tendency towards the establishment of permanent population centres in all kinds of habitat, featuring an almost imperceptible reorganization of his way of life: a growing prevalence of concentrated groups and a wide range of options with regard to the management of their resources. The most significant achievements took the form of settlements and villages, which were small and isolated at first and then later became larger and more numerous.
The most outstanding developments were those of home construction. With the artificial construction of dwellings the inhabitants abandoned the natural shelters, deciding their place of settlement based on the requirements of the new system of production. Woven materials provided protection for the body against the wind, the sun, the cold and the wet. However, above all, these materials constituted a new working tool, one that fishermen used to catch large hauls of fish through the elaboration of nets and hook-lines. These materials also served to make clothes and bags and cord for multiple purposes.
From this moment on, a complex society slowly took shape, based on a sedentary way of life and an economy organized around agriculture and stockbreeding, with fishing and gathering playing a supporting role, one that has never been abandoned.
The fourth and third millennia prior to our era constituted a period of intense activity within the Andean world, with the inhabitants settling in every habitable space and beginning to transform them. Peru reached the year 2000 BC in a very different state to the country that the very first settlers had seen twelve to fifteen thousand years ago, although it was also very different compared to the country just two thousand years before, when things began to change. The third millennium was a period of great change, especially the second half, between 2500 and 2000 BC, which is when the complex civilizations along the coast and the mountain ranges began to flourish, featuring the establishment of urban centres associated with public ceremonial areas.
The size of the settlements was now significantly larger, and various population centres, such as Caral and Aspero, in Supe, presented complexes of buildings that served purposes other than those of habitation, such as platforms and “sacred” enclosures. These were “ceremonial urban centres” associated with a complex network of facilities that served an agricultural activity at once highly laborious and highly specialized.
In effect, the simple mastery of the reproductive cycles of various plants—which forms the basis of domestication—was not sufficient to make agriculture the source of a higher standard of life compared to an existence based on the gathering of shellfish and plants, fishing and hunting. Although there were some improvements regarding access to subsistence items,
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