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A god forsaken: the sacred bear in Andean iconography and cosmology

Susanna Paisley a;Nicholas J. Saunders b a School of Anthropology and Conservation, The University of Kent, b Department of Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Bristol, Online publication date: 23 April 2010

To cite this Article Paisley, Susanna andSaunders, Nicholas J.(2010) 'A god forsaken: the sacred bear in Andean

iconography and cosmology', World Archaeology, 42: 2, 245 260 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/00438241003672880 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00438241003672880

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A god forsaken: the sacred bear in Andean iconography and cosmology

Susanna Paisley and Nicholas J. Saunders

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Abstract
Bears are all but invisible in Andean iconography, and consequently are considered unimportant in pre-Columbian cosmology. This assumption is re-examined in the context of present-day Andean culture in which bears are highly salient characters in stories, ritual and performance. Indeed, Qoyllur Riti, the largest native pilgrimage in the Americas, has a bear as its main protagonist. Refuting a presumed colonial Spanish origin for bear imagery in contemporary Andean culture, a n, the principal deity at the Formative Horizons pre-Columbian origin is proposed in El Lanzo highly inuential cult centre of Chav n de Huantar. Here, we present ethnographic, ethnohistoric and archaeological data to propose a signicant place for the bear in Andean cosmology.

Keywords
Chav n, Andes; iconography; cosmology; spectacled bear; bear cult; Moche; Qoyllur Riti.

The invisible bear Veneration of the boreal species of bears is a striking and ancient feature of northern hemisphere cultures dubbed the circumpolar bear cult (Black 1998; Hallowell 1926). A review of the literature on Andean iconography and cosmology reveals an almost total absence of references to bears whereas the large felines are ubiquitous (e.g. Kauman Doig 1980; Stone-Miller 1995). Given the almost universal reverence for bears (Berres et al. 2004: 8), the absence of acknowledged bear cults in Mesoamerica and the Andes is notable: the importance of the . . . bear was lost in Mexico and the Andes, a remarkable fact considering that this loss occurred despite the bears having been a member of the fauna of these regions (Mundkur 1976: 448). A case in point is the Moche culture of northern Peru (AD 100800). Fine-line drawings of striking realism and visual complexity (Bourget and Jones 2008: xi) documented the natural and symbolic worlds of the Moche, including the hunting or individual depiction of at least

World Archaeology Vol. 42(2): 245260 Humans and Animals 2010 Taylor & Francis ISSN 0043-8243 print/1470-1375 online DOI: 10.1080/00438241003672880

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eighty-six animal species from lice to pelicans (Larco Hoyle 1938: 97103). Yet images of bears or bear hunts are unknown (Larco Hoyle 1938: 93) despite the open terrain, described as having excellent visibility for observational [bear] studies (Appleton 2008: 2), in which bear hunts were readily selected for depiction in the seventeenth century n 1978, II: gs 119, 120) (see Fig. 1). The absence of bears in (Martin ez de Compan o Moche iconography is therefore intriguing. The conspicuous absence of bears in Andean iconography, however, may not mean that bears were symbolically unimportant in pre-Columbian times. As Saunders (1998a: 14) observes, the frequency of material symbols is not a reliable indicator of the status of the feline in local beliefs, a view we argue is equally applicable to bears. Indeed, partial invisibility may be a feature of the bear in cultures beyond the Andes. DAnglure describes a similar enigma in contemplating the symbolic meaning of polar bears, despite their enormous practical and cultural signicance to the Inuit: Rather than making explicit what it considers important . . . the pensee sauvage of hunter-gatherers such as the Inuit prefers to conceal what is valued, keeping it implicit or expressed only in certain signs or outlines . . . . The obscurity surrounding the gure of the polar bear in Inuit ethnography illustrates this diculty. The image is found in the classic monographs.. . .But the image is fragmented, diused, and evanescent, and absent from the majority of descriptions and analyses. (DAnglure 1990: 178) For the Inuit, nevertheless, the polar bear was a dominating gure in the imaginary space and social time (DAnglure 1990:178). In Scandinavia, Hedeager found a correspondingly enigmatic absence of the culturally salient bear in Norse iconography: In artistic expression, the bear is virtually non-existent. Yet it is patently not a meaningless animal in the Norse world. Its lack of representation in visual arts . . . is so

Figure 1 Depiction of hunting in Lambayeque, Peru: (a) Moche neline painting of a deer hunt, redrawn from Donnan (1976) and (b) seventeenth-century painting of a bear hunt commissioned by n. Martin ez de Compan o

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striking that it can hardly be explained other than that the bear, whether it was in its animal or human form, was so feared and so taboo that it could not be portrayed. (Hedeager 2004: 249)

Deciphering the form and meaning of a phantom Our argument, based on Andean eldwork over the last fteen years and archival research, is that bears, far from being insignicant in pre-Columbian culture, were at its shadowy core. Clearly, attempts to identify any animal which inspired prehistoric iconography, and to assess the associated bundle of meanings, are bound to be fraught with diculties (Morphy 1989: 3). Straightforward formalist zoological identication in iconographic studies has been superseded, and a considerable literature has appeared which regards animals as metaphors and concepts as well as natural entities, and individual traits as recongurable symbols (e.g. Ingold 1988; Morphy 1989; Willis 1990). Fangs, for example, are often seen as abstract references to the supernatural or to power, rather than as specic signiers of the jaguar or caiman. Despite these complexities, and the recognition that subjectivity more or less strongly permeates all attempts at identication (Morphy 1989: 38; Ucko 1989), archaeologists have regularly attempted to identify animals in iconography. In some cases these identications are based on the subjective assessments of early scholars, which layer by sedimentary layer solidify into orthodoxy. Scholars occasionally call expressly for the reinterpretation of a long-held specic animal assignment, using evidence from natural history, ethnography and ethnohistory (cf. Amat 2004; Davenport and Schreiber 1989). One relevant example is Sitio Conte, Panama, arguing for the presence of the Andean bear (Helms 1998). In order to explore the iconographic obscurity of the Andean bear (De Boer 2001: 112), particularly among the high cultures of Peru and Bolivia, the following hypotheses are proposed: 1 Bears do not play a part in Andean cosmo-vision and were never depicted because they were not regarded as symbolically important. 2 Bears were of some importance, perhaps signicant, perhaps marginal, but were cloaked in some form of taboo prohibiting their recognizable depiction. 3 The taboo against depicting bears was in deference to a single supernatural bear or bearhuman an ur-gure made incarnate by some particular and recognizable artefact.

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The zoological perspective Tremarctos ornatus is the only extant South American bear, and is found in the Venezuelan, Colombian, Ecuadorian, Peruvian and Bolivian mountains (Goldstein et al, 2008: 2). It has many local Amerindian and Spanish names (Peyton 1999: 15; Torres 2001: 2) but in English it is the Andean or spectacled bear, after the rings of pale fur often encircling one or both eyes (see Fig. 6d below). The largest member of the carnivore order in South America, the Andean bear may weigh up to 175kg (Peyton 1999: 157).

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Andean bears are found from 250m to 4750m in a wide range of human adaptive zones including puna, jalca, kichwa, and ceja de selva (Burger 1992: 213; Peyton 1999: 159). Thus, historic bear distribution overlapped many key Andean archaeological sites (see Figure 2). Andean bears and people come into direct contact as both species have similar daily activity patterns and are opportunistic omnivores with a particular fondness for fruit, maize and the esh of livestock, which they rarely kill, but consume avidly as carrion (Paisley and Garshelis 2006: 25; Peyton 1999: 158). The jaguar alone is said to span all domains of this vertical world: the trees, the earth and the water (Coe 1972: 3) the domain intermediary, the liminal creature par excellence (Roe 1998: 174).We suggest that the highly arboreal Andean bear, also an able swimmer (Paisley 2001: 175; Peyton 1999: 157), is worth considering in similar terms. Additionally, bears possess features which make them easily anthropomorphized such as: eyes on the frontal plane like humans; the abilities to stand on their hind legs and to walk for limited distances; and the ability to rotate their shoulders and forelimbs, enabling deft food manipulation (McLellan and Reiner 1994: 89).

Insights from ethnography: the bear as archetypal Andean mediator The most striking ritual related to Andean bears is the Peruvian festival of Qoyllur Riti, the largest native pilgrimage celebrated in the Andes (Allen 1992: 41; Salnow 1989: 207). The main protagonists are the ukukus, or bear-men, who represent a large proportion of the tens of thousands of celebrants who ascend to a 5000m-high valley surrounded by glaciers (Randall 1982). From there, only the ukukus risk their lives by continuing up the perilous glaciers and cutting blocks of ice which they carry down the mountain on their backs (Gow and Condori 1976: 53; Randall 1982: 39; Urton 1985: 270). The melted ice is used for healing and ensuring the fertility of crops (Randall 1982: 43). The earliest image

Figure 2 Bear distribution: (a) map of historic bear distribution overlaid with selected sites and (b) mother and cub at Machu Picchu, from La Republica newspaper (14 June 2009: 22), used with permission.

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of the festival, depicting the fur-clad ukukus, is a sixteenth-century polychrome qero vessel (see Fig. 3a below) (Otavola 1995: 66). The festival is, however, likely to have preColumbian origins (Randall 1982: 41). It celebrates the re-emergence of the Pleiades constellation and with it a time of health and fertility (Randall 1982: 43). Ukukus mediate between the crucial stages, concepts and identities of social life: sickness and regeneration, highland and lowland, humans and animals, nature and culture, childhood and adulthood, order and chaos (Randall 1982: 57; Urton 1985: 271). Since water is a mediator between earth and sky in Andean thought (Urton 1981: 113), it is not surprising that bears, who are mediators, also have watery symbolic connections. This is clear at Qoyllur Riti, as at other sites, like Cuevo, Bolivia, where men dressed in bear skins play with water during the Fiesta de San Juan (Velez pers. comm. 2008). n de Colca, the bear-man is associated with agricultural Likewise in the Peruvian Callejo fertility and irrigation: benecent if honoured, with the power to make seeds germinate, but vengeful if not appropriately honoured (Raez 2002: 92; and pers. comm. 2006). These beliefs may relate to the bears attraction to maize and other crops. Bears are protected by a taboo against hunting in some parts of the Northern Andes (Colding and Folke 2001: 596; Torres 2001: 3), but elsewhere are often shot while crop-raiding their meat, blood and fat taken as curative (Taussig 1980: 237; Yan ez 1990: 2). The bear is also strongly associated with human fertility and sexuality, notoriously running o with shepherd girls. Many contemporary stories in the bears current range extemporize on this theme (Paisley in prep). For example, in the Peruvian highlands of Carpish, stories describe the ukumari surprising and forcing sex upon young women. Despite this, girls reportedly frequent such areas to oer their virginity, believing the bear a god incarnate, thereby guaranteeing fertility in their future marriage (Ormachea 1986: 18). Related dances in bear costume have been documented throughout Bolivia and Peru, the bear being described as a feared supernatural, a trickster, prone to passionate love with human females (Costas Arguedas 1961; Paredes Candia 1953). In Oruro, Bolivia, bears are semantically linked with water, forced sex and the fertility of the earth: This form of rape is nothing more that a personalisation of the rape of the earth by the seasonal rains and snows which are the masculine forces that the bear embodies; indeed, there exist dances of

Figure 3 The bear costume: (a) early colonial Qero vessel depicting Qoyllur Riti; (b) seventeenth n; (c) man wearing bear skin during Qoyllur Riti century bear costume from Martinez de Compan o in 2006 (photos and drawings by S. Paisley).

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the bear which are practised explicitly in the rainy season (Arnold and Lopez 2000: 13). Further links to sexuality, fertility and mediation occur in the oral, written and cinematic renditions of the pan-Andean Bears Son stories, in which a bear/human coupling produces a hybrid ospring of great strength (Cipolletti 1983: 146; Costas Arguedas 1967: 17695; Itier 2007: 14573; Morote Best 1988: 179239; Urton 1985: 2702; Barnard and Rist 1999: 278). This mythic theme is truly global (Frank 1996: 124) and some scholars view the Andean versions as post-conquest imports, although they are more commonly considered a fusion of European and pre-Columbian myths (e.g. Cipolletti 1983: 145; Morote Best 1957; Paredes Candia 1953: 139).

Insights from the early chroniclers: the bear as deity and sexual predator
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Bears have been overlooked in the texts of early chroniclers. A typical view is that The bear does not . . . gure in our accounts of Inca or early Colonial Quechua mythology (Allen 1992: 38) yet there is solid ethnohistoric evidence that bears, with large felines, were considered sacred. Garcilaso de la Vega wrote in 1609 that pre-Inca tribes worshipped bears, pumas and jaguars for their strength and, chancing upon one in the forest, they would throw themselves on the ground and allow themselves to be eaten without any attempt to defend themselves (Garcilaso de la Vega 1963 [1609], I: 31). de Acosta provides similar testimony, saying that Indians worshipped Father Jose bears, making oerings so that, duly propitiated, the bears would let them pass unharmed and give them strength (2002 [1588]: 314). The Augustinian monk Antonio de la Calancha wrote that Indians of the Andes who live in the lands behind the snow-capped mountains . . . worship Tigers, Lions, Bears and Serpents, specically identifying the people of Tomebamba, Ecuador, as bear worshippers (Calancha 1639, II: 373). In the central sierra of Peru, Avila describes Lloclayhuancupa as a sacred site associated with bears (Avila cited in Taylor and Acosta 1987: 293). The mysterious Choque chincay constellation was described as a jaguar in charge of large felines and bears and their n reproduction (Ondegardo 1916 [1571]: 74). One of several mentions of bears in Guama Pomas writings describes them, along with pumas and jaguars, as among the nine n Poma 2009 [1615]: 50) and which creatures that originally occupied the earth (Guama thus possess cosmogonic importance. It is possible to discern more than just a general attitude of reverence towards the bear. Randall described the ukuku or bear-man as the archetypal Andean intermediary pointing to the sixteenth-century Quechua dance drama of La Tragedia de la Muerte de Atawalpa, in which Huaylla Huisa, seer-prophet to the eponymous last Inca emperor, is constantly accompanied by an actor dressed in a bear skin (Randall 1982: 62). Together these two characters mediate between the Quechua and the Spanish, the present and future, and gods and men. Spanish chroniclers relate numerous tales of human-bear couplings. Stories of a libidinous bear absconding with and impregnating a woman are reported factually by at Ignacio de Lecuanda least three early chroniclers: Cabello de Valboa (1951 [1586]), Jose rraga (1946 [1605]) who wrote, in direct concordance (1861) and Fray Reginaldo de Liza with ethnographic evidence, that [t]here [in Cochabamba] are bred very large bears that

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pursue the women and, when the women see the bears, they make no resistance (Lizarraga 1946 [1605], XII: 127). The bear costume is also described: among the indigenous chiefdoms of the northern Venezuelan Andes, some of the most distinguished warriors were clad in puma or bear skins, with the animals mouth placed over the head (Kircho 1948: 489). Writing in 1609, Garcilaso de la Vega does not specically mention bear costumes, but alludes to them when describing the Inca festival of the sun, Inti Raimi, where men danced in animal skins, wearing the heads as masks (see Fig. 3). The most abominable gures were from the Yungas (Garcilaso de la Vega 1963 [1609], IV: 20), core habitat for Andean bears.

n: the bear god of Chav n El Lanzo

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Of all pre-Columbian Andean cultures, we would immediately look to Chav n de Huantar to pursue our third hypothesis: that the taboo against depicting bears arose to honour one pre-eminent bear icon. Julio C. Tello (1960) called Chav n the mother culture of the Andes and it continues to be thought of as one of the six pristine civilizations in world history with unrivalled inuence on subsequent Andean cultures (Burger 1992: 11). Chav n de Huantars sphere of inuence covered nearly 200,000km2, with goods traded and oerings brought across great distances, such as lapis lazuli from the Atacama Desert in Chile and Spondylus shells from the Ecuadorian coast (Burger 1992: 211). From its inception around squez de Espinoza 1000 BC until colonial times, it was a centre for sacred pilgrimage (Va 1948 [16281629]): 458). It was well positioned: halfway between the coast and the tropical lowlands, at the conuence of two rivers and midway between two cordilleras (Burger 1992: 128). Chav n appears not to have been a military empire, but rather a vast network united through iconography, cosmology and the worship of one deity generally thought of as an  1979: 31; Burger 1992: 130). anthropomorphic feline (Kano n, its supreme deity, dwells at If Chav n de Huantar itself embodies centrality, El Lanzo the centre of the centre. The U-shaped Old Temple, built deep into the earth, is riddled with mysterious labyrinthine passageways. In the middle of the central cruciform chamber is the dramatic 4.5m carved granite monolith around which the entire Old Temple was built (Stone-Miller 1995: 34). With its base deep in the ground, its peak rising into a n refers to its lancecorbelled ceiling, it clearly served as an axis mundi; the name El Lanzo like shape, although its form is now believed to relate to the chaki taklla or Andean foot plough, key agent of the earths fertility (Burger 1992: 136). For those allowed access, the supreme deity may have served as an oracle as well as a multi-sensory object of veneration (Burger 1992: 136). Divinations from the chamber n itself (Patterson 1971: 38). above would have seemed to emanate from the Lanzo Lumbreras et al. (1976) hypothesized that an elaborate system of air and water ducts created the acoustic eect of a giant roar resonating within the Old Temple. A thin channel is carved down the front of the monolith, leading to a small cross-shaped well and then over the deitys face and body; into this channel, liquid oerings like maize beer or sacricial blood may have been poured (Tello 1960: 1767). This liquid would have given still more shininess and movement to the cult image in the ickering light of torches hung from projecting stones on the walls (Burger 1992: 136).

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Various animals have been identied as singular or combined elements in Chav n iconography: felines (usually jaguars), snakes (usually anacondas), crocodilians (usually n itself is generally caimans) and birds (usually harpy eagles) (Rowe 1962). El Lanzo referred to as an unspecic anthropomorphic being with feline characteristics (Burger 1992: 150). The human attributes include elaborate clothes and ear pendants. Many have considered its erect posture, ears, arms, legs and ten digits with opposable thumbs as anthropomorphic (Burger 1992: 149; Rowe 1962: 90). Most scholars have related the large upper incisors set in a smiling mouth to the feline although this has been questioned in favour of the caiman, anaconda and howler monkey (Burger 1992: 150; Mundkur 1983: 133). The bear has not hitherto been considered. n has distinctive features of shape and posture which indicate We propose that El Lanzo the ursine: at, turned-in feet with ve long curving claws; erect stance; one paw up and one down; round nostrils; and the smiling mouth (see Fig. 4). Furthermore, lines radiating out from the eyes specically suggest the facial markings of the spectacled bear (see Figs 5 and 6a below). n are its feet, which are at on the The most unambiguous ursine features of El Lanzo ground with ve long curving claws. In contrast to felines, bears possess long nonretractile claws. Constantly worn down by being extended, bear claws are less sharp, but much longer, with ve claws clearly visible per paw. Unlike felines, bears walk on the soles n makes it of at feet in the plantigrade position. While the shaft-like shape of El Lanzo arguable whether the rear paws are in-turning, the rollout reproduced in Figure 4 indicates that they do face inward, a characteristic attribute of bears (see Fig. 5b and d). n is erect. Bears are nearly unique among large mammals in The stance of El Lanzo having achieved an intermediate stage of bipedalism, allowing them to stand upright and walk short distances on their hind legs. The familiar gestalt of the quadruped, and the attendant connotations of otherness, is abruptly broken when a bear raises itself to standing, almost certainly to a greater height than the human observer and advances. This is therefore a common position for the depiction of bears (see Fig. 4).

n, the principal deity of Chav n (redrawn from Burger Figure 4 (a) A rollout drawing of El Lanzo 1992); (b) An Andean bear in a similar position (courtesy of the Red Tremarctos).

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Figure 5 Comparative bear iconography: (a) the national crest of Greenland; (b) a small fth-century Russian bronze (courtesy of the Hermitage, St. Petersburg); (c) the poster for a 1976 horror lm (reproduction allowed under US Fair Use Laws); (d) bear sculpture in the Haida style of the Pacic Northwest.

n; (b) Bolivian jucumari or bear-man at the Figure 6 Spectacled bear mask: (a) the mask of El Lanzo festival of Gran Poder in La Paz, 1998; (c) a line drawing of this style of mask (photo and drawings by S. Paisley); (d) facial markings of a spectacled bear (photo by Karl-Rainer Ledvina).

It is not uncommon to see bears portrayed with one front paw raised and one lowered n, this is thought to symbolize the (see Fig. 4b, 5a and 5c). In the case of El Lanzo mediation of opposing forces (Burger 1992: 136), a concept ethnographically relevant to Andean bears. This position also recalls Andean bear dancers, who carry a whip or handkerchief in one hand when dancing (Paredes Candia 1953: 145). In shape, the front n, paws are ursine with long claws and separate nger pads and the thumbs of El Lanzo previously thought anthropomorphic, are in fact minimally dierentiated from the other digits, with no clear indication of opposability. ns nostrils are bear-like, with round openings rather than the smaller nostrils El Lanzo characteristic of felines. There appear to be two sets of ears, one adorned with earrings on the sides of the head, like humans, and one on top of the head, like a bear. The upturned

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mouth, suggestive of smiling and grimacing, is considered bear-like in many cultures such as the Haida of the Canadian Pacic coast (see Fig. 5d). The prominent curving upper canines could refer to the ursine as easily as to any of the other animals previously proposed. n is the mask-like pattern of ophidian One nal noteworthy characteristic of El Lanzo lines radiating outwards from the eyes. The spectacled bears facial markings also resemble a mask, a powerful resonance for cultures in which masks are important means of connecting to the spirit world (Romero 1993). Bear masks most frequently encountered in n, especially the nose, smile, eccentric Bolivia today exhibit striking similarities to El Lanzo pupils, canines, muzzle decoration and radiating eye-lines (see Fig. 6). Signicantly, an observer from outside the culture would not readily identify this mask as a bear, yet inside the culture this identication is unequivocal.
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Disentangling the ursine and feline in the Andean symbolic order The linguistic interconnectedness of bears and large felines is clear. The Quechua word otorongo or uturunco usually refers to a mythical feline, but also to the bear in parts of the n 1922: 507). In Venezuela, pumas are described as a Andes such as Ayacucho (Valdizo yellow bear with a round face (Herrera et al. 1994: 150). In Peruvian Amazonas, bears are black pumas and they share the fearful strength and super-human powers that characterise (the large cats) (Taylor 1997: 451). The Quechua word puma is used adjectivally to denote predator status and animal power (Taylor 2006: 77) but on its own can refer to bear, puma Felis concolor or jaguar (Jacobs 2006: 276). Thus, the linguistic connections between bears and felines arise because they share the perceptual category of large predators (see Saunders 1998b: 24). In Apolobamba, as in Chachapoyas, bears and pumas are related in speech and, therefore, most likely also at a conceptual ethno-classicatory level. An informant in Amarete explicitly stated: The bear (jukumari) and the puma (machu kara) are the same. The bear is like the shadow of the puma but the bear is the stronger half (Paisley in prep.). Throughout Apolobamba, bears and pumas were often substituted for each other mid-story, suggesting that, as elsewhere, Western zoological distinctions were not operative (Paisley in prep.; Taylor 1997: 452). As the two largest members of the Carnivora in the high Andes, bears and pumas share strength, size and impressive canines, yet further comparison provides many contrasts: dark versus light; diurnal versus nocturnal; bulky and plantigrade versus sleek and digitigrade; omnivore versus obligate carnivore. These contrasts may lend themselves to the tendency for dynamic dualism between an opposed yet complementary pair, that ancient and peculiarly South American cognitive and cultural style. It is useful to try to disentangle the visual features dierentiating these animals. In the case of the jaguar and ocelot, their mottled pelage is an obvious indicator. Otherwise, feline images are commonly characterized by long sigmoid tails, sinuous bodies, digitigrade paws, short curving pointed claws, at facial proles, prominent canines and the pendant eye, where dark fur over the eye creates a rm brow from which the pupil seems to hang (Cooke 1998: 92; Cordy-Collins 1998: 156).

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In contrast, the bear has no visible tail, a bulky body, plantigrade feet, long relatively blunt claws, a lengthier muzzle, markings on the face and chest and rather small and seemingly weak eyes. In the northern hemisphere the long tongue is often selected for depiction. The ability to stand is also a key diagnostic feature. Whatever the features and artistic conventions used to depict them, it is certainly the case that bears are almost never recognizably depicted in pre-Columbian Andean art, whereas feline images are common. It may be the case however that hidden ursine symbolic meaning is cloaked within the overtly feline. Sixteenth-century Andean peoples were described as worshipping both bears and large felines. There is also strong evidence of ethnoclassicatory inter-connectedness between ursine and feline. The idea that the bear is the half of the puma that is in shadow comes to mind again when considering Chav n, where the thirteen unmistakeable feline gures adorn the external circular plaza of the Old  1979: 84), El Temple and appear to be attendants of the central personage (Kano n, the one clear depiction of a bear in all of Andean iconography. Lanzo n, if bears were depicted at all it may be in highly coded form. Thus, Beyond El Lanzo what has been interpreted as the total absence of bears from pre-Columbian iconography may be the jaguars, pumas and bears being depicted and venerated as one. As Urton put it: The universe of the Quechuas is not composed of a series of discrete phenomena and events, but rather there is a powerful synthetic principle underlying the perception and ordering of objects and events in the physical environment . . . [in terms of] iconography, we could develop a more coherent approach to the study of animal motifs in Andean art from Chav n times onwards. (Urton 1981: 126) The bear in Andean cosmology: a synthetic model In many parts of Peru and Bolivia, bears play an enigmatic but profound and in some ways dominant role in contemporary culture. Yet, in typical imperialist ideological style, any ethnographic salience recognized has been largely dismissed as a Spanish import and the bear has been considered insignicant in the Andean cosmo-vision as backed up by its virtual non-existence in historic and prehistoric visual culture. Although more work on the architecture of ursine symbolism in the Andes is required, we can now begin to discern some basic symbolic associations, the most obvious of which concerns mediation. Bears seem both human-like and animal-like; they span habitat types. When a mother dens with her cubs, she occupies the underworld or ukhupacha an association with caves and subterranean places whose potent symbolism is well documented throughout the Americas (Ryan 1999: 72). Likewise, to arrive in the presence n, one must also enter the ukhupacha via dark, disorienting subterranean of El Lanzo passages. The mother bear emerges with her cubs to inhabit the surface world, whether on land, in water or in trees. Ukukus at Qoyllur Riti climb the glaciers, serving as mediators n, one paw raised and one lowered, embodies mediation. between realms just as El Lanzo The second symbolic association concerns fertility human and agricultural. There are innumerable ethnographic and ethnohistoric associations between bears and fertility.

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Their connection with agricultural fertility may well spring from sharing an omnivorous diet with people, in particular the fondness for maize, a crop of great economic and ceremonial importance from pre-Columbian times. Fertility connections occur with Qoyllur Riti, where glacial ice is used to bring forth the fertility of the earth and with El n, which resembles the chaki taklla, or Andean foot plough. Lanzo Animation is another compelling symbolic dimension. Though immobile, the cult image n might have been made to seem alive by the eects of sound, liquid and light. of El Lanzo In pre-Columbian and modern times, there is a strong disinclination to represent bears in static material culture such as architectural adornment. Reinforcing this point is the fact that in Apolobamba, bear skulls, carefully tended on altars, must not be left still, forgotten or abandoned, but rather should always be in motion, taken outside as saints and other sacred objects are taken on processions and promenades (Paisley in prep.). This suggests that bear body parts are required to be animated, physically and spiritually, by human (male) agency. Artefacts depicting bears in the Andes today are almost exclusively masks and costumes, animated through dance. The supreme animation of bear costumes, of course, is the great death-defying trek of the ukuku at Qoyllur Riti. The identication and re-identication of the animals represented at Chav n de Huantar is not new, and some key theories about Chav n have arisen from this process. Donald Lathrap, in particular, argued that felines, snakes and birds could be identied to the species level, and that these species were native to the lowland forests whence the Chav n culture must therefore have arisen (Tello 1960; Lathrap 1971). There has long been a consensus that theirs was a cosmos inhabited by fearsome creatures entirely foreign to the daily lives of the Chav n farmer or artisan (Miller and Burger 1995: 454). In the reappraisal presented here, it is suggested that those who rst imagined and created the iconographical universe of Chav n, venerated a supernatural who walked among them in animal form, who could be encountered in any of the vertical ecological zones in which they lived and worked, who had a diet like their own, sharing even their fondness for maize. This suggests they did not, as has been previously concluded, have a policy of intentional exclusion of locally inspired symbols (Miller and Burger 1995: 454). The data presented here all point to the rejection of the rst hypothesis, that bears were not depicted because they were not symbolically important. But the question remains: why would people resist making icons or images of an animal so salient in historical and contemporary culture? The second hypothesis, that a taboo has been in place seems selfevident, but what of the third, the idea that this taboo has a specic identiable origin? n can be seen as a bear, or bear-human hybrid, we must consider the If El Lanzo intriguing possibility that a taboo against depicting bears originated in deference to this principal deity of Chav n, and that this taboo held long after its origin had been forgotten. Moreover, Chav n, one of the most important pilgrimage centres in the history of the Andes, had bear imagery at its core some 3000 years ago, echoing Qoyllur Riti, the main pilgrimage in the Andes today. The symbolic importance of the bear has been overlooked due to a combination of factors: the very taboo against depiction which made it all but invisible; the Spanish and their campaigns of extirpation of idolatry; and perhaps also a harder to substantiate blind spot among the experts where bears were concerned. Despite this, although the image of the bear is, as among the Inuit and Nordic peoples, fragmented, diused and evanescent, it seems that the ukukus of Qoyllur Riti,

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mask-makers in the markets of La Paz and storytellers throughout the Andes have kept alight the embers of a once intense pre-Columbian veneration of the bear. Susanna Paisley School of Anthropology and Conservation, The University of Kent S.Paisley@kent.ac.uk Nicholas J. Saunders Department of Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Bristol Nicholas.Saunders@bris.ac.uk

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Susanna Paisley is Director of Development and lectures at the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology in the School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent. Her research centres on the anthropology and archaeology of large carnivorehuman interaction, particularly where there are implications for conserving endangered species. Nicholas J. Saunders is a course co-ordinator in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Bristol. His current research interests include the anthropological archaeology of twentieth-century conict, the material culture symbolism of light and colour in pre-Columbian and native America, and eldwork projects in southern Jordan and at Nazca, Peru.