Paracas Cavernas and Chavin

Abstract

In a recent review and critique of the Chavín Problem (1), Gordon Willey has listed seventeen ancient Peruvian sites whose remains indisputably affiliate stylistically with the type site oí Chavín de Huántar. Beyond these, he reviews a greater number of sites for which relationship with Chavín has been alleged. These he puts into three classes: 1, No evidence has been presented for the relationship; 2, There is evidence, but it shows similarities in cultural inventory or context, not of the characteristic Chavín Style; 3, Evidence is available but debatable. In this last class Willey puts the Paracas Cavernas pottery of Paracas and Ocucaje. He sees in its dark-ware, flat-bottomed, incised bowls ( 2 ) close similarity with Ancón and Supe Chavín bowls; but this similarity is balanced by the dissimilarities of [a] most of Cavernas cerramics being polychrome, and [b] others being negatively painted (3), a technique never or rarely ocurring in a Chavín context. As for an intised and painted fanged cat-face from Ocucaje, (4) it "lacks the characteristis Chavín rendering".