15.44

Conchopata 1942/1999 Staff God and Profile Attendants. First discovered by Julio C. Tello in 1942, Menzel (1964, 1977) restudied Tello's collection of deliberately smashed giant urns, constructing its inventory of images from fragments much less complete than this large sherd discovered in 1999. Menzel named this variant of Profile Attendant Angel A. She argued that this Staff God and its Profile Attendants represented the initial introduction of Tiahuanaco imagery into Ayacucho, initiating Middle Horizon Epoch 1a and inspiring cultural changes that precipitated the Wari polity and its capital city. However, it is now clear that this style of Staff God and Profile Attendant is later than the SAIS iconography discussed above that decorates smashed jars but that SAIS imagery is no older than Middle Horizon Epoch 1B. Furthermore, SAIS imagery appeared after the development of the Nasca-Wari, Chakipampa ceramic style; after the first ceremonial smashes of giant jars; and after the formation of Wari as an expansive political system governed from an urbanized heartland.