America or the Americas, meaning the entire continent of North and South America, stretching like a giant semi-colon the entire length of the globe from the frozen Arctic of Canada and Siberia, down through the USA, Texas and Mexico, to the narrowing isthmus of Central America and Panama, before broadening into Colombia and Venezuela, Peru and Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Patagonia.
This is the New World not just for European invaders but because, cut off from the rest of the globe by ice and sea, it was not entered by man until some 20,000 years ago. Then, towards the end of the Ice Age, a small group of people are thought to have reached it from Asia, across those Arctic wastes, when low sea levels (because of vast amounts of ice stored in the polar caps) combined with sufficient warming to make the journey possible. And they spread throughout the entire region, over perhaps five thousand years.
American Indians, the indigenous peoples of North and South America, are tightly related. This is the New World. They arrived a hundred, a hundred and fifty thousand years after humans had spread through Africa, Europe and Asia. They have not been here long. They look similar, they have some similar customs. Wearing their hair in braids, carrying their children tightly wrapped in a papoose. And drawing pictures on rocks.
The rock art of South America extends over a vast geographical area and across a long period of time. The earliest paintings known were found in the North East of Brazil. Here in the cave of the Toca de Boquairoa de Pedra Furado, a fragment of stone with two parallel lines painted in red was found under a hearth whose upper level was dated to 17,000 years BP, Before Present. The paintings visible today in the rock shelter are thought to be more recent, early Holocene, 8-9000 BP, when the first Maize and squash was being domesticated in South West Mexico.
At the beginning of present times, hunters of the Holocene or “Completely New Age”, produced paintings of animals, humans and geometrical figures, found in the lowlands of Brazil and Argentina, and in the Southern Andes of Chile, Bolivia and Peru. The oldest are thought to be scenes from North East Brazil, showing scenes of hunting, fighting, dancing, sexual relations and giving birth, dated to 12,000 years BP.
In Patagonia a few thousand years later, there are camelids, alpaca and vicuna, chased by humans, and the famous hands in negative of the Cave of the Painted Hands by the Rio Pinturas, Paintings River, in Santa Cruz. Similar hunting scenes appear in the Andes from the North of Chile, through Bolivia to South and Central Peru, whilst the the hand paintings are found in small numbers in Chile and Bolivia but no further North.
In Brazil, these figures continued to evolve with the development of agriculture. About 5000 years BP, an new style appeared in the centre and North East dominated by large human figures, together with hands and feet and simple animals. In Peru, the figurative style was succeeeded by a semi-naturalistic tradition, and later engraved rock art directly linked to the cultures such as Cupisnique and Tihuanaco, where great quantities of fine ceramics, for the first, and a vast cultural centre of stone sculpture by lake Titicaca, for the second, gives us a detailed iconography with which to compare.
Both painted and engraved figures at this time represent supernatural beings and humans, schematised animals, and geometrical figures. Some of them are similar to images seen on textiles or ceramics. Petroglyphs continued to be made up to and beyond the spanish conquest, as can be seen from representation of mules and horses at some sites.
Rock art in the Americas only began to be studied systematically in 1979 in the USA, in the 1950s in British Guiana, in the 1960s in Colombia and Venezuela, and in the 1970s in Brazil.
In Peru, Antoni Nuñez Jimenez, a cultural Ambassador from Cuba, did most to identify sites and to record rock art in the 1970s, and published his work in four volumes in 1986. sistematize the information.
Patagonia, at the southern end of the Continent is an exception, since it has been studied since 1949 when two important works were published, establishing a sequence of seven styles of rock painting, In the 1980s the classification was simplified to three major groupings – engravings from Patagonian hunters, painted art of the ancient hunters of Central and Southern Patagonia, and a geometric style, thought to be from more recent hunters in Northern Patagonia. It is an indication of the difficulties facing researchers in this field that nevertheless, the ancient art of the region is still considered to be little known and poorly understood.
Early Peruvian explorers of the eighteenth and nineteenth century – who came with names like Huchinson, Middendorf, Raimondi, Desjardins, Hiram Bingham, Squiers and Wiener – mentioned archaeological sites including rock art and sometimes sketched what they found. Those who came after them, in the second half of the twentieth century, often had either little awareness of what had been published elsewhere in the world, or, heading of in the other direction, were keen to seek parallels with the great cave art of Lascaux in France or Altamira in Spain.
For painted art, Jean Guffroy provided the first definition of an “Andean Tradition” of naturalistic art which extended across the highlands of Southern Peru from the border with Chile and Bolivia. In the Central Andes, he identified one semi-naturalistic style – distended bodies, long thin necks and tiny heads – concentrated directly East of present day Lima, in the departments of Junin and Pasco, at heights around 4000 metres above sea level. A second naturalistic style he considered to be intermediate between the southern rock art of Argentina and Patagonia, and the later Central semi-naturalism. The initial age of these paintings high in the Andes is put in the early Holocene some 8,000 years ago, where they show hunting scenes, up to 6000 years before the present, where they appear to show scenes moving towards domestication. But it is thought that the artwork continued, just as the rearing of alpaca and llama continued, towards the time of the Spanish invasion.
What was the function of rock art? Jean Guffroy has undertaken one of the most thorough analyses of Andean rock art, yet his tentative conclusion to El Arte Rupestre de Antiguo Peru is this: “the question of meaning is made all the more difficult because of our limited understanding, the few sites recorded in such a vast territory, the imprecise data and limited published iconography. Whilst we wait for new data, we will content ourselves with presenting alternative hypotheses based on the artistic content, the archaeological context and ethnographic comparisons.”
For a time then there may have been men hunting mammoth and fleeing sabre-toothed tiger, but the Andean Art almost entirely shows camelids, llama and guanaco, being hunted and also, perhaps a sign of the first stages of domestication, heavily pregnant and ready to give birth.
Its earliest manifestations may be due to the first hunters in the Andes, but later works, possibly at the same or nearby sites, could have been produced in parallel with the culture of Caral, 5000 years ago, whose excavated complex of stone pyramids round a central plaza and a lone standing stone 20 kilometres from the coast is just one of up to 20 contemporaneous sites extending up the Supe valley. Or at the same time as Chavin, 2000 to 3000 years ago, whose signature ritual site at Chavin de Huantar, over 3000 metres high in the Northern Andes, features a giant scultured pillar of stone, the Lanzon, positioned beneath a skylight in a maze of underground tunnels, themselves constructed inside a colonnaded temple with a wide stone staircase, with sculptured heads representing a shamanistic transformation from man to jaguar. And the sites themselves may have continuing significance. The paintings in red and black of pregnant llamas on the face of a rock shelter at Cuchimachay, some of them over a metre long, are sited on the ritual path still used today in pilgrimage to the Mountain god Paria Caca, the mountain deity for several of the valleys on the Central coast whose river banks and rocky hillsides shelter occasional petroglyphs.
Ceramics, and in the dry coastal deserts of South America textiles too, can be excavated carefully in a place and at a depth that give them an archaeological context. They are found in stratified locations, that can be analysed. Petroglyphs on the other hand are generally not linked with any associated archaeology, can not be dated, and can not be related to a particular period or culture.
In Peru, much of the ceramics and textiles in museums have little known context, as they have been dug up by huaqueros, tomb raiders, and sold to private collectors. Even if we know where they were found, that is not necessarily where they originated. We have to be careful with the identification of such materials with cultures or periods.
Ceramics, when excavated, are located in space and sometimes, approximately, in time. Much of Peru’s inherited collections of found objects are only vaguely located in either space or time. Petroglyphs, on the other hand are absolutely precisely located in space, though not in time.
In this sense petroglyphs can give us some indication of what was happening in this place, on the fertile banks of the river flowing down from the highlands to the coast, next to the llama trail hugging the mountainside, with a view to this or that great mountain. But when – that is often, in fact usually, unknown.
Peru has a narrow coastal plain facing the Pacific, behind which the Andes rise steeply to 3 or 4000 metres. Rivers flow down the Andes westwards to the Sea, so that the coast of Peru is punctuated by some 32 rivers. Once over the Andean passes there is a broad area of highlands and mountains punctuated by rivers which flow, by contrast North and then East, into the Amazon basin. The effect is as if you rucked up a blanket, producing one ridge facing you, and a series of parallel ridges. And this is essentially what has happened. The blanket is a platelet of rock which is being pushed up by collision with another plate, The rucking takes place the length of the Americas, leading to the San Andreas Fault in California, the volcanoes of Mexico and Guatemala, and the Rocky Mountains in Northern USA up to Canada.
There is a curious geographical division in ancient outdoor art in Peru. Painted art, in caves and rocky shelters, is largely found in the Northern, Central and Southern Highlands, above 3000 metres. Jean Guffroy´s 1999 work Rock Art of Ancient Peru maps 16 major sites or areas of cave paintings in the Highlands, by rivers which descend parallel to the coast and then turn east and flow through the Amazon to the Atlantic. There are just two coastal sites, both close to Lima, with a few painted figures in rocky shelters and at the foot of cliffs.
On the other hand engraved art, petroglyphs, and other art drawn in the landscape, such as geoglyphs, is primarily located between the coast and the highlands. In fact virtually every river valley leading down to the Pacific coast has petroglyph sites, not on the coast nor yet in the highlands, but in between, typically 40 kilometres from the ocean, or at a height of 1000 metres.
One theory has linked the position of the sites to highly prized areas of coca cultivation – linked in turn to a particular height above sea level, a combination of humidity and temperature appropriate for growing the coca bush.
The oldest creations in Peru seem to be painted, whilst the outdoor engravings appear to be more recent. Petroglyphs were largely scratched, engraved, or ground into the surface of rocks in the open air, whilst the paintings are in enclosed spaces. Only in a few cases are both types of artwork present in the same space.
And yet there are more recent paintings and at times the two traditions may be contemporary. There is perhaps some unity to the paintings of the highlands in caves and rock shelters, but the petroglyphs have a great deal more diversity. They vary from a single stone engraved with a simple line, to groups of hundreds of stones covered with figures. There is a vast range of styles, different locations in time and space, and cultural contexts running from figures attributed to hunter-gathers, to farmers and herders, and even, as we shall see, in the case of the Piedras de Mala, to weavers, metal workers and deep sea fishermen.
Antonio Nunez Jimenez, a pioneeer in the recording of rock engraving in Peru, recorded 72 sites across the country, most of them close to the coast. In 1986 he completed an awesome compilation, stone by stone, panel by panel, of all these sites, whilst he was Cuba´s Cultural Ambassador to Peru. The work was published in four volumes, moving from the North of Peru to the South, and remains today the best or only record of many sites. For Mala and no doubt elsewhere, he records art that is now lost to weathering and fragmentation of the rock surface.
An inventory made by the INC, the National Institute of Culture, in 1986, registered 97 sites with painting and 137 sites with petroglyphs, across all areas of the country.
By 2007, in the introduction to his photographic overview “Images and Scenery of Peruvian Rock Art”, Guffroy was talking of 400 sites of rock painting and 400 more sites of engraved stones. But the overall picture is unchanged – painting in the highlands, showing hunting and rearing of camelids, and engraving in the Western coastal valleys. Llusqhani in Puno is an exception, where hunting scenes similar to those seen in 6000-8000 year old cave paintings are engraved.
The petroglyphs are thought to have developed from around 5000 years ago, in association with other art of the central and Northern coast of Peru. Their appearance parallels the evolution of an agrarian society – settled farming, in contrast with the hunter-gathering and nomadic pastoralism, the guanaco hunting and the llama and alpaca herding, of the highlands, and its associated cave painting.
Three traditions have been identified in Peru, with Tradition A being the oldest, focused around the area from Sechin to Jequetepeque on the northern coast. The Jequetepeque valley is the present day route up to Cajamarca and the Northern Highlands.
Tradition B from Jequetepeque down to Pisco and Ica, includes the Tradition A area, but represent a much more recent style of petroglyphs, dating from a little over 2000 years BCE, and continuing up to the Spanish invasion.
Sechin and Lima are positioned at similar distances down this area from North to South, so it can be imagined as three equal parts from Jequetepeque to Sechin, Sechin to Lima, and Lima to Pisco. The petroglyphs of Mala and Cañete lie in the centre of the third, southernmost part of Tradition B.
In the South, from Ica down to Northern Chile, a third style is identified. Tradition C is more recent still, considered to date from 600 AD in the Northern part of the area and from 1000 AD in the Southern part, up to the Spanish conquest.
One site, for example at Huancor, is thoght to include work from 2500 years ago, up to the present. Others may span 1000 years, whilst Huacaringa is considered to include work from over 4000 years BCE up to just 1400 years ago. In these cases, the art is likely to be from different people and for different purposes, even if the Tradition, the linking cosmovision, has some continuity.
The majority of sites contain a small number, up to ten large engraved blocks, visible from a distance. There are also several containing dozens of stones, particularly the older sites.
There are in addition, a dozen or so sites with hundreds of petroglyphs. The accumulation of a large number of engraved figures suggest that they site has been used repeatedly – but not necessarily continuously – over a long period of time.
In many sites there are signs that the art was done at different times – changes in style and iconography, different patina or surface wear, figures superimposed on others, and even later mutilation of earlier figures.
The topography of sites, their position in the landscape, also varies. Nevertheless there are some commonalities. Most sites for example, throughout Peru and throughout the three traditions, are sites on level ground, with stones distributed over an area. It is easy to walk amongst the stones touching or looking at the figures. It would be possible for a gathering of hundreds of people to visit the site together.
Several sites are more theatrical – the rocks are on a slope, or placed as a cascade, and the viewer appears to enter from below, and be looking upwards, more like a theatre – with the visitor on the stage, and the terraces around him peopled with symbols.
In the South, there are petroglyphs on the rocky slopes of ravines, difficult to view from the valley bottom. The artists probably needed help to reach the dangerously high rocks. At these places there are also burials in circular tombs.
The rocks are what remain in a space which most likely had a broader significance, an area to carry out ritual activities – pilgrimage, singing and dancing, worshipping, offerings, drinking, games and competitions. We can get some idea of what these might be from modern Andean festivals, from myths and traditions, and from the written records of early colonists. The sites may be near rivers, mines, salt water springs, standing stones or geoglyphs.
The earliest figures tend to be few and isolated, occuping the central part of a front panel. Man-feline figures, and the Andean trilogy of snake, birds, and puma (or jaguar), representing three levels of the world, are common. A particular motif, which is seen in Chavin and Cupisnique ceramics and sculpture, is a complexly drawn human feline face – big teeth, a single eye set off-centre, a nostril, and streaming hair.
In the middle period, from 2300 to 1400 years BCE, there are large panels covered in small figures linked by lines, often so dense that the figures are hard to discern within the lines, like a visual puzzle. There are also abstract symbols, which we might see as suns, wheels, crosses and stars, and a variety of animals, with some man-animal figures.
Later, from 1400 BCE to 500 BCE, to the Spanish invasion, there are again felines, birds of prey and serpents, whilst in the southern area there are more human figures shepherding camelids, and, at Toro Muerto, a very specific style full of movement with highly stylized human dancers surrounded by vertical stripes and zigzags.
One or two rocks with circular depressions are commonly found associated with sites, as well as in isolation. Archaeologists taks of “cups”, broad and shallow, “bowls”, deeper than their diameter, and “cupules” a few cm wide.
At Checta, there are three rocks richly covered in such depressions, but they are set to one side of the hundreds of other boulders featuring engraved plants, animals and symbols, they are made on larger rocks with a harder, darker finish. They suggest an evolution of a sacred site with later peoples adding their own contributions. This is common throughout the country, where sacred sites such as ancient platform mounds feature burials from later cultures, over thousands of years.
The cupule and circular depressions have been variously interpreted as counting systems, star maps, sacrificial altars, where the blood pours over the stone and fills the cups or flows down grooves, and mirrors, where, filled with water, they allow observations of the starry sky.
Visitors to Machu Picchu will be shown two such bowls, finely carved from granite bedrock set in the floor of the so-called Acllahuasi, temple of the women. At one time they were described as grinding mortars and the building was a kitchen, now they are star mirrors and the setting is an astronomical observatory.
The earliest sites, from 3000 BCE, with isolated stones and single motifs, can be seen as sacred sites where the rock, as a representation of the depicted figure, is the object of veneration. The act of engraving appears to be carefully done by an artist who may also be an accomplished potter or weaver. The flat stones with circular depressions, related to cosmology, divination or sacrifice, are assumed to date from the same period.
Later traditions, with many engravings, often crowded on one stone, and the repetition of simple signs such as lines, circles and crosses, suggest many people being involved, some working quickly and simply and without much skill. These speak more of a communal activity.
Within the Central Coast tradition, archaeologists identify isolated stones over great areas that could be marking territory. Further south, sites are more theatrical and can be seen from a distance. These could be ritual sites for participation of a large crowd.
Then in Southern Peru, the third tradition C is related to trade routes, from the coast to the Sierra, and to funeral practices.
We shall see whether this overview of Peruvian art can cast any light on the particular work at Mala, or indeed whether the Rio Mala petroglyphs can offer any insight into petroglyphs elsewhere in Peru.
Illustrations from top: a boulder at Checta with stars, humans and animals – the latter two infrequent at the site; the path up the hillside towards the Checta stones, passing an “entrance” ahead to the left; the rectangle of stones, several of them with engravings, seen to the side of the path on the previous image, this time looking back down towards the valley; rock shelter in Quebrada Verde, near Pachacamac, Lima, and the view looking out from within; painted art on the back of a hollow beneath a boulder higher up the hillside; a pile of bones in a looted cemetery at the higher up the same valley.
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