The staff god is an ancient image in Andean culture. Close to Caral, the thousand year old civilisation centre still being excavated 200 kilometres north of Lima, a gourd was found engraved with such a figure – legs astride, facing the viewer, arms outstretched and with a staff in either hand. The gourd was carbon dated to 2250BC, but the implications are disputed. The gourd has no archaeological provenance, being a surface find from a cemetery long since ransacked by tomb robbers. In the coastal desert where such finds last for thousands of years, it is certainly possible that a later artist engraved the figure on an already ancient gourd.
The god of the andes for several thousand years, on ceramics, and most of all in exquisite textiles, whatever changes come, is a god with two hands out holding his symbols of power, snakes or running waters, halters holding llamas or crops, maize plants,
The Raimondi Stela, now in the Museum of Anthropology in Lima, is an astounding work of incised sculpture from, apparently, 3000 years ago. It is difficult to fully appreciate the complex design under normal lighting. The outline below show the complex details.
The Staff God is seen in one of its finest forms on the Raimondi Stela, a seven foot high inscribed slab of polished green-gray granite shown to Italian explorer Antonio Raimondi by a local farmer in 1874. Ascribed to the Chavin culture – fanged jaguar head, hair and belt of snakes, clawed feet of an eagle – the figure holds ritual staffs in either hand. Hundreds of kilometres to the south and nearly a thousand years later, the “Gateway of the Sun” at Tiwanaku on the south shore of lake Titicaca has another representation of the Staff God. Three metres tall and four metres wide, the doorway is constructed from a single block of stone, and above the door is a figure with a rayed head and two staffs, surrounded on either side by 48 winged creatures facing towards the centre.
These are two of the finest pieces of andean art worked in stone, but the Staff God was depicted in many forms in textiles and ceramics throughout much of coastal and highland Peru and Bolivia, suggesting a continuity of the deity or the image, through the Chavin culture from 1000 to 200 BC and on to the Tihuanuco and Wari empires of 600 to 1000 AD.
A similar figure is most clearly seen on the hidden face of the Lobster rock, a large figure, dominating the panel, with one hand empty and the other holding a rod, facing the river. The figure is repeated, much smaller, but with the same square torso, splayed feet, outstretched arms and tendril head-dress, on the east face of the Serpent Rock, close to the lungs or chirimoya design. There is something also, just above the second line of llamas, on the upper surface of the Llama rock, facing towards the hillside.
Many of these figures are faint, and newer images are superimposed. Henry Tantalean counts 48 complete anthropomorph figures. Antonio Nuñez records 45. Most of them are facing frontally, with arms outspread, holding objects or cords linked to llamas necks.
A ceramic of unknown origin from the private Museo Larco showing a figure with a staff or digging stick in either hand. The left hand object resembles that seen on the Staff God figure on the hidden face of the PariaCaca Rock.
The staffs are generally considered to be batons, symbols of authority, and excavated high status burials such as those of the Moche at Sipan are surrounded by several such staffs, plain and straight, topped with silver or gold. Today in rural Andean society the community leaders are known as the varayok, the staff-bearers.
In the iconography of the different cultures of the Andes and the coast across four thousand years, the staff god and similar figures appear repeatedly. The objects they hold vary. Nazca figures carry digging sticks, often with trophy heads attached, but also plants with fruit or tubers, maize, and pepper . Chancay textile figures stand facing the viewer, arms outstretched, sometimes with staff or snake forms, sometimes empty handed.
Some textiles show figures holding a trophy head from which a plant grows, one fantastic Paracas mantle has a man holding a tree which rests on the back of a pampas cat.
The classic Chavin form has snakes, hanging head down, in either hand. The carved stone figure over the Gateway of the Sun at Tihuanuco, the ceremonial centre south of lake Titicaca, has snakes.
Perhaps the interesting thing about the Chincheros figures is that they are not consistent. Even on one panel of rock there are, as we have seen in the photo above, three figures close by each other which nevertheless are drawn in different styles and hold different objects.
There is a tendency in archaeology throughout history to draw conclusions based on the viewer`s own social perspective, so that British colonials often found evidence for racial segregation and different cultures incoming and dominating the indigenous people. In the present day, there is a tendency to see environmental mismanagement or climate change as the reasons for a people`s decay or disappearance, as in the case of the Maya or the Easter Islanders.
In the Peruvian context, time and again the archaeologists discover a stratified society with high status “lords”, senors, at the top and a priestly ruling class. More recently, at Caral, Ruth Shady is finding a world with no warfare and high status women.
What we do not see at Cochineros is a strictly codified, centrally managed artwork. It is more of a doodling board for anyone who feels inclined to contribute. It is not managed by a rigid hierarchy, like the iconography of the Colonial Spanish religious art, but nor is it without order or themes. It is more like a participatory democracy where several points of view are welcome. Perhaps then the rocks are a speakers corner, a forum for discussion, a place to share and compare ideas.