The Moche: General Archaeological Summary

Introduction

1. As is the case with Gallinazo, the artifacts used to define Moche archaeological culture only relate to the realm of power and elite rank (corporate architecture, metallurgy, art and iconography). At the lower ranks of society the material record is virtually identical throughout the Early Intermediate Period suggesting that the North Coast people in general represented a stable indigenous population that periodically experienced changes of ruling orders whose leaders used their own particular ideologies of power to support their authority. The material record that defines Moche, then, is actually the symbolism of a specific ruling order that dominated much of the north coast between AD 200 and AD 750 - the later part of the Early Intermediate Period (AD 200-600) and the early part of the Middle Horizon Period (AD 600-AD 750).

2. As in the long period of time since the first emergence of coastal agricultural society around 1800/1600 BC, the population of the north coast in the Moche era were primarily farmers, with a smaller group of fishers, inheritors of the maritime tradition, living along the shore in small fishing villages. The rural population gave primary allegiance to their local villages and their kin affines who occupied them. Their community fields and the irrigation segments that fed them held special significance to them as the lands in which their specific natural huacas were located and where the spirits of their ancestors were to be found. Stone artifacts found in the Moche Valley have been identified as such local kinship group land markers - the hallmarks of Andean sacred landscape.

3. On the larger economic and political level, the local communities were linked through segmentary kinship lines to higher-level leaders, holding their positions by virtue of their senior lineages that crossed local affinities. The Gallinazo evidence suggests that by the Moche period whole valleys and possibly several southern valleys were united by these means into economic and political units in which local laborers owed reciprocal obligation of work to the broader community in terms of farming, construction, and possibly fishing. The construction techniques of the Huaca del Sol in the Moche Valley, and the Gallinazo period platforms, and field supervision stations (Michael Moseley) indicate this organized labor system.

4. On the mental level, north coast peoples were united at the local level by their own specific myths of origin and group descent, evoked in the tradition of shamanistic ritual as the religious events through which group cohesion was ensured and the spiritual world mobilized on behalf of the group. On the broader level, certain of the north coast myths were used by higher-level leaders to construct the ceremonial of wider political unity where they acted as shaman-rulers, taking the responsibility of communing with the supernatural to ensure stability and cosmic balance. These “state” rituals took place on platforms that were the artificial mountains, edifices that incorporated their natural counterparts properties as sacred places where life-giving rain fell and the places where important spiritual forces (apu) resided.

5. Thus in all probability north coast society in AD 200 adhered to versions of basic Andean economy, political cohesion and belief. It was these basic concepts that were transformed by the Moche and their Chimú successors into the foundations of unprecedented political power.

Moche Material Culture and Its Significance

Ceramic Relative Chronological Sequence

1. The Moche Cultural Phase represents one of the best-known archaeological eras of the pre-Inca Andes. Because of its relatively easy accessibility, great desert preservation, and impressive art and architecture, Moche archaeology has a century-long history at this juncture.

2. For much of the period archaeologists from Max Uhle (1900) to the present (and almost exclusively until the late 1960’s, with the major exception of the 1940’s Virú settlement pattern project of Gordon Willey), concentrated on building chronological schemes from the rich ceramic inventory gleaned from cemetery investigation. This resulted in one of the best relative chronologies in Andean archaeology but almost ignored settlement-oriented social and economic analysis

3. One of the pioneering scholars of the first half of the 20^th century was Rafael Larco Hoyle. Based largely on grave lots from the Chicama Valley and similar data from the far north Piura region, he established a relative chronology for Moche, using the form and decoration of a specific ceramic vessel - the stirrup spout. This chronology with some modifications is still largely in use today, dividing the Moche sequence into 5 (I-V) phases. However, while it largely works for the southern valleys, the northern style evolved a modified sequence; this is still being defined.

Elite Pottery

1. Probably the best-known Moche artifact class is ceramic. The well known decorated and molded pottery style was largely the monopoly of the ruling group, used to communicate the position and ideology of authority to the population at large.

2. Moche elite pottery contains themes from myths and rituals. It also portrays the elite groups and their various religious and political occupations. A specific category - the portrait vessels- is localized to the southern valleys and depicts actual individuals of power. Content, form and decoration varied according to time and geographical location of its production.

Architecture

1. The most prominent expressions of Moche architecture are the great pyramid mounds. They stand solidly within the tradition of freestanding platforms approached by central ramps established in the Pre-ceramic Period Aspero Tradition. Made of standardized shape adobe brick, these “artificial mountains” were the largest symbols of the ruling ideology, embodying the supernatural aura ascribed to real mountains and representing the locus of the rituals of social cohesion and political authority.

2. Moche residential architecture was largely of vegetal superstructure with houses not unlike their simple rural descendants of today, containing kitchens, lining areas, and domestic storage rooms.

3. While most settlements were separated into the two categories of corporate centers (the seats of ideological and political power and social integration) or villages, in the late period this traditional north coast pattern was interrupted by a temporary period of urbanism with large cities replacing the dispersed rural pattern.

4. Burial architecture used a standard form of rectangular subterranean chamber in which the deceased was laid in an extended supine position. While burials were most commonly located in cemeteries at the periphery of settlements, they more rarely were placed within the general residential areas and platform mounds and, uniquely at Galindo, within house architecture. Burials display a wide range of status and accompanying grave goods.

Other

Other media of distinctly Moche style included metallurgy, wood, semi-precious stone and textile.

The Historic Sequence

Moche I-II (ca AD 200-400)

1. In this formative period many north coast rulers in valleys north of Virú adopted the new political order with its symbols. This earliest stage of Moche material remains includes minor settlement and a few burials in the Moche Valley, an elaborate burial in the Jequetepeque Valley and minor additional occurrences in the valleys from Chicama to Lambayeque. In the far north the elaborate contents of the Loma Negra cemeteries indicate early Moche presence. Moche material symbolism is mostly expressed through metallurgy in the north and ceramic art in the south showing local diversity that probably also operated on the social and political levels.

2. Equally important, Gallinazo culture continued unchallenged in the valleys south of the Moche and in the coastal zones of valleys to the north of Jequetepeque, indicating selective adoption by north coast rulers and a pattern of political diversity that obtained to some degree throughout the Moche period.

Moche III-IV (ca. AD 400-600)

1. This period saw the greatest expansion of Moche political authority on the north coast. In the south a large polity with its capital at the Huacas del Sol and de la Luna expanded from Chicama through 8 valleys south to Huarmey. Moche administrative centers intruded into local valley societies and the local agricultural lands were reorganized with accompanying change in local settlement patterns. The rulers of this polity probably gathered more exclusively personal (as opposed to traditional kin-based status) power than any other Moche leaders and asserted their individual power through ceramic portraits.

2. The northern part of the coast was the venue for a number of other polities - mostly confined to a single valley, although the great Lambayeque river system may have contained several of which the great Sipán site was one prominent example. The northern valley polities continued to emphasize precious metal symbols by contrast to the south. All areas portrayed the “shamanistic” rituals of power through murals attached to the platforms on which they were performed, on fine-line painted pottery and on metallurgical symbols.

3. The traditional view of Middle Moche political development saw a consistent expansion from the Moche Valley north and south until the entire region was united in a single state with its capital at the Huaca del Sol. While this idea has not yet disappeared, the growing recognition of local diversity is discrediting it and pointing toward the asymmetrical developments noted above.

Moche V (AD 600-750)

1. In the last Moche phase major disruption affected the north coast. Possible some combination of environmental calamity, social unrest and external political pressure caused the southern polity to collapse with only a Moche-Chicama valley rump surviving. Impact further north was not as dramatic but in all areas threatened elites modified their political foundation by importing foreign ideological elements, by adopting coercive control strategies and by economic management.

2. The most radical changes involved the rise of two great urban centers, Galindo in the Moche valley and Pampa Grande in the Lambayeque valley. These cities arose as a response to social unrest, succeeded in controlling their concentrated populations temporarily, but around AD 700 were abandoned in the context of final collapse of the Moche system.