Recuay stone monolith, representing a seated cross-legged mummy bundle. Museo Arqueologico de Ancash, Huaraz. (Photo © D. Giannoni).

Recuay material culture

Recuay people were best known for their arts and crafts. Like many groups of the Early Intermediate Period (AD 1-800), Recuay artisans developed a unique visual style across different media that distinguished the culture from their neighbors and contemporaries. Recuay metalwork and weaving rank among the most sophisticated in ancient Peru, but, due to poor preservation of these materials, we currently have very little data to draw solid conclusions. Recuay culture, meanwhile, is best known for their elaborate ceramic vessels and stone sculpture, for which we have a much larger sample of evidence.

Recuay pottery is the hallmark of the style. Some vessels are technical marvels, combining thin oxidized pastes, pre-fire plastic decoration, and multiple stages of polychrome and resist painting. Recuay pots often used a whitish clay, known as kaolinite -- the same type of clay used in porcelain today. The raw material is important because there were limited sources for the clay. Kaolinite fabrics also require higher firing temperatures and likely more elaborate kiln technology. Despite the wide variability in execution, Recuay pottery iconography appears to treat a limited range of themes animated by humans, animals (especially pumas), supernatural figures, and architectural spaces.

Highland Recuay peoples also excelled in the manufacture of monolithic stone sculpture. Alongside the Chavín and Tiwanaku styles, the Recuay style represents one of the most prolific sculptural traditions in Andean prehistory. Artists sculpted both in-the-round and in single-sided bas relief. Depicting important individuals and images of status and cosmology, many sculptures served as structural elements in tombs and other special architectural settings sponsored by important members of Recuay society.

Some of my recent work aims to address how certain dispositions in Recuay art may have developed, and why it took such a distinctive character from other coeval styles, such as Moche or Nasca. The research reinforces the basic association between funerary contexts (where we commonly find Recuay materials) and the imagery (what is depicted on the materials). I argue that many Recuay representations on ceramics and stone sculpture can be intimately related to ancestor veneration, mortuary ritual, and displays of status by community leaders.