In Mesoamerica, it is often said that all of the subsequent cultures owe a debt to the great Olmec civilisation, which set the pattern for art, architecture, religion and culture. For the civilisations of the Andes – the Inca in particular – the great common ancestor was the Chavín culture. Perhaps centred on the archaeological site of Chavín de Huántar, high in the Andes Mountains. Little is known about the Chavín, who left no writings. Our limited knowledge must instead be inferred from the various artistic and archaeological remains which survive to us from the scattered Chavín sites across what is now Peru. And what survives is indeed remarkable. The so-called Great Temple at Chavín de Huántar, for example, was protected from the torrential Andean rainy season by a complex series of water channels and drains. As archaeologists discovered during one particularly heavy downpour, the rumbling of the water through these channels seemed to make the entire temple roar, like the call of the jaguar. We must presume that this represents a deliberate attempt to animate the stones of the temple in the service of some kind of jaguar god.

The artistic output of the Chavín is divided into various subcategories, which have lately been the subject of considerable archaeological debate. The classification of Chavín artworks into ‘coastal Chavín’ and ‘inland Chavín’, or ‘Old Temple’ and ‘New Temple’, have lately given way to classifications like Cupisnisque and Tembladera. One of the characteristic forms of Chavín art was the ‘stirrup vase’, which by some estimates makes up 56% of the total pottery assemblage from Chavín sites. These vases consist of a globular body, from which two necks rise, meeting in the middle, and thereafter rising to a single spout. These vessels are mysterious; their function is as-yet unknown. Predominantly decorated with motifs that reflect the interaction between human and animal, the clear suggestion is that they had some kind of religious or spiritual function.

This highly-accomplished stirrup vessel displays a motif which frequently recurred in Chavín art: the feline and cactus. On the ‘front’ of the vessel, a small feline crouches, naturalistically posed, and with his body picked out in brown pigment. The cat features banded ankles, which are more properly a characteristic of the gato montés (South American wildcat. Felis sylvestris sylvestris) than the jaguar (Panthera onca). His face looks out towards the viewer, with winged eyes which are a characteristic of the north-coast or Tembladera style. The feline does not display the spots and roundels commonly associated with the jaguar in Chavín art. Around the outside of the vessel rise various cacti, sprouting from the bottom of the vase, and from small brown-coloured steps. The cactus represented here is most likely the San Pedro cactus (Trichocereus pachanoi), a plant used in the traditional medicine of the Moche, Nazca and Chavín cultures. A source of the psychotropic drug mescaline, the San Pedro cactus was probably used in various hallucinogenic rituals to connect with ancestors or the spirit world. The rest of the semi-spheroid globular body is covered in punctuating marks, leading up to the brown-painted stirrup spout. Given the presence of the San Pedro cactus on this vessel, it is possible that it was used to dispense a tea brewed from the sap of the cactus for psychedelic rituals. Alternatively, it has been proposed that stirrup vessels were designed to hold chicha (corn beer), which was the endemic drink of the Andes. The stirrup shape may have had a practical function, preventing the rapid evaporation of the contents at high altitudes.

References: an exceptionally close parallel to this stirrup vessel can be found in Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago 2000.322); another well-published ‘feline and cactus’ vessel can be found in Baltimore (Walters Art Museum 48.2832).