Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
El estudio de la iconografía escatológica producida por los mochicas de la costa norte del Perú prehispánico (ca. 50 A.C.-750 D.C.) coloca en evidencia la presencia de diversos personajes lisiados, y más precisamente figurantes masculinos con un pie o los dos pies faltantes. ¿Cuál fue el significado ideológico y político de este elemento simbólico y su importancia en la dinámica del poder mochica? En las escenas que ilustran el mundo de los vivos, estos lisiados forman parte de un grupo, que he llamado “los Intendentes,” puesto al servicio del dirigente mochica. En las escenas del mundo de los muertos, un lisiado de apariencia esquelética (“el Esqueleto con prótesis”) parece igualmente servir al dirigente fallecido. Poniendo en relación estas representaciones con descubrimientos arqueológicos pertinentes, un análisis contextual permite liberar una figura simbólica mayor de la imaginativa de los mochicas, metonimia del orden social y político, que he llamado el “Personaje del pie amputado.” Pareciera que esta figura pudo simbolizar, a la vez en la iconografía y a la ocasión de ciertas prácticas rituales y de sacrificio, la perennidad de la estructura de poder, especialmente a partir de la fase III y posteriormente. Este tipo de análisis contextual permite estudiar desde un nuevo ángulo los elementos constitutivos de la estructura de poder mochica y da nuevas perspectivas para la comprehensión de la dinámica del poder en las sociedades complejas.
Archaeologists are currently reexamining the relevance of archaeological data for analyzing power relations in complex prehistoric societies. This paper belongs to this stream of thought and concentrates on the Moche people who lived on the northern coast of Peru between ca. 50 B.C. and ca. A.D. 750. In this case study, which is focused on a specific iconographic figure (that I have named “the Personage with an amputated foot”), I use a contextual procedure of analysis, based on a confrontation between archaeological and iconographical documents, in order to understand the complex relations between iconography and power in mortuary contexts.
The figurative motif I focus on here is that of a handicapped male personage that appears with some variations in the iconographical documents and which is mainly characterized by one or two missing feet. In scenes that represent the Moche world of the living, this handicapped figure belongs to a group of specialists that I refer to as “the Stewards”; their duty was to serve the Moche ruler. In scenes related to the Moche world of the dead, this figurative motif appears as a male skeleton wearing a prosthesis replacing his missing foot, and carrying a whip or a stick in his hands. As in the case of the Stewards, this skeleton with a prosthesis seems to be one of the ruler"s major servants. I have related these iconographic elements to archaeological data showing handicapped skeletons in two different mortuary sites (Sipán and Mocollope).
This procedure has allowed me to interpret “the Personage with an amputated foot” as a metonymical figure of the social and political order of Moche society. Indeed, I argue that, by its recurrence in the iconography of both the living and the dead, this figure symbolically transcends life and death, so that it could have been helpful to convince the society of the permanence of its power structure. Accordingly, this contextual analysis is presented as a new way of understanding elements of Moche power dynamics and to open new avenues for studying power-structure perpetuation within complex societies.