Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino

Central Andes

• Environment and Geography

• Economy and Technology

• Art

• Social Organization

• Religion and Funerary Practices

• Settlement Pattern

• History

• Environment and Geography

  The Maytas-Chiribaya culture was situated in the fertile Western Valleys of what is now southern Peru, in the territory that extends from the Port of Ilo to the coastal reaches of the Azapa and Lluta valleys in Northern Chile. A few isolated remains of this culture also have been found further south, near Taltal and Caldera.

• Economy and Technology

  The Maytas-Chiribayas were an agricultural people whose main crops were maize, squash, beans, chili peppers and coca. They complemented these and other valley-grown products with marine resources such as seaweed, shellfish, and bird guano. This mixed subsistence pattern is reflected in the grave goods that accompanied their dead, which included implements for farming, fishing and marine gathering. The wide variety of products they had access to allowed them to engage in trade to obtain exotic items from the Altiplano and the eastern Andean rainforests.

• Art

  The Maytas-Chiribaya were expert textile makers, skillfully employing different techniques and designs such as symmetrical stripes with added spiral, hook and triangular elements. These decorative elements would become prevalent in the textile traditions of later cultures inhabiting the same region. Other notable handicrafts include ceremonial spoons and wooden kero cups, four-cornered hats and fire-engraved gourds. Their ceramic tradition included jugs and cups that combined stepped triangular designs stacked vertically, painted in black and white on a red background. In the valleys of southern Peru white points added a unique element to this ceramic tradition.

  The types of ceramic vessels and especially textiles that the Maytas-Chiribaya people made are very similar to those of their contemporaries, the Cabuza people. The fundamental difference is that the Maytas-Chiribaya, as a coastal society, were further away and therefore more removed from the influence of the Tiwanaku Empire.

• Social Organization

  These people had a unified society, which was expressed in their shared material artifacts. Social strata did exist, however, and they may have had elites, but the general understanding is that Maytas-Chiribaya society was divided into an upper and lower class. The latter included the farmers and fishermen, who had a poor diet and suffered from infectious diseases such as pneumonia.

• Religion and Funerary Practices

  The Maytas-Chiribaya shared their cemeteries with the Cabuza people, each with its own well-defined sector. Bodies were placed in a squatting position on a mat at the bottom of a cylindrical pit dug directly into the earth and accompanied by abundant grave goods placed inside the funerary bundles. Some graves have been found with infants and even human placentas deposited in ceramic urns.

• Settlement Pattern

  Most Maytas-Chiribaya villages identified in Chile’s Azapa Valley have been found in the middle and lower reaches, and even on the coast itself. Their cane dwellings were grouped together on artificial terraces carved out of the hillside, sometimes with several hundred in a single place.

• History

  Unlike the Cabuza culture, the Maytas-Chiribaya were a local group that inhabited the Western Valleys during the time of the Tiwanaku Empire. Later, they would blend with the early San Miguel tradition to form the Arica culture.

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