Decorated Wari gourd vessels from Castillo de Huarmey

When we discover pre-Hispanic ruins, we often come across fragments of gourds, which might have been used as vessels or containers (Spanish: mates). Some are undecorated, others – much less common – bear rich shell inlay and pyrography (Spanish: mates pirograbados). Such exceptional items were unearthed at Castillo de Huarmey, a royal Wari necropolis. The technology of their production and their decoration deliver a lot of information about the iconography of power in the first empire of the pre-Colombian Andes.

Gourds as kitchen vessels, offering containers and tools of shamans

Due to its versatile applications since archaic times, the gourd was appreciated by the societies that inhabited the Peruvian coast. It was exploited for everyday activities and had various ritual and symbolic functions. Mates were used as containers for lime powder scooped with small bones or spatulas for chakchada (chakchar means chewing coca leaves in Quechua). The Quechua people used the term ishku for the lime powder and the gourd container was called ishkupuru.

Gourds were also placed in the grave with the deceased as it was believed that those offered during the funerary ritual would be useful in the afterlife. They served for storage of beans, peanuts and meat, as well as beverages, which is supported by residues of corn beer (chicha) in the vessels.

Mates in the funerary context also helped to keep the funerary bundle (fardo) in a vertical position, which was evidenced e.g. at the Pachacamac cemetery. In some cases, a gourd wrapped in a textile replaced the decapitated head of the deceased. Bodies of fetuses or very young children were placed directly inside big gourds.

Spanish missionaries often described mates as idolatrous tools for rituals connected with certain magical practices. These vessels supposedly contained magic concoctions necessary for curses, invocation of demons and mysterious incantations. They were believed to serve the mallquis – exceptionally worshipped mummified ancestors who represented the first members of Inca clans.

These mummies took part in celebrations connected with births, weddings, sowing and harvest, during which they were offered food and drink in gourd vessels. It was believed that they possessed Andean power of invocation of forces of nature to life, consequently, Spanish missionaries regarded them as false pagan idols and everything connected with them as an instrument of black magic.

Written sources describing the first contacts between the Old World and New World also mentioned mates in the ritual context: they confirmed association of this type of vessels with the Inca court culture. Some texts report offering of liquid sacrifice in mates, for instance to the mythical creator god Pariacaca. Chronicles also deliver descriptions of ceremonies of adoration of the creator god Ataguju, during which the local caciques make an offering by spilling chicha from the mate before they begin to drink. In addition to that, there are accounts of the ritual of offering guinea pigs, which were drowned by priests in a gourd vessel.

Decorated gourds at Castillo de Huarmey

Gourd vessels unearthed at Castillo de Huarmey were placed in the graves with rich funerary goods which belonged to female aristocrats of the Wari – a pre-Colombian empire from Andean highlands that ruled over the modern Peruvian territory in the period roughly from 650 to 1050 AD. The vessels were decorated by pyrography. Rounded shapes, wavy lines and circles were created as a result of drawing short lines and series of applications of a rounded tip of a red hot tool one right next to another. It appears that Wari craftspeople made the decoration by unassisted hand as the surfaces of the vessels bear no traces of preliminary sketches made by engraving or painting.

Contrary to the common belief that gourd vessels were simple and undecorated, these specimens were inlaid with shells and additionally covered with red pigment, probably vermillion. Some of them bear repair marks and the broken ones were bound with string stitches. This suggests that the vessels were used not only for storage of liquids, but also for certain solid substances or objects. They were so valuable that the owner preferred to mend the vessel than to throw it away.

Mythical serpents, birds, spiders and creatures out of this world

The repertoire of the decoration motifs is extremely rich. Mates were decorated not only with geometric patterns – lines, spirals and zigzags, but also with figure motifs. The surfaces of the vessels display representations of felines, most likely jaguars or pumas, as well as felino serpiente (Spanish: felino – cat, serpiente – serpent), that is, Amaru – a mythical snake or dragon, which was an intermediary between Hanan Pacha (world of gods) and Uku Pacha (the underworld inhabited by ancient ancestors). In Andean iconography Amaru might also appear as a hybrid with a bird head and a snake body: ave serpiente (Spanish: ave – bird, serpiente – serpent).

Apart from that, fishes, spiders and birds were represented on mates in a manner corresponding with the marine world of the cultures that occupied the Peruvian coast and valleys of rivers Nepeña, Virú and Jequetepeque. The symbols used by these societies might reflect an ideology that was strictly correlated with nature and its ability to regenerate.

The creatures that deserve special attention possess animal features which endow them with a fantastic appearance – triangular cat canines, a split reptilian tongue and a long tail. These images resemble representations known from the art of the Moche culture, and in some cases, are distant reminiscences of much earlier cultures, such as Chavin and Cupisnique. Hybrid animals held in their hands are attributes of these figures – the combinations of felines, feathered serpents and birds mentioned above, as well as the ceremonial knife tumi tied to the side, war clubs and spear-throwers called atlatl.

These figures sometimes resemble the heroes of the scenes depicted on pottery, Moche murals and Wari-Huarmey style textiles, previously described as Moche-Wari. They represent warriors who hold tumi knives in one hand, and in the other the hair of their opponents, which looks like feline-headed serpents. Some scholars believe that the scene depicts two brothers or twins, who often appear in creation myths of many New World cultures. In pre-Columbian art combination of human and animals features – and particularly images with triangular cat teeth, often showing over lips – became a symbolic way of representing power and, to a certain degree, its affirmation.

References to history and compilation of a local iconography of power

A question arises why Wari rulers from Castillo de Huarmey had less popular motifs, which did not belong to the commonly used canon, represented on gourds. It seems they resorted to a rich selection of stylistic means employed not only by groups that co-existed with them on the coast, but also by much earlier societies.

On the basis of obvious imitations of forms it could be assumed that gourd vessels from Castillo de Huarmey are evidence for intentional references to the iconographic manner of legitimization of power in this part of pre-Columbian Peru. These vessels were most likely produced by local craftspeople and combined local traditions with the iconography that characterized artefacts from highlands, that is, from the heart of the empire. It appears that the selection of decoration motifs was supposed to evoke direct associations with the iconography of power which was common on the coast before domination by the Wari.

The rulers of the empire intentionally used well-known symbols: they exploited these symbols to legitimize their power. Therefore, mates fulfilled a representative function. They were used in funerary ceremonies and as storage containers for offerings. Considering the rich symbolic decoration and the context of the discoveries, they might have also been gifts for Wari elites.

 

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Author:

Emanuela Rudnicka – an archaeologist at the Doctoral School of Humanities of the University of Warsaw. She is interested in artisan specialization in pre-Colombian Andean societies, with a special focus on baskets, textiles, gourds and wooden artefacts. She spends her free time watching film festivals, reading Asian literature, running and mountain hiking.

Editing: A.C.

Proof-reading: A.J.

Cover: Decorated water bottle made of a gourd with representation of birds characteristic of the northern tradition© E. Rudnicka, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence, ed. K.K.

This text was funded by the project entitled “Popularyzacja badań Katedry Archeologii Ameryk na Wydziale Archeologii”, a part of Inicjatywa Doskonałości – Uczelnia Badawcza program.ca