Pre Columbian Art And Culture In The Andean Area

Lavishly illustrated in full color and black and white, this handsome reference provides a broad survey of the rich artistic heritage of pre-Columbian North and South America. Meticulously researched by archaeologists and anthropologists, the set features dramatic close-ups of engraved rock artifacts, cave paintings, pottery, and inscribed and sculpted bones. Covering the entire two continents from present-day Canada in the far north through Central America and down to the Andes Mountains and Patagonia in the south, it is a stunning visual and written record of the great variety of artworks created by Neolithic American peoples over many millennia.

This profusely illustrated, up-to-date introduction to the pre-columbian art of Mesoamerica and Andean South America examines our conceptions of the ancient high cultures, the art they produced, and how our modern-day interpretations were achieved. The book is unique in that it draws on a great variety of scholarly disciplines to interpret the art forms. Since the 1960s our understanding of the Aztec, Maya, Inca, and Andean civilizations has increased dramatically through coordinated interdisciplinary research. In this summary of new and past investigations, Hilda Delgado Pang describes previously unknown historical figures and dynasties. In a clear and entertaining style, she tells how the pre-columbian artists validated their rulers, recorded rituals, portrayed the supernatural and astronomical cosmos, and commemorated transitions from life into death. As she describes the Mesoamerican and Andean high cultures, she also explains the special role that art plays in all societies, ancient and modern. Pre-columbian artists expressed themselves in sculpture and monumental architecture, glyphic notations, weavings, and painted ceramics--beginning about 2000 B.C. and, in some areas, continuing after the Spanish conquest. This new introductory text explores the contributions of epigraphy, formal and iconographic analyses, chemical and botanical identifications, and ethnographic and ethnohistorical sources to our knowledge of the major art styles: Olmec, Toltec, Maya, Aztec, Chavin, Paracas, Nasca, Moche, Tiahuanaco-Huari, Chimu, and Inca. From this book students and general readers will gain challenging insights into both the ancient art forms described and the fast-moving disciplines thatenergize research in the field today.

From prehistory to the present, the Indigenous peoples of the Andes have used a visual symbol system—that is, art—to express their sense of the sacred and its immanence in the natural world. Many visual motifs that originated prior to the Incas still appear in Andean art today, despite the onslaught of cultural disruption that native Andeans have endured over several centuries. Indeed, art has always been a unifying power through which Andeans maintain their spirituality, pride, and culture while resisting the oppression of the dominant society. In this book, Mary Strong takes a significantly new approach to Andean art that links prehistoric to contemporary forms through an ethnographic understanding of Indigenous Andean culture. In the first part of the book, she provides a broad historical survey of Andean art that explores how Andean religious concepts have been expressed in art and how artists have responded to cultural encounters and impositions, ranging from invasion and conquest to international labor migration and the internet. In the second part, Strong looks at eight contemporary art types—the scissors dance (danza de tijeras), home altars (retablos), carved gourds (mates), ceramics (ceramica), painted boards (tablas), weavings (textiles), tinware (hojalateria), and Huamanga stone carvings (piedra de Huamanga). She includes prehistoric and historic information about each art form, its religious meaning, the natural environment and sociopolitical processes that help to shape its expression, and how it is constructed or performed by today’s artists, many of whom are quoted in the book.

"Eminent ancestors of the better-known Inca, the Wari ascended to power in the south-central highlands of Peru in about AD 600, underwent a period of explosive growth, and then, by AD 1000, collapsed. During this lifespan, they created a society of such unprecedented complexity that many today regard it as the first empire in the Andes. Elite arts and the ideologies that informed them were among the culture's most prominent exports. From their eponymous capital, one of the largest archaeological sites in South America, the Wari sent elaborate objects and textiles to their highland provincial centers as well as down into populous Pacific coastal areas to the west. The arts were crucial to their political, economic, and religious systems. Since the Wari did not write, the arts took on special roles in preserving and communicating information. This book is published on the occasion of an exhibition organized by the Cleveland Museum of Art that features some 170 objects from collections in Canada, Europe, Peru, and the United States. The selection covers the full range of Wari elite arts: elaborate textiles, which probably were at the core of Wari value systems; sophisticated ceramics of various styles; exquisite personal ornaments made of precious materials; carved wood containers; and works in stone and other media. The exhibition, the first in North America devoted to the arts of the Wari, was curated and the cataloged edited by Susan E. Bergh, curator of Pre-Columbian and Native North American art at the Cleveland Museum of Art."--P. [2] of cover.

Featuring approximately 145 of the most sumptuous and culturally significant Wari objects from collections in the United States, Peru, and Europe, and published to accompany the first exhibition in North America of their startlingly beautiful art An eminent ancestor of the better-known Inca, the Wari ascended to power in the south-central highlands of Peru in about AD 600, underwent a brief period of incandescently explosive growth, and then, by AD 1000, collapsed. Elite arts and the ideologies that informed them were among the Wari’s most prominent exports. From their capital, one of the largest archaeological sites in South America, they sent their religion along with elaborate objects and textiles out to highland provincial centers hundreds of miles to the north and south, and down into populous Pacific coastal areas to the west. The arts were crucial to the Wari’s political, economic, and religious communications: like other ancient Andean peoples, they did not write. The objects featured here cover the full range of Wari arts: elaborate textiles, which probably were at the core of their value systems; sophisticated ceramics of various styles; exquisite personal ornaments made of gold, silver, shell, or bone and often inlaid with precious materials; carved wood containers; and other works in stone and fiber.