Cupisnique
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The Cupisnique culture was a
pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, th ...
indigenous culture that flourished from c. 1500 to 500 BC along what now is
Peru , image_flag = Flag of Peru.svg , image_coat = Escudo nacional del Perú.svg , other_symbol = Great Seal of the State , other_symbol_type = Seal (emblem), National seal , national_motto = "Fi ...
's northern Pacific coast. The culture had a distinctive style of
adobe Adobe ( ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for ''mudbrick''. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is used to refer to any kind of e ...
clay architecture. Artifacts of the culture share artistic styles and religious symbols with the
Chavin culture Chavin may refer to: Places * Chavín de Huantar, an archaeological site in Peru built by the Chavín culture * Chavín District, Chincha, Peru * Chavín de Huantar District, Huari, Peru * Chavín de Pariarca District, Huamalies, Peru * Chavin, I ...
that arose in the same area at a later date.


The Cupisnique and the Chavin

The relationship between the Chavin culture and the Cupisnique culture is not well understood, and the names are sometimes used interchangeably. For instance, the anthropological scholar, Alana Cordy-Collins, treats as Cupisnique a culture lasting from 1000 – 200 BC, which are the dates some associate with the Chavin culture. Another scholar, Izumi Shimada, calls Cupisnique a possible ancestor of Mochica (Moche) culture with no mention of Chavin. Yet another scholar, Anna C. Roosevelt, refers to "the coastal manifestation of the Chavin Horizon... dominated by the Cupisnique style".


Spider deity temple discovered

A Cupisnique adobe temple was discovered in 2008 in the Lambayeque valley in the area of the archaeological site of
Ventarron Ventarrón is the site of a 4,500-year-old temple with painted murals, which was excavated in Peru in 2007 near Chiclayo, in the Lambayeque region on the northern coast. The site was inhabited by the Early Cupisnique, Cupisnique, Chavin and Mo ...
. That newly discovered temple was very close to the Ventarron temple. The adjacent location is known as “Collud”. This spider deity temple sheds some light on the connection between the Cupisnique and the Chavin because of shared iconography. In fact, some other related temples also had been discovered in the area at approximately the same time. The Chavin people who came after the Cupisnique built a temple adjacent to Collud about three hundred years later, in a location named "Zarpan". Berrin, Katherine & Larco Museum. ''The Spirit of Ancient Peru:Treasures from the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera.'' New York:
Thames and Hudson Thames & Hudson (sometimes T&H for brevity) is a publisher of illustrated books in all visually creative categories: art, architecture, design, photography, fashion, film, and the performing arts. It also publishes books on archaeology, history, ...
, 1997.
The three temples are close together and form a single archaeological site. There are many shared elements among motifs used in all three locations. For example, one common element is that of the spider deity. This spider motif appears to persevere from the 4,000-year-old temple of Ventarrón throughout time, to its appearance on artifacts of the Moche culture dated to c. 300 AD. The temple found in 2008 also includes imagery of the spider deity, thought to be associated with rainfall, hunting, and warfare. The spider deity image combines a spider's neck and head, with the mouth of a large feline, and the beak of a bird. According to the team leader Walter Alva,
"Cupisnique and Chavin shared the same gods and the same architectural and artistic forms, showing intense religious interaction among the cultures of the Early Formative Period from the north coast to the Andes and down to the central Andes."


The Cupisnique and the Moche

Sometimes the Moche and the Cupisnique cultures are referred to interchangeably. The reason for that is because of similarities in their ceramic designs. The Moche were a very “vibrant” culture among emerging cultures within the Cupisnique society that had a base population of farming and fishing along with a middle and elite class. The main connection between the Cupisnique and the Moche is the incorporation of the decapitation theme where there exists a decapitator and a decapitated character. In the Cupisnique society, “the decapitators appear in five supernatural guises: human, monster, bird, fish, and spider…” Moche decapitators are the same five plus two additional characters: the crab and the scorpion. Images of the five main decapitators from both the Cupisnique and the Moche culture appear in many references. Scholars believe that the parallelism between Moche and Cupisnique iconography is not just coincidental, rather, that the Moche were “the heirs to a belief that they subscribed to in practice”. Sometimes the Cupisnique people are spoken of as a cult, due to two main reasons. The first reason being that there had been very “little direct evidence of their patterns of social organization, demography, or subsistence strategies”. The second reason being the buildings reembellished with painted, incised stucco relief work depicting surreal creatures”. The Cupisnique motifs seem to be deeply rooted in religion, which apparently had a great influence upon the character of emerging cultures such as the Salinar, Vicus, Gallinazo, and as mentioned, the Moche culture.


Other Cupisnique sites

One of the most important Cupisnique sites is
Caballo Muerto Caballo Muerto is an archaeological complex located on the northern coast of Peru, in the Moche Valley, in the Laredo District of La Libertad Region. It represents a series of mound sites that span both the Initial Period (2100–1200 CAL B.C.) ...
in the
Moche Valley The Valley of Moche, or ''Valley of Santa Catalina,'' is a large area of the La Libertad Region in northern Peru surrounding the Moche River. It has been farmed since the pre-Columbian era and currently contains rural and urban settlements. Truji ...
. In 2008, it was reported that archaeologists had excavated the Cupisnique site of Limoncarro in the
Guadalupe District, Pacasmayo Guadalupe District is one of five districts of the province Pacasmayo in Peru. Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática The Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática (INEI) ("National Institute of Statistics and Informatics") ...
,
La Libertad Region La Libertad (; in English: ''The Liberty'') is a region in northwestern Peru. Formerly it was known as the Department of La Libertad ('). It is bordered by the Lambayeque, Cajamarca and Amazonas regions on the north, the San Martín Region on t ...
of the northern Peru coast. Two phases of construction were identified; among other things, animal faces indicating Cupisnique iconography were uncovered.
Kuntur Wasi Kuntur Wasi (Quechua ''kuntur'' condor, ''wasi'' house, "condor house") is the name given to the ruins of a religious center with complex architecture and stone sculptures, located in the Andean highlands of Peru. It is believed the inhabitant ...
is another site that was influenced by the Cupisnique culture. In 2020, local farmers clearing land in the La Libertad region of northwestern Peru found the ruins of a shrine bearing a large mural painted in shades of ocher, yellow, gray and white. The site was previously unknown and it is estimated that about 60% of the shrine complex was accidentally destroyed during the process. Researchers have now identified the mural image as a 3,200-year-old painting of a knife-wielding spider god.


Cupisnique mirrors

Mirrors dating to 900-200 BC were discovered in archaeological sites that have been identified as Cupisnique. They reflect high quality images. {{commons category


See also

*
Columbian exchange The Columbian exchange, also known as the Columbian interchange, was the widespread transfer of plants, animals, precious metals, commodities, culture, human populations, technology, diseases, and ideas between the New World (the Americas) in ...
*
Periodization of pre-Columbian Peru This is a chart of cultural periods of Peru and the Andean Region developed by John Rowe and Edward Lanning and used by some archaeologists studying the area. An alternative dating system was developed by Luis Lumbreras and provides different dat ...
* Population history of indigenous peoples of the Americas


References


External links


Ancient Peruvian ceramics: the Nathan Cummings collection by Alan R. Sawyer
an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Cupisnique (see index) Andean civilizations Cupisnique culture