In this chapter, I present a case study of the Aguada culture of the Andean region of northern Argentina, drawing on two decades of research in the Ambato Valley, Catamarca Province (Figure 4.1). I start with a synthesis of Aguada culture and sketch its ontology on the basis of different contexts and objects. Subsequently, I identify elements of the culture that enable an ontological analysis and which approximate perspectivism, in particular plastic expressions in various media, contextual associations and related practices involved. Two specific themes are analysed: the relationship of humans with, first, domestic and wild animals and, second, a particular type of pottery characteristic of Aguada societies, known as Ambato negro grabado or Ambato Black Engraved pottery. The modes of relationship are demonstrated to be coherent with perspectivist ontology in the way they bring into play constructions of otherness, ways of understanding the world and the construction of persons.
Figure 4.1 Relative location of the Ambato Valley (solid line) and the dispersion area of the Aguada Culture (dotted line).
The Culture of La Aguada
From the third to eleventh or twelve centuries ad (depending on region), in an extensive area spanning three provinces of north-west Argentina, the presence of groups known collectively as the ‘Aguada Culture’ have been identified (Reference Callegari, Campos, Gonaldi and RaviñaCallegari, Campos, Gonaldi and Raviña 2000; Reference GonzálezGonzález 1961–1964, Reference González1998; Reference GordilloGordillo 1994, Reference Gordillo2018; Reference HerediaHeredia 1998; Reference KriscautzkyKriscautzky 2000; Reference Kriscautzky and TogoKriscautzky and Togo 2000; Reference ManasseManasse 2000; Reference Pérez and HerediaPérez and Heredia 1987; Reference SempéSempé 1998; among others). Research dating back more than a century has led to these societies being characterized as one of the key archaeological cultures of the Andean region of Argentina. Their historical development and a sequence of changes towards increasing complexity and differentiated forms of social organization have been established, as well as local manifestations in this geographically vast region (Reference Laguens, Gnecco and LangebaeckLaguens 2006, 2008). The earliest appearance of the La Aguada phenomenon to date has been recorded in the Ambato Valley by radiocarbon between 214 and 429 ad (Reference Bonnin, Laguens and de Filosofía y HumanidadesBonnin and Laguens 1997: 82), though the culture reached its maximum expansion between ad 500 and 1000 and covered an extensive territory in three Andean provinces of Argentina (Figure 4.1). Its most distinctive element has always been its pottery, of excellent craftsmanship and quality. The most characteristic ceramics are black with fine incisions (Figure 4.2) and include an iconographic repertoire centred on what Reference González and BensonA. González (1972) named the ‘feline complex’ – representations of personages with Andean roots, such as the figure with two sceptres or empty hands, the sacrificer, an anthropo-feline figure, the prominent nose figure and ophidian-feline figures (Reference GonzálezGonzález 1998: 317). The same images are also found on other ceramics, bone artefacts, baskets, textiles and metal. Notably, the Aguada achieved an important level of bronze metallurgy (Reference GonzálezGonzález 1998: 95; Reference GonzálezGonzález 2002), manufacturing tools, ceremonial axes, plates and pectorals using the lost-wax technique (Figure 4.14).
Figure 4.2 Aguada Black Engraved ceramics from Ambato. (a) Three-body pitcher, MAAQ; (b) ñandú modelled vase, ARC; (c) and (d) bowls or pucos, ARC; (e) vase or kero, MAAQ; (f) and (g) small vessels, MAUNC (Photos: Paloma Laguens); (g) batrachian modelled vase, MAAQ
An ancient Andean religious tradition can be recognized in all Aguada iconography. Two important elements stand out: the cult of ancestors and the use of hallucinogens (Reference GonzálezGonzález 1992, Reference González1998; Reference Pérez GollánPérez Gollán 1991, Reference Pérez Gollán1994, Reference Pérez Gollán1998). In Aguada, religion took on a degree of public display previously unknown in the region. Typical Andean U-shaped ceremonial centres were built, with large plazas and stepped mounds (Reference GordilloGordillo 1994; Reference Pérez and HerediaPérez and Heredia 1987; Reference GonzálezGonzález 1998). The connections between Aguada and Andean societies had been pointed out early on (Reference GonzálezGonzález 1961–1964; Reference UhleUhle 1912), for cultures of both the Formative and the Middle Horizon – such as the remarkable iconographic similarities with the Altiplano Pucara, Chiripa and Yayamama styles and the Recuay of the Sierra, as well as the conceptual similarities with the ideologies of Chavín, Paracas and, fundamentally, Tiwanaku (Reference GonzálezGonzález 1998: 268). Although no direct relationship was possible (Reference Laguens and Pérez GollánLaguens and Pérez Gollán 2000: 83), Aguada and Tiwanaku elements converge in San Pedro de Atacama, northern Chile, in an area of interaction of great importance at that point in the South Andes. Further north, in the Moquegua Valley of Peru, an Aguada-style copper plate was found in Wari contexts at the Cerro Baúl site (Reference Moseley, Nash and WilliamsMoseley, Nash, Williams et al. 2005).
Aguada at Ambato
Recent research has focused on several aspects of Aguada societies in the Ambato Valley, principally how material culture and other forms of social resources were structured to maintain and reproduce a heterogeneous organization for five centuries until Aguada collapsed in the Ambato Valley around ad 1000 and dissolved locally as a social and political unit (Reference Laguens, Gnecco and LangebaekLaguens 2014b). Many changes occurred around ad 500 that promoted a new way of life in the valley (Reference LaguensLaguens 2005a), with a marked increase in population density and a shift of ceremonial activities from the domestic to the public sphere, along with a new communal ritualism associated with the construction of ceremonial centres. Furthermore, new hydraulic engineering systems and agricultural terraces expanded the productive area on both sides of the Ambato Valley, resulting in a greater reliance on agricultural products and the introduction of new maize varieties, potato cultivation and llama breeding in maize fields rather than in open pastures. These innovative practices enabled the people of Ambato to achieve unprecedented levels of agricultural production and surplus relative to other cultures of north-western Argentina.
Aguada disappeared as a society in the eleventh century. Sites were burned and abandoned abruptly, probably as a result of a serious crisis, with no traces of subsequent significant occupations (Reference Marconetto, Laguens, Rojas-Mora and BelmarMarconetto and Laguens 2018). Scattered inhabitants survived at a few sites after the abandonment of the valley, restricted to unburned areas and with a notable decrease in the diversity of material culture. For example, broken pottery was recycled as if it were a scarce resource. Aguada as a culture, in the sense of a shared ideology and way of life, is also present in the surrounding valleys in local forms that were contemporary with Ambato and endured there for several more centuries (Reference Kriscautzky and TogoKriscautzky and Togo 2000). The valley was only reoccupied in the fifteenth century by the Incas and their allies, groups linked to the lowlands of the region east of Ambato.
Pottery in Ambato
One of the characteristic and identifying elements of Aguada in Ambato is its pottery. According to studies of labour investment (Reference Fabra and MartinFabra 2005, Reference Fabra2007) and standardization (Reference Laguens and JuezLaguens and Juez 2001), all ceramic production is organized around specialist, though probably part-time, potters. In all Aguada crafts, not just pottery, there is a strong symbolic charge linking the craft to other spheres of society and to other regions. They are also linked, I argue, by a common ontology represented by a central figure with feline characteristics, whether a jaguar, a human with jaguar attire or both simultaneously. A common medium for these iconographic manifestations is the Aguada Black Engraved ceramic style, a reduction-fired thin-walled pottery made of an extremely homogeneous paste. The surface is burnished and decorated with incised motifs (Figure 4.2). The repertoire of forms is varied, since the same style was used to make a range of pieces that may have been serving vessels or tableware, as well as anthropomorphic and zoomorphic modelled vessels and portrait vases and jars. The serving ware has two basic forms – bowls (pucos) and triple-bodied pitchers (Figure 4.3). Given the regularities in form and proportions, these pieces must have been manufactured following a fixed canon, and in the particular case of the bowls, there are surprising regularities in terms of size, wall thickness, height, mouth and base diameter, and body and rim proportion, all standardized dimensions (Reference Laguens and JuezLaguens and Juez 2001). The shape of the pitchers is also uniform, though with greater freedom and variation in size. Mass spectrometry analysis of the pastes of these pieces shows a compact group with a great deal of similarity in clay composition, pointing to the preponderance of a single clay source (Giesso, Laguens, Bertolino, Boulanger and Glascock 2016). Other less frequent forms are modelled portrait vessels, both of humans and animals (camelids, batrachians and birds), and vessels of complete humans in seated positions. Fine lines are incised on the fresh paste, or occasionally when it is leather-hard, delimiting highly naturalistic figures and marking out areas of contrast through the scratching or flattening of interior spaces. At other times, the same techniques were used but in negative, enhancing the figure through the treatment of the background (and forcing a change of perspective to understand them). Most images are of felines, humans, humans with feline masks, humans with shields and weapons in their hands, felines with human heads or limbs (Figure 4.5) and in smaller number other animals such as lizards, parrots and birds. Another series of motifs is known as ‘draconiform’ (draconiforme) in reference to the characteristics of the figures, which are usually depicted in negative with large-toothed jaws, protrusions or hooks on their upper jaws and prominent round eyes. Draconiform figures are reminiscent of European dragons, from the serpentiform bodies, claws, long tails and tongues (which often morph into other heads), from which these same figures sprout again, forming complex motifs in constant growth (Figures 4.4 and 4.5).
Figure 4.3 Serving vessels of Aguada Black Engraved style. Column on left: Type B three-body pitchers. Column on right: bowls or pucos. (a) and (b) MNBA; (c) to (h) ARC
Figure 4.4 Draconiformes or draconian motifs of Aguada Black Engraved pottery
Figure 4.5 Aguada Black Engraved pottery with draconian motifs made in negative: the engraved background is used to highlight the figure on it
Ambato Tricolour (Figure 4.6, see also Figure 5.2) is another characteristic style that accompanies Ambato Black Engraved. The former occurs only as large vessels with rough, matte-finished thick walls and geometric, anthropomorphic or draconiform painted motifs on their bodies. Though called ‘tricolour’, this is more for the effect of the black and white painting that highlights the red background of the surface than for the use of red as a third colour (which, when present, is more brown than red) (Reference Bertolino, Gastaldi, Zimmermann and LaguensBertolino, Gastaldi, Zimmermann and Laguens 2016). The necks of the anthropomorphic pieces are adorned with clay appendages modelling facial features such as ears, noses and mouths. The vessels were mainly used for the storage of grains, wild fruit and liquids and, particularly, for the processing of chicha (corn beer). Painting on a matte finish was also used in the manufacture of pipes, sometimes by fugitive paint application. Pipes also present modelled clay appendages of animal and human features (Figure 4.7). Finally, there is a smaller number of generally small modelled pieces with a polished red finish, such as llamas in a sacrificial position with legs tied.
Figure 4.6 Tricoloured vessels from Ambato Valley
Figure 4.7 Aguada-style ceramic pipes. (a) With human face modelling on the bowl, MNBA; (b) with hybrid feline and bird modelling on the bowl, Reference GonzálezGonzález 1998; (c) pipe bowl with painted feline motifs and feline head modelling, MAUNC (Photo: Paloma Laguens); (d) pipe with a human face modelled on the bowl and the stem representing a feline, Reference GonzálezGonzález 1998
In summary, there are two basic predominant technological forms: incised and burnished reduction-fired black ceramics (in a variety of types) and oxidation-fired ceramics finished with matte paint and modelled appendages (the tricolour vessels and pipes, which were produced in a far greater range of forms). These varieties of pottery styles – together with their contexts and other archaeological materials – are the entry point to the ontology of the Ambato people.
The Archaeological Contexts and the Ontology of Aguada in Ambato
Chapter 2 noted that perspectivist ontology is consistent with the local archaeological record of the Aguada at Ambato and thus presents interpretative possibilities based on the analysis of contexts and archaeological materials from the valley. When analysing the archaeological contexts of different sites, one of the aspects that first caught my attention was the interchangeability between humans and camelids and their representation on aesthetically charged material. Ritual contexts were found that included human skeletal remains and, in homologous contexts, animal remains (Reference JuezJuez 1991). Furthermore, both in houses and ceremonial centres it is common to find remains of fragmented, chopped-up and burned human bodies distributed on the floors of houses, in rubbish dumps and in the stepped mounds of the public plazas. Such finds have been interpreted as the remains of sacrificial practices, supported by iconography in which people were portrayed carrying other people dressed as felines in a horizontal position, as if dead (Figure 4.8). A table or flat platform was also uncovered on top of one of the stepped mounds in front of the public plaza at the Iglesia de los Indios ceremonial centre site, on and around which butchered and charred human bones were found (Reference GonzálezGonzález 1998). Other sites have turned up human vertebrae and skulls exhibiting cut marks made with sharp instruments, indicative of defleshing. Human bone fragments, including phalanges, are found in residential contexts, serving as ‘relics’ of some kind (Reference Cruz, Costa and LlagosteraCruz 2006). They also occur in domestic mounds that functioned as rubbish dumps, which, given their contents, were also special places or monuments that sedimented local memories and histories (Reference GastaldiGastaldi 2010).
Figure 4.8 Depiction of one person carrying another. The carried person has been interpreted as possibly dead or on the way to sacrifice
I focus here on two cases in which human bones were found with fragments of camelid bones (llamas or guanacos) and anthropomorphic Ambato Tricolour ceramic vessels (Reference JuezJuez 1991). One of these finds is particularly suggestive because there is concordance between the number of people, animals and vessels present. Based on the minimum number of individuals and vessel fragments, there are seven of each.Footnote 1 Human and camelid sacrifices are also found as deposits in the foundations of the walls of dwellings. Inside a single enclosure at the Piedras Blancas site, the complete skeleton of a child no more than two years old was found buried at the base of a wall facing east. The infant’s occipital bone was resting on a ceramic pot. A long bone splinter was found pierced through his neck, and offerings formed an arc around the small body, consisting of the bones of the last phalanx of a rhea leg (ñandú, Rhea americana), a small bronze ring, clay figurines of camelids and a spatula and punch made of camelid bone, along with other human and animal skeletal remains and ceramic fragments scattered around the vicinity. In the same enclosure but in an earlier occupation level and at the base of a different wall, a camelid skull was found surrounded by charred corn-kernel offerings, mirroring the disposition of the infant burial. In the occupation floor corresponding to the child’s burial, a juvenile camelid was uncovered in the foundations of a circular clay combustion structure dedicated to the melting down of bronze used for the laminate production of artefacts. The sacrifice of a camelid and its burial linked to an activity like metallurgy, as full of meaning (and soul and life; see Reference FalchettiFalchetti 2018; Reference Lechtman, Lechtman and SoldiLechtman 1981) as it is in the Andean world, is surely significant.Footnote 2 Something of great importance was offered – such as a child – in the foundations of a house, itself full of souls and life. In the foundations of the western perimeter wall, which is of large quartz blocks and give the site its name (‘white stones’), a complete skeleton of a young camelid was found, although in this case without offerings. In another of the valley’s ceremonial centres, Iglesia de los Indios, a human–animal association was discovered in a funerary context. An adult male with a bronze plaque or pectoral was buried inside an enclosure, above which was found the sacrificed remains of an adult camelid (Reference GordilloGordillo 2009). It is not possible to tell if these are domestic or wild camelids (llamas or guanacos), given the anatomical similarities between the two species and their young age (though in native Aymara terms, such a distinction does not hold (see Chapter 2)). It is also interesting that the camelids in the foundation deposits were extracted very early from their herd – prior to their socialization, just like the children.
These recurring associations between camelid and human remain s in different contexts, where both species receive equal treatment in the face of death, are suggestive of an identification between both species and the possibility of their reciprocal interchangeability in other contexts.Footnote 3 Cave paintings show scenes of coitus between men and llamas, supporting a possible homology (Figure 4.9a). Coitus with camelids is a common theme in the Andes, past and past (Reference Gero, Haaland, Oestigaard, Anfinset and SaetersdalGero 2004; Reference Hill, Whelehan and BolinHill 2015). At the site of La Candelaria, a cave with Aguada-style cave paintings and a place of ritual or shamanic practices (Reference LlamazaresLlamazares 1999), well hidden in the yungas, the wet, forested montane east of the Andes, a scene depicts male figures framed between two huge rampant felines. One feline is on a leash in a line of men with masks and rattles, dancing or jumping in a state of sexual excitement. It is accompanied by two staff-wielding shamans or lords and a pair of musicians who face each other over a large drum, all painted in yellowish-white (Figure 4.9) (Reference GudemosGudemos 2003; Reference LlamazaresLlamazares 2005). Further scenes include flocks of rhea (ñandú, the American ostrich) with a human shepherd and other, separate human figures. Additionally, there is almost zero material content in the excavated strata, as if the cave had never been used for prolonged events. The presence of a small mortar dug in the bedrock, which is usually interpreted as having been used to grind herbs – in this particular case, cebil seeds (Anadenanthera sp.), a potent hallucinogen of great importance used throughout South America and endemic to this part of the yungas. Likewise, chemical analysis of the paintings showed that alkaloid substances were used in their preparation (from cebil and the wachuma cactus, Trichocereus terschekii) (Reference Arado, Llamazares and LaguensArado, Llamazares, Laguens et al. 2000), components that do not affect the quality and plastic properties of the painting but do impact its shamanic and ritual meaning. Among these scenes, a painting of men copulating with llamas, subduing them by forcing them to kneel, stands out. Although the latter is somewhat distant from the dancing scene, there is no superposition of images, and the unity of style throughout the cave points to near-contemporary occupations or at least strong continuity.Footnote 4 The fact that this image of the sexual union of humans with camelids was painted in this ritual context highlights the importance and meaning that this practice must have had.
(a) Copulation between human and llama;
(b) drawing detailing the grazing of a group of Rhea sp. or ñandú, found in the middle part of the scene below; based on Reference GudemosGudemos 1994;
(c) depicting a series of male dancers
Figure 4.9 Aguada-style cave paintings in the La Candelaria cave.
Humans and camelids are treated in a symmetrical and mutually replaceable manner, as if they were the same kind of entity; entities that are different in their exteriority, in their bodies, but apparently not in their ontological status. They are interchangeable as the terms of a single ‘equation’, as is seen by the identical treatment of their remains and their homologous dispositions in comparable situations.
This same equivalent treatment of camelids and humans is found in another completely different practice, related to how the camelid herds are fed. Towards the end of the Aguada occupation in Ambato, herds were fed almost exclusively on maize. In studies of agricultural systems (Reference FigueroaFigueroa 2013; Reference Figueroa, Dantas and LaguensFigueroa, Dantas and Laguens 2010) and herd-management practices in the valley (Reference Dantas, Izeta and Mengoni GoñalonsDantas 2013; Reference Dantas and KnudsonDantas and Knudson 2016; Reference Dantas and FigueroaDantas and Figueroa 2018), we found that staple food production was organized in a single, agro-pastoral system, which combined both techniques of food production in a single annual cycle and in the same physical spaces on the slopes of the valley. Systems of cultivated terraces and corrals were also present in the vicinity (Reference Dantas, Figueroa and LaguensDantas, Figueroa and Laguens 2014; Reference Laguens, Figueroa and DantasLaguens, Figuero and Dantas 2013). Stable isotope analysis of δ13C and δ15N from camelid bones revealed that a high proportion of C4 plants was consumed (Reference Izeta, Laguens, Marconetto and ScattolinIzeta, Laguens, Marconetto and Scattolin 2009), suggesting llamas were fed with maize, the only known forage resource with isotopic values consistent with the results (Reference Falabella, Planella, Aspillaga, Sanhueza and TykotFalabella, Planella, Aspillaga, Sanheuza and Tykot 2007; Reference Fernández and PanarelloFernández and Panarello 1999; Reference Figueroa, Dantas and LaguensFigueroa, Dantas and Laguens 2010).Footnote 5 The llamas had to have been feeding on maize much of the year since, given the high C4 concentrations, maize intake could not have been limited to the grazing of fallow fields after harvest. Additional grain must have been fed to them; a practice found elsewhere in the Peruvian Andes at different time periods (Reference BonaviaBonavia 2013; Reference Finucane, Agurto and IsbellFinucane, Agurto and Isbell 2006). Beyond possible economic explanations, such as the production of a surplus or the necessity of feeding grain to llamas in the face of an environmental or productive crisis, as happens towards the end of the occupation (Reference LindskougLindskoug 2016; Reference MarconettoMarconetto 2010; Reference Marconetto, Laguens, Rojas-Mora and BelmarMarconetto and Laguens 2018), the fact is that these animals were being raised on maize, the quintessential human food in the Andes in pre-Hispanic times.Footnote 6 Not only was maize the paradigmatic food, loaded with many symbolic meanings and with political and economic importance, but it was also the raw material for chicha, a product that played an important role in sociality, ceremonies and displays of power and generosity. As Reference FinucaneFinuncane (2007: 2122) argues, ‘rather than serving merely as a ceremonial cereal or one component of a diversified economy, maize was the stuff of life’. That is, llamas and humans not only received the same treatment in death and ritual, but also during their lifetimes in relation to food. Llamas are other-humans, sharing the same food, essential for human nourishment and life.Footnote 7
The Objects
The same interchangeability of humans and other animals is recorded on objects that illustrate animal species and humans. These objects are principally ceramic, though there are some made from bone, metal and wood. Images occur on pottery pieces such as bowls and pots and as modelled animal parts or complete humans on portrait vases and other vessels in the Aguada Black Engraved style. In comparison to pre-Aguada contexts, completely different practices are involved, ranging from the manufacture of the objects to practices carried out in domestic and everyday spaces – such as rubbish dumps – where the pottery pieces are commonly found (although provenance is unknown for many objects as they are from private collections or museums).
Biomorphic modelling – which encompasses zoo-, phyto- and anthropomorphic forms – is a common practice in pre-ad 1000 societies of north-west Argentina and declines steeply in popularity subsequently. The Aguada culture partakes in this tradition. There are three forms of biomorphic modelling in Ambato: complete body pieces, sphinx and portrait vases (of both humans and animals), and modelled human hands or feet in the place of handles. All are made from either the typical Ambato Black Engraved or, in a few cases, polished red ware. Some modelled pieces are seated human figures, possibly portraying meditating shamans due to their posture and attire (Reference Stone-MillerStone-Miller 2004) – their faces, above all, are naturalistic and detailed, but less so the rest of their bodies.
The lack of detail on arms and legs contrasts with the emphasis placed on detailing body ornaments and tattoos or skin paintings, mainly on the face, of jaguar motifs. One example has a bat-head headdress (Figure 4.10). Complete body animals also feature, including camelids, batrachians and birds. The animals are either moving (e.g., the birds), static (e.g., the batrachians) or lying down (e.g., the camelids); all are executed in a naturalistic manner (Figure 4.2b, h). The zoomorphs also emphasize the details of the drawings on the skin; their surface decoration consists of incised motifs of felines – such as jaguar spots, heads and legs – or fantastic motifs of the draconiform type, identical in technique and style to those on the human heads.
Figure 4.10 Modelled pieces of seated complete humans. (a) Human with a cephalic headdress in the form of a vampire bat, MNH, Inv Nr 4642 (Photos: Ana Forlano); (b) human with a cephalic headdress in the form of a vampire bat (Drawing: Mario Simpson, based on Reference GonzálezGonzález 1998; (c) seated human wearing a necklace and feline motifs on the face, MLP (Drawing: Mario Simpson), based on Reference GonzálezGonzález 1998; (d) seated human with anthopomorphic figures on the body and feline motifs on the face, MNBA
The second type consists of sphinx and portrait vases of humans that carefully illustrate details of the face, as if identifying a particular person. The engravings of feline motifs in the form of skin painting or tattoos again stand out (Figure 4.11). According to Reference GonzálezGonzález (1998: 209), based on their closed eyes, these represent the severed heads of sacrificed subjects. The severing of heads is a widespread Andean practice – the well-known ‘trophy heads’ – also illustrated in several ceramic scenes. Heads are significant in multiple ways, from political to communal, and are linked to numerous ontologically predatory practices (Reference ArnoldArnold 2006; Reference Arnold and HarstorfArnold and Hastorf 2008). There are cases of portrait vessels made in a different ceramic style, modelled and painted in red, on which hairstyles and faces are highlighted, sometimes including facial paintings with feline motifs, which may also represent specific people. Of greatest interest here is that the use of portrait vases was not limited to depictions of humans; camelid heads were also modelled with the same detailed and naturalistic anatomical features – incisions are made to resemble facial paintings or tattoos of feline motifs. Once again, we find the same treatment of humans and camelids, with clear continuity between these non-humans and humans. Their attributes are indistinguishable, and they are portrayed in identical ways, perhaps because they are the same kind of entity. Could this also be a form of substitution, insofar as both species possessed a similar interiority?
Figure 4.11 Head-portrait vases of humans and animals from Ambato. (a) Human head with inverted ‘L’ nose, MAUNC (Photo: Paloma Laguens); (b) human head with feline motifs, EMB, CC BY-SA 4.0; (c) human head with the figure of a snake with a feline head on each end, based on Reference GonzálezGonzález 1998; (d) llama modelled head with feline motifs, based on Reference GonzálezGonzález 1998; (e) modelled head of an animal, possibly a deer, MNBA; (f) to (i) vessels modelled with human heads that highlight the hairstyles, ARC
Human and animal figures are modelled in the same way on other kinds of objects, including ceramic pipes for smoking tobacco and the hallucinogenic cebil and large painted vessels for the storage and processing of plant products, both found in domestic contexts. In the case of the pipes, figures are modelled on the bowls, with human or animal attributes present in relief, including eyes, noses, mouths and ears. Paws and hands are occasionally depicted on the horizontal stem (Figure 4.7). The modelled figures are complemented with paint (sometimes fugitive), forming feline motifs in red, black, white and yellow. Complete human figures with feline attributes are painted in black and white over the red background of the surface of the large Ambato Tricolour vessels, covering almost the entire body of the pieces (Figure 4.6, see also Figure 5.2). On the upper part of the vessels, a face is modelled by means of clay additions of ears, nose, eyes and mouth, as if the neck of the vessel were the head. Sometimes these are human features that are also partly fantastical, with hooked or inverted ‘L’-shaped noses, prominent cheekbones and protruding tongues. The latter is a motif repeated on ceramic pipes and Aguada Black Engraved portrait vases, suggesting a specific character is being portrayed.
In the previous case, humans and animals appeared on pieces whose morphology is analogous to what they represent: hence, the idea that they are ‘portraits’. The situation here is somewhat different, as these are morphologically identical objects. The pipes are all similar size (roughly 30 cm long for the horizontal and vertical parts of the stem, which are always at 90° to each other) on which were modelled humans, felines or vampire bats in an identical manner, perhaps also indicative of interspecies substitutions. The Ambato Tricolour vessels also respond to regular canons of shape and size, as if reproducing the same kind of body each time (see Figures 5.1 and 5.2). I return to these bodies and their mode of existence as vessel-persons later in the book.
Among other pieces of Ambato Black Engraved style are bowls and complex vessels known as ‘Type B’ (Reference Bedano, Juez and RocaBedano, Juez and Roca 1993) that are decorated with non-human or feline motifs and modelled human attributes limited to hands and feet (Figure 4.12). The latter replace the handles of the vessels, and the orientation of the soles of the feet calls to mind a person ‘belly up’. Bowls generally do not have handles. When these occur, they take the form of a closed fist with extended thumb or a cupped hand, either singly or one opposite the other. The modelling of these human appendages on the bowls is striking. Bowls only ever include naturalist or fantastic images of animals or human-felines and only exceptionally non-naturalistic images of humans, which are more common in other ceramic forms. The modelling of naturalistic hands and feet on objects that lack other human characteristics could be a figurative resource where isolated human attributes function by synecdoche (the part standing for the whole) – an arm for a body, a pair of feet for a human – without being a direct reproduction of a human or anthropomorph. Perhaps feet or hands were included on these pieces to materialize properties related to a potential interiority analogous to that of humans.
Figure 4.12 Handles shaped into human hands and feet. (a) Bowl or puco with human arm, ICC, based on Reference Fernández ChitiFernández Chiti 2021; (b) three-body pitcher with feet as lateral handles, MAAQ; (c) bowl or puco with human arm, ARC; (d) detail of hand (c)
Notably, the human figure is only infrequently found together with felines, at least in the same design field or on the same side, on other Type B pieces, which does not happen on other ceramic styles from other valleys, such as the Aguada Portezuelo ceramics (Figure 4.13c, d). Two exceptional and outstanding cases of both species appearing in the same scene feature a human leading one or two jaguars by a leash attached to their necks (Figure 4.13).Footnote 8 One can make a perspectival reading of these scenes. The fact that both figures – human and jaguar – never appear together in the same visual field is extremely suggestive. This avoidance of an encounter is necessary when faced with the possibility of an exchange of perspectives, just as in real life. Simultaneously, the possibility of metamorphosis of one figure into the other (simply by turning the piece) is left open. In contrast, when humans and jaguars do appear together, the former dominate the latter, holding them down in an attitude of total dominance, as if the jaguar no longer had the capacity to transform itself because it is in the world of humans. It is now unmistakably a jaguar, under conditions where appearances no longer deceive.
Figure 4.13 Depictions of humans with jaguars, in a situation where the felines are controlled. (a) and (b) Aguada Black Engraved style, based on Reference GorettiGoretti 2006; (c) and (d) Aguada Portezuelo style, based on Reference GonzálezGonzález 1998
The relationship between humans and animals can also be analysed in the iconographic themes on ceramics, textiles, objects of bone, metal and wood and pictographs in caves (Figure 4.14). Feline-related iconography appears in different forms and on many objects. The insistent and repeated presence of or allusion to images of the feline invades every corner of the material and daily relations of people with things in a constant reference to human–animal metamorphosis. Jaguars are presented in different forms, often as a complete body in naturalistic body poses. On other occasions, only isolated characteristics appear that allude to their presence. Synecdoche is frequently resorted to; spots and (less frequently) footprints are common. Such features are found accompanying scenes on ceramic pieces, the body of human figures, and directly on objects, such as spoons and bone spatulas. A human calotte has also been found with black circles painted on it in the manner of a jaguar’s spots. Human figures appear dressed in jaguar attire, including large masks or complex, exuberant headdresses, clothing with jaguar skin and spots, shields, earrings and pectorals with jaguar motifs (Figure 4.15).
Figure 4.14 Aguada-style iconography depicted on different surfaces. Above: cave paintings from the La Tunita site, Catamarca (Photo: Emilio Villafañez). Below: (a) llama-fibre shirt made with the batik technique, found in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile; IIAM; (b) plaque in bronze, MAUNC (Photo: Paloma Laguens); (c) stone vase, MAAQ; (d) carved bone of unknown use, MNBA; (e) spindle whorl made of bone, MAUNC (Photo: Paloma Laguens); (f) bone owl, MAUNC (Photo: Paloma Laguens); (g) plaque in copper, MAAC, ID 38025
Figure 4.15 Human figures in jaguar clothing and carrying objects with feline motifs. (a) Based on Reference GorettiGoretti 2006; (b) and (d) based on Reference Bedano, Juez and RocaBedano, Juez and Roca 1993; (c) based on Reference GonzálezGonzález 1998
Of particular interest here are the frequent illustrations of felines that, due to their body position or ambiguous attributes such as legs and feet, are difficult to resolve – are they jaguar, human or one transforming into the other (Figure 4.16)?Footnote 9 It seems likely that that these are humans transformed or in the process of transforming into non-humans, in a metamorphosis from human to animal; men become felines, and the converted felines retain attributes of men. The motif is generally found only on bowls in a field near the rim (where the decoration is always found). The feline-humans are lying down either belly up (sometimes with their eyes highlighted and their tongues out, as in a kind of hallucinatory trance) or crawling, belly down. At first glance they seem to be just felines, but close attention to their legs, feet and hands reveals that they are undoubtedly human. The need to pay careful attention recalls perspectivist descriptions of humans transformed into jaguars or jaguars transformed into people, but a transformation that is only discovered by their strange behaviour and a perhaps discreetly visible attribute of the other species, such as a tail. Furthermore, the rim figures are not mirrored exactly on each side of the bowl, but include subtle or gross differences such that two felines that appear to be the same at first glance are much less so if you look at them in detail or turn the piece round. Something similar happens with a set of images on the Type B vessels, where one side shows a jaguar in profile seated in a human position and the opposite side is the same figure in the same position but face on, where the face is that of a masked human rather than the jaguar, though with feline motifs on the cheeks. The image produces an interpretative game – or literally a change of perspectives – when turning the piece, where the jaguar turns out to be a human and vice versa (Figure 4.17).
Figure 4.16 Ambiguous figures of human-jaguars, or possibly in the process of metamorphosis. Note the human-shaped calf and foot details, ARC, based on Reference Bedano, Juez and RocaBedano, Juez and Roca 1993
Figure 4.17 Above: three-body pitcher with a feline in profile seated in a human position on one side and the exact same figure facing forward on the other, wearing a feline mask, ARC. Below: detail of the change in perspective of the head between both figures, images based on Reference Bedano, Juez and RocaBedano, Juez and Roca 1993
I have already referred to interpretations of the feline figure and its importance in the Andean world, which has been linked to the divine. In origin myths, the solar deity transfigures into a human-feline on a rock on an island on Lake Titicaca, a ‘tiger’ that becomes a man at will, known as the Punchao or Uturunku (Reference Pérez GollánPérez Gollán 1991).Footnote 10 Runa-uturunkus (man-tigers in Quechua) are also known in the Andean area of Argentina as capiangos and are the characters of a myth in which tigers and men transformed into each other by rolling on the ground praying.
‘To this day’, wrote the early anthropologist Reference Lafone QuevedoLafone Quevedo (1898: 255), ‘the lowland people of all those places believe that many of the tigers (Uturuncos) are transformed men’, a myth also found among Indigenous groups of other regions, such as the eastern lowlands of Paraguay and north-eastern Argentina (Reference AmbrosettiAmbrosetti 1917). Reference QuirogaAdán Quiroga (1929: 201–202, my translation) tells of such metamorphoses in 1897, partly based on Lafone Quevedo’s account:
in Catamarca and La Rioja [Andean provinces of north-western Argentina], the way to secure the transformation of a man into a tiger is for him to roll on a tiger’s skin [cuero] while carrying out certain ceremonies invoking the tiger. The man who does so, little by little, takes the forms of the feline, until he becomes a complete tiger, which since that moment has no other life than to hunt the enemies of the mortal transformed into a tiger, to take revenge on them.
The transformation of man into a tiger is very common throughout Calchaquí, either by means of the tiger’s skin [cuero], by smearing feline fat, or by the invocations of the dying man, to whom those who have harmed him have a long account to render.
The myth lives on in the study area, particularly in localities in the Ambato Valley, where accounts were collected in the nineteenth century and even as recently as the mid-twentieth century (Reference GonzálezGonzález 1998). For example, Reference QuirogaQuiroga (1929: 199; my translation) recounts:
It is said that in Ambato, back in 1852, there lived in La Puerta a very bad Indian, ño Rocha, who had a tiger skin. He rolled around in his skin and became an uturunco on the spot; and, once transformed into a feline, would go out to roam the ranches, hunting cattle. If he encountered a tiger, he would fight it, always defeating it. To become a Christian, the uturunco would roll in the tiger’s hide. When ño Rocha died, the priest refused to bury him in sanctified ground, and so he remained a tiger out in the fields.
‘To this day [1897]’, adds Reference QuirogaQuiroga (1929: 204; my translation), ‘in many remote places of Calchaquí there is the belief that some families of Indians descend from the tiger.’ During fieldwork in the 1950s to the west of the Ambato mountain range (or ‘Manchao’, as it is known locally),Footnote 11 Reference GonzálezGonzález (1998: 319; my translation) collected a story that he called ‘the legend of the man transformed into a tiger’:
Mr José Reynoso, an accurate informant, who put a lot of care into the story, told us spontaneously without prompting that the old folk said that the runa uturuncu was a man who had a tiger skin. [The man] used it for his sorcery. He would put it on and was transformed into a tiger. There was only one way to recognize him: although otherwise totally transformed into a tiger, his genitals were still human.
These accounts seem almost to animate the figures on the bowls when read from perspectivism: the men disguise themselves, cover themselves with skins, roll on the ground, put on masks, claws and jaguar legs, since they do not share the same physical state with the felines. However, they manage to become uturunkus, feline-men, subtly distinguishable by a physical feature – a hand, a foot, the genitals, an eye, some remnant of their original condition – but not by their interiority, which is beyond question, as they continue to be man-tigers (or runa uturunku), which is what enabled the metamorphosis in the first place.Footnote 12
Final Considerations
There are several points that can be drawn from this array of contexts, practices and plastic expressions that bring us closer to a perspectivist understanding of the Ambato archaeological record. It could be asked why I do not simply consider the Ambato Aguada animists. The answer would be that I am certain that the evidence goes beyond an attribution of animacy to animals and things, to modes of relationship that bring into play the construction of people and otherness and ways of understanding the world more akin to a perspectivist ontology. First and foremost, the transformability of animals and people expressed in the changing, ambiguous figures of felines and humans (and even the continuously unfolding draconian motifs) reinforces the idea of an unstable world where everything is subject to movement, change and metamorphosis. This is conveyed both by the iconography and the pieces themselves during their manipulation: the images change according to who is looking or from where they are seen. For example, they would have been turned or repositioned in use, conforming to the gestures used in serving (Reference GastaldiGastaldi 2010); or they could have caused a change of perspective through the play between figure and ground required to understand or find the image. The latter recalls Rivière’s WYSINWYG: one of the qualities of this changing and unstable perspectivist world is that appearances are deceptive – what you see is not what you think it is (everything depends on the point of view). The vessels, too, are unstable, as is the world itself.
Second, relations of humans with camelids in particular, and perhaps other animals, are strongly indicative of shared properties and subjectivities that allow species substitution. Llamas were llama-humans. Notably, metamorphosis of one into the other did not occur, in contrast to the human–jaguar relation, although there is evidence of the metamorphosis of the llama into a feline, which would perhaps reinforce the former’s human character. That is, the llama is neither an enemy nor a dangerous being to humans, so there would be no exchange of perspectives or construction of otherness. Clearly, this is not a predatory relationship but one of nurturing, care and commensality. Through the consumption of food, social relationships of affinity, kinship and belonging are produced and reproduced (Reference FaustoFausto 2002; Reference PazzarelliPazzarelli 2010). In short, the relationship between llamas and humans entails a different form of the production of persons and sociality, one based on actions such as sharing, rearing, tending and care, as opposed to predation, where persons are produced based on otherness and confrontation with the other. Llamas are not persons simply by dint of being born llamas. Rather, they are produced as persons through relations in the same way as wawas (‘children’ in Quechua) are in the Andes (Reference ArnoldArnold 2017; Reference Arteaga Böhrt and Domic RuizArteaga and Domic Ruiz 2007; Reference WeismantelWeismantel 1995) and Amazon (Reference FaustoFausto 2002, Reference Fausto2007) today.
Finally, although such relationships of commensality are centred on camelids, the analogous modelling in ceramics of bodies and heads of humans and other animal species, all treated equally as if they were entities of the same type, suggests that other species may also have been endowed with subjective capacities or have been non-human persons. Indeed, the objects themselves may have been capable of subjectivity, of being person-things. As we have seen in Chapter 2, a key element of Amerindian multinaturalist ontology is that humanity is the universal and original condition for all entities of the world. If modelled animals can be subjects, could not the very objects on which they are modelled share that same potential capacity to be subjects and to have a point of view? Could they not constitute just one more class of entities among others with subjectivity? I develop this particular theme in more detail in Chapter 5 in the case of the Ambato Tricolour anthropomorphic vessels, where their capacity to be subjects animates certain types of practices but from a predatory type of relationship. Such could also have been the case with other objects, including pottery models of animals.
Up to this point, I have explored a perspectivist approach to archaeology by searching for evidence of past ontologies in the archaeological record through the contexts, practices and objects of the Aguada societies of the Ambato Valley. The Ambato Aguada are also the case study for the following chapter, where I present an approach to the archaeological record using perspectivism heuristically. I analyse a group of large anthropomorphic storage vessels as possible subjects and discuss the implications for their various relationships with people.
