Exhibition of Tiwanaku ritual artifacts at CAF Artspace

(La Paz, March 27, 2009) - The Andean Development Corporation will exhibit in the CAF Artspace Gallery, from March 30 to April 17, 2009, the most representative pieces of a set of archaeological artifacts of Tiwanaku filiation which were found in 1998 close to the locality of Amaguaya in La Paz department.

The exhibit, open to the general public, presents the The Amaguaya Bundle which is believed to have belonged to a Tiwanaku religious or medical man. This set of ancestral pieces was recovered from a rocky shelter at 4,000 meters on a mountain close to the Amaguaya community, in Larecaja province. The religious healing objects were carefully hidden by their owner over 1,000 years ago and accidentally discovered by Fausto Pilco, local community leader.

It is considered that the find of The Amaguaya Bundle is a fundamental contribution to the scientific knowledge of the therapeutic practices of the Tiwanaku culture. The most outstanding objects of the ceremonial set to be exhibited in the CAF Artspace include an inhalation tablet, carved in wood and designed iconographically with an anthropomorphic being: the figure of a kneeling personage with ornamentation allusive to a trophy head and a beheader.

The tablet, with a hide pouch, is one of the largest of its type. Tablets are thought to have been used in ancestral cultures for inhalation of hallucinogens, evidencing the importance of the use of psychotropic substances in the spiritual and religious life of the Tiwanaku probably since the start of the culture (1500 BC) and mainly at its highest point and expansion (from 300 to 1250 AD).

The Tiwanaku Bundle is composed of several organic artifacts (pouches, leather bags, textiles and woolen fibers) which are generally very well conserved considering that they were made from biological materials.