Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Nasca origins and Paracas progenitors

2016; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 36; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00776297.2016.1239874

2051-6207

Patrick Carmichael,

Environmental and Cultural Studies in Latin America and Beyond

The origins and endings of Nasca culture lie with the appearance, florescence, and termination of Nasca religion (south-coastal Peru, Early Intermediate Period, ca. 100 B.C.–A.D. 600). Elaborate, polychrome iconography on ceramic vessels reveals a pantheon of supernatural creatures representing the materialized ideology of Nasca worldview. This article takes an iconographic approach to examine the origins of Nasca religion by tracing the central deity—the Masked Being—the most complex, common, and constant figure of the painted designs. It is demonstrated that the predecessor of the Masked Being was the Paracas Oculate Being, which originated in the Ocucaje Basin of the Ica Valley. Both deities were the icons of severed-head (huayo) cults. Archaeological examples of the diadem always painted on Masked Being motifs are seldom found outside of Ocucaje and the Paracas Peninsula cemeteries, where they date to Paracas Phase 10. Paracas ancestors, migrating from the Ocucaje Basin during the Necrópolis Era (ca. 100 B.C.–A.D. 100), brought a religion and severed-head cult, which on the Nazca frontier morphed into a new belief system conducive to new social and environmental circumstances. It is proposed that, in the southern region during Early Nasca times, religion facilitated a subsistence strategy of gardening and gathering combined with herding, hunting, and residential mobility as an adaptation to a hyper-arid desert environment subject to droughts and flash floods. This study advocates a multi-regional approach to Nasca archaeology by developing independent chronologies, ceramic seriations, and culture histories for each region.