The first known pottery of Yarinacocha is far from primitive. It consists mainly of bowls, mostly with complex outlines. Large open bowls with a broad labial flange, concave sides, and in some cases a second flange where side meets base, could have been cooking pots. Small bowls with inward-sloping sides meeting the rounded base at a sharp angle could have served for drinking; and a shallow bowl, with rounded base meeting the low, slightly outsloping concave sides at a lesser angle, may have been a plate for solid food. There are shards from large urns that may have served for brewing cassava beer. Decoration of finely hatched or cross-hatched geometrical areas, outlined by broad incised lines, occurs on most vessels, and one has a similarly executed feline face. In spite of severe weathering, postfired red paint, later so characteristic of the south coast, is found on some vessels. The Early Horizon
The Early Horizon emerged after the appearance and rapid spread of the Chavín art style, ending the regional isolation of the Initial Period. The Chavín art style derives its name from the ruined temple complex of Chavín de Huántar in the Andean highlands of central Peru. The dates suggested for the emergence of the style beyond the environs of the temple, however, vary among scholars. Rowe dated it from 1400 bc, while Lumbreras suggested 850 bc; and the very designation of Chavín as a horizon has been challenged. But even those who have most favoured dropping the concept of horizon for this period have noted that in about 1000 bc there was an invasion of highlanders into the coastal Casma Valley who brought with them radically different architectural styles, ceramics, and food plants and animals that supplanted those in the valley; such a penetration was clearly a unification of the coast and the highlands into a single polity.
Chavín came to cover most of the north and centre of Peru, and its influence affected a good part of the south coast, excluding only the southern highlands. The art style, which is regarded as the expression of a cult, is expressed in painted textiles (of which few have survived), in pottery, and chiefly in stone carvings. Archaeologists at one time generally agreed that the chief object of worship was a cat, probably the jaguar, but this has been questioned, although many natural bird, animal, and human forms had feline mouths and other attributes. Feline representations were widespread, whereas some unquestioned deities were confined to the immediate neighbourhood of Chavín. Chavín monuments and temples
Most Chavín temples seem to have been ceremonial centres without people living around them, although the complex at Chavín itself seems to have been accompanied by a considerable town. The remainder appear to have been focuses for scattered settlements. The most elaborate temple known is that at Chavín, which lies at an elevation of 10,530 feet on a tributary of the Marañón River, east of the Callejón de Huaylas district of the Santa River. The temple consists of a group of stone platforms formed of rubble faced by walls of coursed masonry in which two thin courses alternate with one thick one. They are honeycombed with galleries running parallel to the walls at different levels and ventilated by shafts. The oldest part of the temple is a U-shaped structure, with the open top of the U facing east; the rectangular central arm contains a cruciform gallery, at the crossing of which stands a remarkable prismatic shaft of white granite, some 15 feet high, carved in low relief to represent a standing human figure with snakes typifying the hair and a pair of great fangs in the upper jaw.
This figure, which has variously been called El Lanzón, the Great Image, and the Smiling God, is thought to have been the chief object of worship in the original temple. The southern arm of the temple was subsequently twice widened by rectangular additions, into which some of the original galleries were prolonged. After the second addition, the two were joined by a freestanding facade having a central portal with a lintel supported on two cylindrical columns. The lintel bears 14 eagles in low relief, supplied with feline jaws with prominent fangs behind the beak, and each column is entirely covered by a mythical bird bristling with feline fangs and faces. These have been interpreted as attendants of the god worshiped in that part of the temple, who had perhaps superseded the Smiling God and could have been the god shown on the Raimondi Stone, now in Lima. The stone shows the Staff God, a standing semihuman figure having claws, a feline face with crossed fangs, and a staff in each hand. Above his head, occupying two-thirds of the stone, is a towering, pillarlike structure fringed with snakes and emerging from a double-fanged face, which Rowe interpreted as a symbolic treatment of his hair as a tongue coming out of a mouth. Unlike the Smiling God, this figure has been found in areas as far from Chavín as the northern and southern coasts of Peru. Except for the columns, which are of black slate, the stones of the facade are light in colour on the south side and dark on the north. East of the facade is a small sunken court of the same period, which contained a number of slabs with carvings in low relief, and to the east of this is a much larger court surrounded by platforms. Within this court is a square, slightly sunken area, in which was found the Tello obelisk, a rectangular pillar carved in low relief to represent a caiman and covered with Chavín symbolic carvings, such as bands of teeth and animal heads. This is considered to be an object of worship like the Smiling God and Staff God. Carvings found on and around the temple include a cornice of projecting slabs, on the underside of which are carved jaguars, eagles, and snakes, and a number of tenoned heads of men and the Smiling God; they are thought to be decorations or the attendants of gods rather than objects of worship.
On the coast, the temples were built mostly of adobe. In the Nepeña Valley, two temples—Cerro Blanco and Punkurí—differ so much that they must also differ in age, but it is not known which is the earlier. Cerro Blanco is a massive platform of conical adobes and stones, supporting rooms with walls bearing Chavín decoration, including eyes and feline fangs, modeled in mud plaster in low relief and painted red and greenish yellow. Punkurí has a low, terraced platform with a wide stairway on which stands a feline head and paws, modeled from stone and mud, and painted. By the paws was buried a woman, believed to have been sacrificed. At Moxeke and Pallca in the Casma Valley to the south, there are terraced, stone-faced pyramids with stone stairways. The first has niches containing clay-plastered reliefs of mud, stone, and conical adobes showing felines, snakes, and human beings of Chavinoid character painted in polychrome. Also in Casma is a temple at Cerro Sechín, consisting of a series of superimposed platforms with a central stair, on either side of which, at the bottom level, stands a row of irregularly shaped flat stones with incised designs showing standing men carrying clubs, severed heads, and other designs. Lacking Chavín characteristics, these have been interpreted variously as ancestral Chavín or derived from it, the latter being the more plausible. There is a Chavín ceremonial centre at Garagay in the Chillón Valley but none to the south. The pottery of Chavín and Paracas
Chavín pottery is best known from the decorated types found in the galleries in the temple at Chavín and in graves on the northern coast, where it is called Cupisnique. Until the end of the period, the ware was monochrome—dull red, brown, or gray—and hard and stonelike. Vessels were massive and heavy, especially in the early part of the period. The main forms are open bowls with vertical or slightly expanding sides and flat or gently rounded bases, flasks, and stirrup-spouted bottles. The surface may be modeled in relief or decorated by incision, stamping, brushing, rouletting, or dentate rocker-stamping, all of which may be applied to particular zones in contrast with other smooth ones. Some bowls have deeply incised designs on both the inside and outside faces. Many of the forms and decorative features, apart from specifically Chavinoid designs (particularly feline fangs), were already present at Kotosh in the previous phase.