Alexander Herrera Wassilowsky, Isabelle C. Druc, Juan Camilo González Galvis
{"title":"Crafting the voice of God: ceramic waylla kepa shell horn technology in the Andes","authors":"Alexander Herrera Wassilowsky, Isabelle C. Druc, Juan Camilo González Galvis","doi":"10.1016/j.jaa.2022.101470","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper addresses the enchainment of skills and interactions for the production of ceramic shell horns, and the meaning of these musical instruments whose sounds have shaped the ritual soundscapes of the central Andes since the boom in public architecture in the second millennium BC (early Formative Period c. 3800–3300 BP). Linguistic and ethnohistoric reviews shed light on performance practices and meanings at the time of conquest. Contextual analysis of thin sections of ceramic shell horns excavated in Keushu (Yungay, Ancash, Peru) and dated to the Early Intermediate Period and early Middle Horizon (c. 2200–1600 BP) suggests the agency of specialist itinerant potters. Crafting processes are reconstructed by bringing together material analysis (petrography, X-ray tomography, X-ray diffraction), bioarchaeology, studies of instrument organology, and ceramic ethnoarchaeology. Informed by experimental reconstruction distinct modeling techniques are distinguished and crossed with available provenience data to suggest three independently arising traditions or hotspots in northern Ecuador, on the central Andean coast, and in the highlands of northern Peru. The ritual sounds and soundscapes of the latter area are discussed. Like earlier conch horns, ceramic shell horns played a pivotal part in ritual performances that accompanied the development of irrigation-dependent agrarian and pastoral lifeways in the Andes. Enduring symbolic linkages between shell horn sounds, the sea and irrigation water may indeed represent a powerful embodiment of the voice of God.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47957,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Anthropological Archaeology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.0000,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Anthropological Archaeology","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278416522000782","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ANTHROPOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
This paper addresses the enchainment of skills and interactions for the production of ceramic shell horns, and the meaning of these musical instruments whose sounds have shaped the ritual soundscapes of the central Andes since the boom in public architecture in the second millennium BC (early Formative Period c. 3800–3300 BP). Linguistic and ethnohistoric reviews shed light on performance practices and meanings at the time of conquest. Contextual analysis of thin sections of ceramic shell horns excavated in Keushu (Yungay, Ancash, Peru) and dated to the Early Intermediate Period and early Middle Horizon (c. 2200–1600 BP) suggests the agency of specialist itinerant potters. Crafting processes are reconstructed by bringing together material analysis (petrography, X-ray tomography, X-ray diffraction), bioarchaeology, studies of instrument organology, and ceramic ethnoarchaeology. Informed by experimental reconstruction distinct modeling techniques are distinguished and crossed with available provenience data to suggest three independently arising traditions or hotspots in northern Ecuador, on the central Andean coast, and in the highlands of northern Peru. The ritual sounds and soundscapes of the latter area are discussed. Like earlier conch horns, ceramic shell horns played a pivotal part in ritual performances that accompanied the development of irrigation-dependent agrarian and pastoral lifeways in the Andes. Enduring symbolic linkages between shell horn sounds, the sea and irrigation water may indeed represent a powerful embodiment of the voice of God.
期刊介绍:
An innovative, international publication, the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology is devoted to the development of theory and, in a broad sense, methodology for the systematic and rigorous understanding of the organization, operation, and evolution of human societies. The discipline served by the journal is characterized by its goals and approach, not by geographical or temporal bounds. The data utilized or treated range from the earliest archaeological evidence for the emergence of human culture to historically documented societies and the contemporary observations of the ethnographer, ethnoarchaeologist, sociologist, or geographer. These subjects appear in the journal as examples of cultural organization, operation, and evolution, not as specific historical phenomena.