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4 - Mirroring Desert Societies with Monkeys

Primates in the Late Pre-Hispanic and Early Colonial North Coast of Peru, Central Andes (c. 900–1600 CE)

from Part I - The Americas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 August 2022

By
Jorge Gamboa
Edited by
Bernardo Urbani ,
Dionisios Youlatos  and
Andrzej T. Antczak
Bernardo Urbani
Affiliation:
Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research
Dionisios Youlatos
Affiliation:
Aristotle University, Thessaloniki
Andrzej T. Antczak
Affiliation:
Universiteit Leiden
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Summary

Although the North Coast of Peru and the Amazon basin are separated by hundreds of kilometers and a massive cordillera, they were never worlds completely apart. Imagery of monkeys, one of the most conspicuous inhabitants of the South American tropical forest, provides evidence of interaction among those regions. This chapter examines the presence and meaning of monkeys in the Lambayeque and Chimú cultures, two Late pre-Hispanic societies that developed on the North Coast between 900 CE and 1450 CE. The focus is in particular on figurative depictions of monkeys carried by humans, bearing litters, and holding fruits. A peculiar indigenous early Colonial depiction has also been identified wherein a monkey is portrayed pulling the ear of a roaring feline. A review of zooarchaeological and visual data permits an exploration of the symbolism of monkeys for the Late pre-Hispanic and early Colonial indigenous populations of the northern Peruvian coast. This interpretative exercise leads us to recognize the monkey as both a living sign of dependent relationships and hierarchies and a captive being subject to the construction of meanings based on its corporality, otherness and behavior.

Keywords:

Andes, Peru, pre-Hispanic North Coast, Colonial period, primates, iconography.

Type
Chapter
Information
World Archaeoprimatology
Interconnections of Humans and Nonhuman Primates in the Past
 , pp. 108 - 131
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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