ABSTRACT
Latin Americanists have long been interested in the symbolic and historic nature of the feline in art, myth, and religion (for example, Benson 1972; Furst 1972; González 1982; Zuidema 1985; Dillehay and Kaulike 1985; Friedmann and Arocha 1985). Over the years art historians, anthropologists, and archeologists have searched for ethnographic analogies to explain the origin, function, and persistence of the feline symbol in native societies, and the structured fit of this core symbol in Andean and tropical forest cultures. In studying its past meaning, scholars have generally concentrated on a multitude of archeologically detectable cultural and environmental conditions under which the feline symbol appeared. These conditions, as manifested in settlement configuration, exchange networks, artifacts, public ceremony, and other forms, tend to reflect only the spatial and visual outcome and context of the symbol. They do not necessarily reveal the structure or the principle of organization represented by the symbol and its point of articulation and development within the society.
