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Conch Calls Into the Anthropocene: Pututus As Instruments of Human-Environmental Relations at Monumental Chaviń

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Conch Calls Into the Anthropocene: Pututus As Instruments of Human-Environmental Relations at Monumental Chaviń Yale Journal of Music & Religion Volume 5 Number 2 Music, Sound, and the Aurality of the Environment in the Anthropocene: Spiritual and Article 4 Religious Perspectives 2019 Conch Calls into the Anthropocene: Pututus as Instruments of Human-Environmental Relations at Monumental Chaviń Miriam A. Kolar Amherst College Follow this and additional works at: https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/yjmr Part of the Archaeological Anthropology Commons, Ethnomusicology Commons, and the Other History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons Recommended Citation Kolar, Miriam A. (2019) "Conch Calls into the Anthropocene: Pututus as Instruments of Human- Environmental Relations at Monumental Chavin,́ " Yale Journal of Music & Religion: Vol. 5: No. 2, Article 4. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17132/2377-231X.1151 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by EliScholar – A Digital Platform for Scholarly Publishing at Yale. It has been accepted for inclusion in Yale Journal of Music & Religion by an authorized editor of EliScholar – A Digital Platform for Scholarly Publishing at Yale. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Conch Calls into the Anthropocene: Pututus as Instruments of Human- Environmental Relations at Monumental Chaviń Cover Page Footnote My fieldwork at Chavín has been conducted as a researcher formally associated with the Programa de Investigacioń Arqueologicá y Conservacioń Chaviń de Huantaŕ (PIACCdH -- Chavín de Huántar Archaeology and Conservation Research Program), directed by Dr. John W. Rick with various Peruvian co- directors, authorized by the Ministerio de Cultura del Perú (Peruvian Ministry of Culture). Many thanks to my collaborators and supporters in this long-term investigation. My 2016-17 Weatherhead Fellowship at the School for Advanced Research (SAR) in Santa Fe, NM, contributed significantly ot the development of this work. This article is available in Yale Journal of Music & Religion: https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/yjmr/vol5/iss2/4 Conch Calls into the Anthropocene Pututus as Instruments of Human-Environmental Relations at Monumental Chavín de Huántar Miriam A. Kolar Pututus (conch-shell musical horns) are ing the Anthropocene. I argue that known in the Andes as annunciatory devices Chavín’s site-excavated Strombus pututus enabling their players to call across long were tools for ritual communication distances. However, the sonic and gestural that link diverse ecologies with human versatility possible in pututu performance interventions toward environmental constitutes dynamical evidence for control. Intrinsic to site ritual, the Chavín nuanced archaeological interpretations of pututus were pivotal in the expression these multifaceted and ritually associated of human-ecological (re)positionings. instruments. Pututus were documented Archaeological engagement of both sonic in texts with drawings created during the and environmental concerns is at stake in Spanish conquest and colonization of the my exploration of human-environmental Andes, and intact shell horns have been interdynamics and their conceptualization, excavated from monumental architecture rooted in the material culture of in Perú preceding the Inca by more than monumental Chavín and its setting. The two millennia. At the Andean Formative human-environmental positionality of center at Chavín de Huántar, Perú, whose Chavín’s monumental architecture relates well-preserved ceremonial complex was to the ecological materiality of pututus active during the first millennium b.c.e., in their anthropic transposition from pututus were depicted in stone and on marine animal to (super)human vocal decorated ceramics. To date, 21 intact transformer and proxy: a technology of shell horns have been excavated at this air transformation and wind interaction as UNESCO World Heritage site. The use- well as sound production. Environmental worn, identity-projecting, and symbolically interventions via Chavín architecture notched Chavín pututus provide physical and performance using these multimodal and acoustical evidence for functional instruments manifest strategic realizations interpretations of a multimodal ritual of human dominance while communicating communication technology. In this article, negotiation within its flow-directing I take a cross-disciplinary approach to ritualscape. The Chavín pututus harbor examine the Chavín pututus with respect to cosmological significance whose details site archaeology and its particular Andean are mired in the uncertainty of archaeology, highland setting, exploring the intersection yet whose materiality conveys reference of their materiality and dynamical potential, and function: they are communication in context. instruments that interrelate humans Chavín’s built environment and and ecosystems. In the ancient Andes, associated materials evince past strategies the Chavín pututus functioned as ritual for environmental negotiations that technologies for humans asserting agency foreshadow present-day discourse regard- in ordering their cosmos. 22 Yale Journal of Music & Religion Vol. 5, No. 2 (2019) Foreshadowing the Anthropocene in the relevance to a theme well established Andean Formative Period in archaeology. Patterns of human– A vantage recently hailed as the environmental relationships, especially Anthropocene1 frames my archaeological as site-specific or regional evidence, are case study of ritual sonics at monumental extrapolated diachronically in archaeological Chavín de Huántar. Human-environmental interpretation to explain social shifts and relations were articulated in the material movements of people. Anthropological culture of this Andean gathering center archaeology traces human responses to active 3,000 years ago, epitomized by environmental factors and ecological symbolically potent sound-producing dynamics, primarily through studies of conch shells. In an unorthodox cross- cultural materials and human remains. disciplinary exploration that leverages Material culture offers durable traces of past acoustical science and performance understandings of human–environmental study, I interrelate the following topics: relationships that can only be accessed sonic communication, music making, inferentially, from evidential convergence. religious and ritual practices, experimental Recent, globally scaled discussion and experiential archaeology, human– about human–environmental relationships environmental interactions, and ecological reinforces the relevance of anthropologically conceptualizations. My study draws on focused environmental science. Evaluation twelve years of archaeological research and of the Anthropocene requires scrutiny eight seasons of archaeoacoustical and music not only of its proposed mechanics from archaeology fieldwork I have conducted an Earth-system perspective, but of the at Chavín to reconstruct culture-making factors that drive and enable humans to processes and infer social structures from configure environments, from localized remnant materials in site-contextualized placemaking to broader ecosystemic assemblage. Dynamical analyses of manipulations. Ecological changes due to archaeological materials in the context of human activities have been identified much physical settings reveal the importance of earlier than commonly cited markers of the sonic technologies and musical expression Anthropocene, such as industrialization. to transcendental world-building in the A recent study leveraged data science prehistorical “ritualscape”2 at Chavín. techniques to cross-compare regional Archaeological engagement takes knowledge from over 250 archaeologists diverse forms, from expert scrutiny of with land-use expertise, demonstrating that physical materials to public consumption humans effected global ecological changes of interpretative reconstructions. Present by at least 3,000 years ago, and plausibly issues influence our hindsight; ideologies over the past 10,000 years. This project is and societal preoccupations drive framed as research “toward the common archaeological interpretations. In doing goal of understanding early land use as a archaeology, we construct narratives from driver of long-term global environmental material fragments of past lives, relevant changes across the Earth system, including to our own situations. Discourse regarding changes in climate.”3 In contrast, geologists human-environmental relations with have argued that past climatic events respect to climate change brings heightened demonstrated stratigraphically were Yale Journal of Music & Religion Vol. 5, No. 2 (2019) 23 not driven by humans, albeit human- and cultural materials. Although sound influencing.4 Across fields, debates itself cannot be preserved, things that continue. The complementary study of past make and shape sound persist and can human dealings with their environmental be evaluated in terms of their acoustical relationality requires local specificity, and features and psychoacoustical correlates. produces knowledge on the scale of human Sound-producing instruments enable experience, my focus here. humans to make sound, produce visual Zooming in on the material culture gestures, and articulate environmental of particular archaeological sites entails settings and social proxemics, among detailed examinations that expose evidence other anthropologically significant for past humans’ conceptualizations of functions. Static material culture stands ecological relationships. A shift of research as evidence of human activities in the perspective from numerically focused data
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