Chimú culture

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For the organization (state) of the Chimu culture, see: Chimor

Chimú Gold apparel. 1300 A.D. Larco Museum, Lima-Perú

The Chimú were the residents of Chimor with its capital at the city of Chan Chan, a large adobe city, in the Moche valley of Trujillo, Peru. The Inca ruler Tupac Inca Yupanqui led the campaign which conquered just fifty years before the arrival of the Spanish in the region. Spanish chroniclers were able to record accounts of Chimú culture from individuals who had lived before the Inca conquest. Archaeological evidence suggest that Chimor grew out of the remnants of the Moche culture; early Chimú pottery had some resemblance to Moche pottery. Their ceramics are all black and their metalwork is very detailed and intricate.

The Chimú were also known for worshiping the moon, unlike the Inca who worshiped the sun. The Chimu viewed the sun as a destroyer. This is likely due to the harshness of the sun in the desert environment they lived in. Offerings played an important role in religious rites, and one common object for offerings as well as an item used by artisans was the shell of the Spondylus shellfish, which lives only in the warm coastal waters off Ecuador and is associated with the sea, rainfall, and fertility. It was highly valued and traded by the Chimú^[1].

Pendant made of Spondylus shell and turquoise, 900-1470 CE (Dumbarton Oaks Museum, Washington, DC).

The Chimú are best known for their distinctive monochromatic pottery and fine metal working of copper, gold, silver, bronze, and tumbago (copper and gold). The pottery is often in the shape of a creature, or has a human figure sitting or standing on a cuboid bottle. The shiny black finish of most Chimú pottery is not achieved by using glazes, but instead is achieved by firing the pottery at high temperatures in a closed kiln which prevents oxygen from reacting with the clay.

Chimú vessel showing a sexual act (Museum of the Americas, Madrid, Spain).

In William S. Burroughs' novel Queer, while the protagonist is visiting Guayaquil, Ecuador, he refers to the city as "the area of the ancient Chimu pottery, where salt shakers and water pitchers were nameless obscenities: two men on all fours engaged in sodomy formed the handle for the top of a kitchen pot."^[2] There are, in fact, several examples of Chimú pottery depicting homosexual acts.

[edit] References

^ Chimú, in: Encyclopedia of Prehistory, vol.7 "South America", edited by Peter Neal Peregrine, Melvin Ember, Springer (2001)
^ Burroughs, William S. (1985), Queer, New York: Penguin Books, p. 94-95, ISBN 0-14-00-8389-8