Chavín de Huantar

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This is an article about an archaeological site. For the Peruvian military unit involved in ending the 1997 Japanese embassy hostage crisis, see Chavín de Huantar (military).

Chavín de Huantar is an archaeological site located 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Lima, Peru. The site lies at an elevation of 3177 meters (10,423 feet), beyond the Andean mountain range known as the Cordillera Blanca in Ancash Region. The city's location at the headwaters of Río Marañon, between the coast and the jungle, made it an ideal location for the dissemination and collection of both ideas and material goods.

A detail of the Raimondi Stela. This stela was found out of situ at Chavín de Huantar, and was acknowledged by Pablo Picasso as one of the inspirations for his art.

Chavín de Huantar was initially built by the Chavín, a pre-Moche culture, around 900 BC. The site consists of two main structures, the Old Temple and New Temple. The Old Temple was an inward-facing U-shaped structure with a central court. The court contained obelisks and stone monuments with low relief carvings depicting jaguars, caymans, hawks, and various anthropomorphic forms. The interior of the temple contained a maze of passageways, chambers and water conduits.

The New Temple, constructed between 500 and 200 BC, also contained many relief sculptures and was a more block-like form. A massive stair led up to an elevated landing with a sunken rectangular court. Hidden passageways and platforms allowed priests to miraculously appear above their audiences.

The population in the surrounding areas grew from about 500 in its initial phase to nearly 3,000 between 400 and 200 BC. Several droughts occurred at the time of the occupation of Chavin de Huantar, leading to the increased travel of pilgrims and traders. These natural events, along with the strategic location of the temple site, led to the wide dissemination of the Chavín artistic style and religious beliefs throughout the area that is now known as Peru.

An alternative dating scheme for Chavín has been recently proposed by a team of researchers from Stanford University, which dates the chronology of construction at Chavin a number of centuries earlier, and in particular argues that monumental construction at Chavin ceased well prior to 500 BC.

Some of the Chavín reliefs from this archaeological site are on display in the Museo de la Nacion in Lima. Chavín de Huantar is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. However, the site has suffered structural damage from landslides, erosion, and neglect, and its system of underground galleries are in danger of collapse due to water seepage within the platform mounds. The Global Heritage Fund (GHF) has stated that if properly conserved, Chavín could become "the next Macchu Picchu of Peru", and generate sustainable tourism revenue on a similar scale indefinitely. As a result, the GHF has teamed with Peru's Instituto de Cultura and Stanford University in a program of conservation.^[1]

[edit] Notes

^ Jan Hodder and Jeff Morgan, "The Global Heritage Fund: Saving cradles of civilization", Minerva, 17 no.4 (July/August 2006), pp. 48f.

[edit] References

Rebecca Stone Miller, Art of the Andes, from Chavin to Inca New York: Thames and Hudson, 1995.
Michael E. Moseley, The Incas and their Ancestors New York: Thames and Hudson, 1992.