Stirrup-spout Bottle with Geometric Motifs

In 1919, Julio C. Tello, the first Indigenous archaeologist of the Americas, rediscovered the site of Chavín de Huántar in Peru’s northern highlands and in it saw the cultural matrix (cultura matriz) of the Andean civilizations. Long considered a coastal Chavinoid expression, Cupisnique art appeared many centuries before Chavín de Huántar was inhabited. The use of stirrup-spout bottles began on the north coast about the eleventh century B.C.E. and would continue until the Inca period. Through dividing and uniting two streams of liquid, their shape, which in fact is relatively impractical, possibly underscores the importance in the Andes of the notion of complementary duality.