Body Signs : Body Decoration and Sensory Symbolism in South America

By: David Howes

Sociology and Anthropology

Concordia University Montreal . Quebec

CANADA H3G 1M8

http://artsandscience.concordia.ca/socanth/cv_howes.html
 
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Westerners are accustomed to seeing photographs of native South Americans with elaborately painted bodies or with lips and ears distended by rings and plugs. To the Western eye these decorations may appear to be simply visual display, a "savage" equivalent to Western cosmetics and jewellery. In this paper I will explore how such decoration in fact encodes vital social and cosmological information and multisensory meanings by examining its use within a selection of South American cultures.

The Incas

In the Pre-Columbian Andes, Inca men were distinguished by the wearing of large gold ear ornaments. These ornaments were bestowed on adolescent boys at the end of an elaborate puberty rite. During this rite Inca boys were required to listen to a series of lectures on Inca tradition and morality given by their elders. The piercing of their ears and the insertion of ornaments at the end of the rite served to ensure that the lessons the boys had received would "penetrate" their hearing and be remembered.(1)

At the same time, the ear-piercing ceremony of the Inca puberty rite was designed to "open up" the participants ears to the voice of the Divine. In the oral world of the Andes, where all things were imagined to engage in a cosmic dialogue, the sense of hearing had a particular importance. By wearing prominent ear ornaments, Inca men emphasized their privileged access to sacred orality. Inca men drew attention to their ornamented ears and their superior sense of hearing by keeping their hair short (unlike other men of the region who wore it long).

Sound, in Andean culture was conceptualized as fluid substance and symbolically associated with water. The Inca control over sound, therefore, also indicated a special power over water resources, of great importance in the often arid Andean highlands. One Inca myth illustrates the special ties linking the pierced ears of the Incas with sacred orality and with water resources. The myth relates that when Inca Roca (the sixth ruler of the Incas) had his ears pierced, one of them hurt so much that he went to a hill nearby the capital city of Cuzco seeking relief. While on the hill he prayed that Cuzco might be provided with a badly-needed source of water. As he was praying he heard a clap of thunder, whereupon he lay down, putting his left ear to the ground. While in this position the Inca heard the noise of running water under the earth. He ordered the spot dug up until a spring was found and then had a canal built to carry the water to Cuzco.

In this myth the Incas earache symbolizes both Cuzcos lack of water and the Incas own need for an oral communication from the divine. His ears having been recently pierced, Inca Roca is ready to receive his first experience of sacred orality. This communication comes with a thunderclap, a message from the thunder/lightning god Illapa, signalling the presence of the desired water. The Inca falls to the ground, enabling him to hear the sound of water running underground. Cuzco is thus provided with a new source of water and the Inca establishes a channel of oral communication between himself and the deities, and between the upper world and the underworld. The pierced ears and gold ornaments of the Inca were evidently much more than "body decoration"; they were vital elements - or conduits, as it were - in the maintenance of the Inca social and cosmic order.

The Suya

The Suya of Central Brazil are distinctive for the painted wooden disks they insert in their pierced ears and lips. As in the case of the ear ornaments of the Incas, these disks are accorded to youths after puberty and signal an initiation into adulthood. While both men and women wear ear disks, however, only men wear lip disks. The Suya understand their identity as a people in terms of their lip and ear disks, and their song styles.(2)

The ornmanents worn by the Suya emphasize those faculties which the Suya consider to be pre-eminently social: hearing and speaking. Among the Suya "to hear" means to understand, and the ear is a repository for knowledge. Thus when a Suya has learned something he or she says "it is in my ear". Hearing is also closely related to correct social behaviour and morality. Immoral people among the Suya are those who do not hear/understand.

Speaking is similarly associated with knowledge and social integration by the Suya. An important form of speech is public oratory, which consists of exhorting and instructing members ofthe community to behave in certain ways. Oratory is only spoken by adult men and especially by chiefs and ritual specialists. The highest form of oral expression for the Suya is the song. As with oratory, singing is a largely male concern, and, indeed, a significant portion of mens time is taken up with learning and practising songs.

In contrast to hearing and speaking, the faculties of smell and sight are symbolically anti-social among the Suya. Strong smells and a keen sense of smell are associated with the natural world and with people - primarily women - who are understood to be more closely linked with the natural world. A strong sense of sight is thought to be a characteristic of witches. The relative devaluation of sight in relation to hearing is evidenced by the fact that most Suya singing sessions take place at night, when the singers can be heard, but not seen.

In comparison to hearing, speech, sight and smell, the senses of taste and touch are not symbolically elaborated to any great extent in Suya culture. The only faculties to be marked by ornaments are hearing and speech, and only those persons occupying the highest place in the social ranking - men - manifest this double ornamentation. Children, who are yet to be fully socialized and who do not know how to listen or speak properly, wear no ornaments. Women, whose social role is to listen, not to speak, wear only ear disks.

The distinct characters of speaking and hearing are suggested by the different colours of the lip and ear disks. The red colour of the lip disk is symbolic of dynamic force. The white colour of the ear disk is symbolic of passivity. The relatively low social importance of the eyes and nose is brought out by their lack of ornamentation. The only time that the eyes and nose are decorated by the Suya is on ritual occasions when men attempt to become like animals. At such times they are customarily painted black - the most antisocial of colours.

The Desana

The Desana of the Colombian Amazon paint their faces with a variety of designs according to the occasion. Young men, for example, sometimes decorate their faces with fragrant yellow dots using sap from a tree. When Desana men are about to go fishing they use red pigment mixed with various aromatic saps to paint their faces with fish-like motifs. In the first case the most immediate purpose of the decoration is to attract women, in the second case, to attract fish.(3)

The facial painting of the Desana provide us with a basis for seeing beyond the notion of such body decoration as being purely visual. To start with, the designs painted by the Desana on their faces are aromatic, and thus convey olfactory, as well as visual, messages. It is thus impossible for a photograph, or other means of graphic representation to do these designs justice, on account of their olfacto-visual nature. Such body decorations, however, are often not only multisensory in themselves, they also encode multisensory meanings.

In Desana cosmology life on earth is produced through the medium of different colour energies emanating from the sun. Each colour has distinct associations: yellow is associated with male fertiity, and red, with female fertility; blue is associated with values of transition and communication; and green, with freshness and growth. The Desana visualize the cosmos in terms of layered colours: at the bottom lies the green Paradise, then comes the red earth, then the blue sky, and, on top, the yellow light of the sun.

The Desana make extensive use of colour symbolism, both in their material culture and in their association of colours with actions and concepts. The yellow and blue feathers of crowns, for example, represent male power and divine communication, while the act of procreation is represented by red dots on a yellow background.

The colour symbolism of the Desana is not purely visual, however, for it is synaesthetically integrated into a larger system of sensory symbolism involving temperatures, flavours, odours, sounds and tactilities. For example, in the case of a particular tune played on clay panpipes by young men: "The odor of the tune is said to be male, the color is red, and the temperature is hot; the tune evokes youthful happiness and the taste of a fleshy fruit of a certain tree. The vibrations carry an erotic message to a particular girl".(4) The synaesthetic associations posed by the Desana among sensory stimuli mean that colours inevitably evoke a range of other sensory perceptions.

The Desana believe that all sensory imagery corresponds with sensory codes contained within the brain. The brain, in fact, is sometimes compared by the Desana to a honeycomb, with each hexagonal compartment containing honey of a different colour, odour, flavour and texture, and a different corresponding moral value. Ideally, each sensation perceived by a person should stimulate the corresponding sensory and moral value within the brain.

The colourful designs the Desana paint on their faces, therefore, represent but one aspect of an intricate and integrated multisensory complex of beliefs and practices. What may appear to be a simple pattern of visual markings designed to make a person more attractive, in fact, encodes and evokes a train of sensory associations which begin in the brain and encompass the cosmos.

The Shipibo

The Shipibo of eastern Peru, like the Desana, paint their faces on ritual occasions. The intricate, geometric patterns favoured by the Shipibo for body decoration traditionally also covered their homes, boats, tools, housewares and clothing. Shipibo body art was hence but one aspect of a highlly patterned cultural universe.(5)

While manifested on the body and in material culture, however, the designs of the Shipibo are considered to be spiritual in origin. All of the designs are held to come from a cosmic anaconda whose skin embodies all possible design patterns. This world-snake, called Ronin, is one of the most powerful spirits of the Shipibo cosmos and is said to have a "radiating, electric, vibrating power".(6) The designs emanating from Ronins skin and employed by the Shipibo on their own skin to serve as conduits for this radiating power.

[Figure 3: Geometric design of the Shipibo]

Shipibo designs, in fact, are but external manifestations of patterned sacred energies. Shipibo shamans employ these energy patterns to reorder the bodies of persons who are ill. Since all members of the society are treated in this way from an early age, every individual feels "spiritually permeated and saturated with designs".(7)

The designs of the Shipibo, while extraordinarily eye-catching, are not considered in solely visual terms. The designs are, in fact, interrelated with a range of sensory impressions. This multisensoriality is brought out during the healing ceremony in which the shaman penetrates a patients body and spirit with design energies.

The healing ceremony takes place in an aesthetically-pleasing and culturally meaningful environment. The patient is surrounded by images of geometric designs, by the fragrance of burning tobacco, and by healing songs. The patient may also drink herbal teas, be rubbed with aromatic ointments and have patterns painted on his or her face with fragrant fruit juice. The Shipibo use the term quinquin to refer to such pleasing combinations of sensory beauty with cultural relevance.

The shaman uses his decorated garments to fan away the evil airs of the disease-causing spirit. Certain diseases are thought to be caused by harmful designs which the shaman must magically unravel and wind onto an imaginary spool or destroy and sweep away. The shaman employs a bundle of fragrant herbs to brush away the "mess" the illness has left on the patients body.

In a drug-induced trance the shaman visualizes a luminous design in the air. When this design floats down and touches the shamans lips it becomes transformed into a song which is sung by the shaman and the attending beneficial spirits. Different elements of the song relate to different elements of the design; for example, the end of each verse is associated with the end-curl of a design motif. The song is also said to have a fragrance, which is likened to the aromatic fizz produced by yucca beer. The shaman sings "I see brilliant bands of designs, curved and fragrant."(8) The shamans song penetrates and reorders the patients body in the form of harmonious geometric designs.

Disease-inflicting spirits are said to interfere with the healing process by continually seeking to smudge the intricate designs and curative odours contained in the shamans song with their own evil songs and ill odours. Given this harmful interference, generally four or five treatments are necessary before a cure can be accomplished. "At first, the sick body appears like a very messy design. After a few treatments, the design appears gradually. When the patient is cured, the design is clear, neat, and complete".(9) The shaman then "covers" the patients body with songs which are believed to coat the internalized healing designs with a protective finish.

The designs the Shipibo paint on their faces, therefore, are but a small sign of the extensive patterning imagined to configure their spirits. Such internal patterning is deemed to be permanent and to mark a persons spirit even after death.

The Sensory Skin

Anthropologists sometimes use the term "the social skin" to refer to the ways in which the skin may be employed by cultures as a kind of map for charting social orders.(10) For example, the Aymara of the Andes sometimes paint the faces of their children with a line extending from ear to ear across the nose. This line, cutting across the right and left halves of the face, seemingly divides the face into four quarters. This symbolic quadripartion has been interpreted by anthropologists as serving to represent the four traditional divisions of Aymara villages and thus to integrate Aymara children into the social order.(11)

It is not only social relations which are inscribed on and embodied through the skin, however, but also sensory relations. Thus, the line painted across the face by the Aymara symbolically unites the ears with the nose and the sense of hearing with the sense of smell. Both sounds and odours have similar symbolic functions among the Aymara, providing avenues of communication between the human and divine worlds. In Aymara ritual, prayers ascend to the deities on a upward trail of incense. The line uniting the ears with the nose expresses the importance of integrating sounds and odours in order to ensure a continuing dialogue with the divine. At the same time the line separates the eyes from the mouth, indicating an opposition between the sense of sight, associated with spiritual faculties such as memory and imagination, and the sense of taste, associated with physical experience.

Of the different South American peoples we have discussed above, the Inca and the Suya provide good examples of how body decoration may serve to both symbolically order society - and the cosmos - and symbolically order the senses. Thus the large gold ear ornaments of the male Inca élite marked both their political ascendency over other social groups in the region (as well as over women) and their superior sense of hearing - a faculty of preeminent importance in the oral-aural culture of the Andes. Within Suya society, the prominent ear and lip disks worn by men establish mens place at the top of the social hierachy and the faculties of hearing and speaking/singing at the top of the sensory hierarchy. As Anthony Seeger writes in his book on Suya concepts of nature and society: "The ear disks and lip disks of the Suya... unite the organs and the senses with components of the moral and social order. The Suya could be said to internalize their values by literally embodying them through their symbolic manifestations, the body artifacts."(12)

Conclusion

The examples of body art of South America considered here indicate that, within its cultural context, body decoration is meant to channel and order both interior and exterior forces, from the sensory to the cosmological. The body signs we have been examining should not be regarded as representations, but rather as conduits of energy. Without an understanding of the multilayered and synaestheitic (or multisensory) symbolism which informs the designs, representations of the body art of native South Americans become flat and superficial - as if they were no more than skin deep.

In a recent paper entitled "Body Paint, Feathers and VCRs," Beth Conklin analyses how such Amazonian peoples as the Kayapo and Wari have been turning their body art into a political tool. Relying on the equation - in Western eyes - of visual exoticism with genuine Indianness (as if cultural integrity could be read on the body surface), indigenous groups have been using their exotic body image to advantage to attract media attention - and thus transnational support - for their own political causes. This strategy has not been without its costs, however. For example, those indigenous groups which do not conform to the idealized media images, because they dont don feathers and paint, are doubly disempowered politically. In addition to political costs, there have been spiritual costs: feathered headdresses formerly part of sacred rituals have become secular political props. Most significant for our purposes are the aesthetic costs:

In other words, whatever does not make for "good visuals" gets filtered out: the body as a sensational field is reduced to a representational field upon entering the visual economy of the West.
 
 

Acknowledgments

Part of the research on which this essay is based was made possible by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I wish to thank Constance Classen for sharing with me some of her "insenses" into the Inca and Aymara sensory orders, and comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Notes

1. The material on the Incas is taken from C. Classen, Inca Cosmology and the Human Body, Salt Lake City, University of Utah Press, 1993, pp. 71-72.

2. On the Suya see A. Seeger, "The Meaning of Body Ornaments : A Suya Example," Ethnology 14 (1975): 211-224 and A. Seeger, Nature and Society in Central Brazil: The Suya Indians of Mato Grosso. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981.

3. This discussion of the Desana is based on G. Reichel-Dolmatoff, Amazonian Cosmos: The Sexual and Religious Symbolism of the Tukano Indians, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1971 and G. Reichel-Dolmatoff, "Brain and Mind in Desana Shamanism", Journal of Latin American Lore 7:1, pp. 73-98.

4. Reichel-Dolmatoff, "Brain and Mind in Desana Shamanism", p. 91.

5. The material in this section comes from A. Gebhart-Sayer, "The Geometric Designs of the Shipibo-Conibo in Ritual Context", Journal of Latin American Lore, 11:2 (1985), pp. 143-175

6. Ibid., p. 153.

7. Ibid., p. 145.

8. Ibid., p. 172.

9. Ibid., p. 164.

10. See T. Turner, "The Social Skin", in J. Cherfas and R. Lewin, eds., Not Work Alone. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

11. T. Bouysse-Cassagne, "Urco and Uma: Aymara Concepts of Space." Anthropological History of Andean Polities, in J. Murra, N. Wachtel and J. Revel, eds., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, p. 214.

12. A. Seeger, Nature and Society, p. 91.

13. B. Conklin, "Body Paint, Feathers and VCRs: Aesthetics and Authenticity in Amazonian Activism", American Ethnologist, 24:4 (1997), pp. 711-728, p. 723

Copyright David Howes

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