The Moche Lima Beans Recording System Revisited by Tomi S Melka - Folklore v45 2010 pp 89-136.pdf - Pisma prekolumbijskie - różne - garnett5

THE MOCHE LIMA BEANS RECORDING

SYSTEM, REVISITED

Tomi S. Melka

Abstract : One matter that has raised sufficient uncertainties among scholars

in the study of the Old Moche culture is a system that comprises patterned

Lima beans. The marked beans, plus various associated effigies, appear painted

by and large with a mixture of realism and symbolism on the surface of ceramic

bottles and jugs, with many of them showing an unparalleled artistry in the

great area of the South American subcontinent. A range of accounts has been

offered as to what the real meaning of these items is: starting from a recrea-

tional and/or a gambling game, to a divination scheme, to amulets, to an appli-

cation for determining the length and order of funerary rites, to a device close to

an accountancy and data storage medium, ending up with an ‘ideographic’, or

even a ‘pre-alphabetic’ system.

The investigation brings together structural, iconographic and cultural as-

pects, and indicates that we might be dealing with an original form of mnemo-

technology, contrived to solve the problems of medium and long-distance com-

munication among the once thriving Moche principalities. Likewise, by review-

ing the literature, by searching for new material, and exploring the structure

and combinatory properties of the marked Lima beans, as well as by placing

emphasis on joint scholarly efforts, may enhance the studies.

Key words : ceramic vessels, communicative system, data storage and trans-

mission, fine-line drawings, iconography, ‘messengers’, painted/incised Lima

beans, patterns, pre-Inca Moche culture, ‘ritual runners’, tokens

“ Como resultado de la falta de testimonios claros ,

todas las explicaciones sobre este asunto parecen in-

útiles ; divierten a la curiosidad sin satisfacer a la

razón .” [Due to a lack of clear evidence, all explana-

tions on this issue would seem useless; they enter-

tain the curiosity without satisfying the reason]

von Hagen (1966: 157).

INTRODUCTION

The Spanish Jesuit missionary José de Acosta (1940 [1590]) quoted by Rafael

Larco Hoyle (1944: 59), Ann P. Rowe & John H. Rowe (1996: 463), and numer-

ous modern authors (Larco Hoyle 1942: 93–94; von Hagen 1966: 157; Donnan

1978: 2; 1992: 11; Zuidema 1991: 151; Bawden 1996: 143; Phipps 1996: 154;

Folklore 45

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Tomi S. Melka

Kaulicke Roermann 2000: 45; Salomon 2004: 23; Brokaw 2005: 572; Pillsbury

2005: 9; 1 Bourget 2006: 1), have drawn attention to the fact that no true writ-

ing system, i.e. basically phonetic in content, was found among the pre-Con-

quest ethnic groups dwelling in what corresponds today to the Peruvian state.

The northern coastal valley areas of Perú, witness to the emergence, develop-

ment and fall of the Moche, Lambayeque (Sicán) and Chimú cultures (see von

Hagen 1966: 39; Banks 1980: 8; del Busto Duthurburu 1983: 141; Berezkin

1983: 7; Bawden 1983: 215; Benson 1992: 303–304; Shimada 1994: 1; Donnan

1996: 123, 2005: 128; Cordy-Collins 1996: 223; Moseley 2001: 172; Valle Álvarez

2004: 11; Pillsbury 2005: 11; Kaulicke 2006: 85; Bourget 2006: 4, Castillo But-

ters & Uceda Castillo 2008: 707–708), are geographically part of this defined

territory.

The salvage of a good number of earthenware vessels – mainly shaped in a

distinctive globular form – in the course of archaeological diggings, or as a

result of chaotic looting across sites and acquisitions by different private col-

lectors or museums of the world, has provided scholarship among other things,

with examples of patterned drawings and incisions. Without doubt, undecorated

and plain vessels exist and must have existed (Donnan 1992: 11); however,

since they are short of elements that constitute evidence for our study, they

will be discounted. At first glance, the illustrated vessels of the Moche appear

to have had some artistic function, related to a commemorative and display

function (see Banks 1980: 51). Yet, the fact that they might have been in some

way utilitarian is not entirely ruled out. Under specific circumstances arranged

by elite groups, i.e. feasting and commensal tournaments at ceremonial centers,

they possibly served as containers to hold water or chicha (see, e.g., Donnan &

McClelland 1999: 19; Swenson 2006: 126, 128, 132, 134), a popular beverage

made of maize, somewhat akin to the ancient Greek hydrias (water jars) and

kantharos (drinking pots/cups), or in another instance, to the Græco-Roman

amphorae regularly and mostly filled with wine, olive oil, water, or honey.

Banks (1980: 51) in his turn, plainly dispels claims of similar nature by stating

that “ for ordinary purposes gourds served as drinking vessels ” among the Moche

population. 2 In some of the fine quality pottery found – Larco Hoyle (1942: 95)

gives notice of more than four hundred pieces of ceramics – are shown chro-

matic (see Donnan 1978: 10), human or humanized figures and kidney-shaped

Lima beans, anthropomorphous and not, of different sizes. The reassembling

and the further study of the preserved material give us also an idea that such

rendering was not done for mere ornamental or amusement purposes (see

Larco Hoyle 1942), though a degree of ritualistic function should also be taken

into account. Larco Hoyle (1944: 57; 1966a: 98; 2001 [1938]: 145–169), driven to

some extent by a desire to endow the ancient Peruvians with a graphic code

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The Moche Lima Beans Recording System, Revisited

“… por rudimentaria que fuera …” [however rudimentary it was] (Larco Hoyle

2001 [1938]: 145; see also Ibarra Grasso 1953; Naville 1966: 43–48; de la Jara

1970: 27–35; 1975: 41–71; Barthel 1976: 27–55; Totten 1985: 63–66; Prada

Ramirez 1994; Rowe & Rowe 1996: 463; Arellano 1999; Kaulicke Roermann

2000: 44–47), was the first to suggest “… un sistema ideográfico de escritura …”

[an ideographic writing system] underlying the patterns in question. Since the

Moche developed a complex, formidable civilization over a time-span of nearly

900 years [ ca . 150–100 BC – ca . 800–850 AD ], – if one cares to employ the multi-

ple reference sources, the time variation comprises periods between 600 and

800 years – he regarded as natural the fact that they possessed a singular

system which “… reflected and transmitted the human thought ” (1944: 57),

probably by recording economic transactions, lists of commodities and other

key social, religious, military and/or natural acts. Larco Hoyle (1944: 59–60)

approaches the system in a comparative manner while finding “… analogías

valiosas …” […valuable analogies…] between Maya glyphs and the Moche painted

beans, which may be helpful in studying the relations and the origins of the

cultures in the pre-Inca South America. Without denying the significance and

the interest the notion raises by itself, caution is urged at this point, most of

all when two long-ago different communicative systems (graphic and symbolic)

are compared on the basis of external analogies. In addition, Mesoamerican

Maya glyphs have been shown to enclose a strong content of speech (see Coe

1992; Houston et al. 2001), while the combinatorial mechanisms of the Moche

Lima beans’ system are still unknown, and their precise undertones are with

any luck speculated, but not yet established. Eventually, despite antedating

the Spanish discovery of 1492 and succeeding colonization, I should say that

enforcing resemblances in terms of common origin and further similar devel-

opments between Maya glyphs – or other scripts – and the Moche mottled

beans in order to make any compelling case, will not proceed. The stance in

itself is explicable given the aspirations to grant graphic status to groupings of

symbols or imagery that appears incised, engraved, stamped or painted in vari-

ous media, on nationalistic, political, private, or on other grounds. The under-

standing here is that the professional literature at hand is not abundant, hence

without forwarding substantial proof – based on original research – about such

status, the approach may lead authors to a pitfall that needs to be avoided.

The aim of this paper is to review the existing opinions in the field and re-

target the marked Lima beans under the focus of a possible structural ap-

proach, though without dismissing the classical iconographic approach, whose

value has been every so often stressed (see Larco Hoyle 1942; Barthel 1976:

28; 3 Donnan 1978, 1992, 1996; Shimada 1994: 22–27; Castillo Butters 2000:

5–6; Kaulicke 2006: 87; Bourget 2006: 2–64; McClelland & McClelland et al.

Folklore 45

Tomi S. Melka

2007). Likewise, it will be also important to look at the parallel view that

generally, non-alphabetic, and in particular, the mnemonic-oriented or the ac-

countancy systems are not crude doodling or primitive schemes in the evolu-

tionary scale of scripts (see Imbelloni 1942: 216–217; Barthel 1976; Sampson

1985: 28–39, 46–61; Gaur 1987: 25–26; Schmandt-Besserat 1994; Boltz 1994:

22–23; Mignolo 1994: 293–313; Bouissac 1994: 362–365; Brown 1998: 11–28;

Arellano 1999; Arellano Hoffmann & Schmidt 2002: 14; Houston 2004: 282;

Corliss 2005: 159–166; Damerow 2006). They appear to be a characteristic and

resourceful offshoot, unexplored in depth (see Brokaw 2005: 573), and not al-

ways and necessarily related to the next stage of progress in universal scribal

practices. Under this perspective, the research is able to bring to light the

examined system as an efficient “ information exchange system ” (Kulmar 2008),

able to work out administrative and non-administrative problems, within the

framework of a dynamic pre-industrial society as the Old Moche polities were.

CURRENT DATA AND RELATED ISSUES

The extant corpora of the marked and/or incised beans appear mainly on earth-

enware or baked clay containers intended for storage, serving, or funerary

offerings, and in a similar manner in textiles (Larco Hoyle 1942, 1944), in

which Moche artists had reached mastery. For certain, these data have been

retrieved in the course of the years as chance would have it. The painted and

designed pottery is in part a direct and expressive testimony of the life and

history of the Moche, and it has been – at length

or not – commented upon in several sources

through the years (Larco Hoyle 1942: 94; 1944:

60; 1966a: 94–96; Sawyer 1966; von Hagen 1966:

85–91; the Queens Museum Exhibition 1975:

Figure 1 . A Moche stirrup spout bottle with series of

beans displaying different patterns.

The state of preservation and the quality lead us to

believe that the object was intended for offering pur-

poses and not for domestic use. The observation, plausi-

ble as it seems, requires more comprehensive evidence in

order to be confirmed or otherwise falsified, see Berniere’s

(2010) discussion. The photo of the artifact (catalogued

ML002479), is reprinted with the kind permission of

Museo Larco, Lima, Perú, specifically from Arql. Isabel

Collazos Ticona.

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The Moche Lima Beans Recording System, Revisited

2–3; Barthel 1976: 27–28; Donnan 1978: 10; 1992: 11, 4 69; 1996: 126–141; 2005:

127–139; Banks 1980; Berezkin 1983; del Busto Duthurburu 1983: 152–166;

Bawden 1983: 281–283; Stierlin 1984: 98–102; Gaur 1987: 18–19; Benson 1992:

309–314; Shimada 1994: 16–20; Berrin 1997; Stone-Miller 2002 [1995]: 103–

116; Pillsbury 2005: 9, 5 McClelland & McClelland et al. 2007; Kulmar 2008:

137, Bernier 2010). Indeed, upon analysis, the material’s general appearance

is sufficiently clear.

The apparent reniform – kidney-like – and clustered pictographs (cf. Larco

Hoyle 1942: 100), 6 though not geometrically simple, do not offer the intricacy

of other established or unknown scripts where at times there is difficulty in

“… distinguishing “ noise ” from meaningful data , particularly when the object is

broken or degraded ” (Hunt & Lundberg et al. 2001). The terms ‘ marked beans ’,

‘ mottled beans ’, ‘ painted beans ’ and ‘ incised beans ’ will be alternated in this

essay. However, they basically point at the same event: Lima beans potentially

used by the Moche around pre-Inca northern coastal Peru as carriers of mean-

ingful information, whose surface was fashioned in a rich variety of patterns.

As for the words ‘ text / s ’, ‘ inscription / s ’, ‘ scribe ’, and ‘ grammar ’, from this point

onwards they will be let alone since they take as fact encoded speech, epigra-

phy and other script-related activities. For lack of a better method, the exami-

nation was made by eye in any available sample of given length. Vase paint-

ings, or better said, the recovered images have been compared to ensure con-

sistency and objectivity in the study, since the drawings are not identical due

to the tridimensional nature of the artifacts, i.e. ceramics, and also due to the

individual or stylistic differences of the authors (see, e.g., Bouissac 1994: 357

on the need of “ a closer examination of the data on the site rather than on

drawings made by a biased researcher …”). Thus, the current analysis refers to

reproduced images or fine-line re-drawings of ceramic pots and bottles, pub-

lished up to now by individuals or institutions, actually all of them eligible

sources (see Imbelloni 1942: 225; Larco Hoyle 1942: 102–103; 2001 [1938]: 147–

149, 151–152, 155–158, 160–161, 164–165; von Hagen 1966: 153, 156, 158; de la

Jara 1970: 33; Donnan 1978: 74–76; 1996: 141; Banks 1980: 27; Berezkin 1983:

13, 82; del Busto Duthurburu 1983: 151–156; Stierlin 1984: 91; Gaur 1987: 19;

Benson 1992: 313; Berrin 1997: 142–144; Shimada 1994: 18; Moseley 2001: 189;

Klauer 2004; Bourget 2006: 36–37; McClelland & McClelland et al. 2007: 76–85,

94, 131, 176; Museo Larco 2010; The Metropolitan Museum of Art 2010). The

importance of the fine-line paintings in studying the Moche culture has been

highlighted by Christopher Donnan (1996: 124) and Michael E. Moseley (2001:

184), “ Because fine-line paintings can portray many figures interacting , they

provide our fullest record of iconographic characters and their behavior .” At

this juncture it should be stated that the accuracy of observations and conclu-

Folklore 45

The Moche Lima Beans Recording System Revisited by Tomi S Melka - Folklore v45 2010 pp 89-136.pdf

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