Getting High in Peru: In this case, getting low and buried upside down

Getting High in Peru: In this case, getting low and buried upside down

We visited the Sican National Museum on Oct 10. It is located 10 Km NE of Chiclayo and celebrates the Sican Culture that lasted 600 years rising around AD 750 following the Moche and survived until around AD 1375 when they were dominated by the Chimu.  Sican may mean ‘house’ referring to the house or Temple of the Moon. Another knowledgeable Peruano archaeologist equates the Sican with the Lambayeque. National Geographic in a 2010 report also mentioned that Sican is Lambayeque.

 The Sican National Museum

The Sican follow the Moche

Model:  Huacas were 40 meters or so in height

This culture is not to be confused with Sipan, and its Lords of Sipan. They were Moche, and the Moche culture preceded Sican/Lambayeque. I will report on the Lords of Sipan in the future. Some of the highlighted artifacts in the Sican museum are from the Sican site at Poma, near Batan Grande. The climate in the area changed for about a 30-year period causing a drought. It appears that the masses burned the Huacas around AD 1100, but not their residences and moved 10 km to Tecume. The masses may have been fed up with the elite and the god who were not providing for the masses and rebelled. You are able to see the mountain at Tecume from the Huacas in the Bosque de Pomac that we visited after our Sican museum visit. The Huacas in Bosque de Pomac are near Poma and Batan Grande. (We visited Tecume on the following day, October 11.)

The Sican became skilled in metallurgy by the 10^th century and were skilled in ceramics using molds. A question I have concerning metallurgy is that they learned to smelt copper to make bronze using arsenic. I wonder how that affected the health of the smelter and others coming into contact with the dumps.

 Examples of ceramics above and firing of below

Examples of their metallurgy skills

 Illustrations of mining for minerals

 Illustration of crushing the mineral

Illustration of carrying the minerals to the city

These are the ceramic ends used to blow air into the forge

Example of metal molds for minerals

Illustration of men blowing air into the forge.

The ceramic ends at at the end of the hollow pipes.

Illustration of the metals they produced 

The museum displays a very unusual burial from a Huaca, and it made a diorama illustrating the uniqueness of the East Tomb. The male king (?), or at least one of the elite, in death was buried upside down in a fetal position; his head had been cut off and repositioned with a gold mask of the Sican god with the upturned eyes (bird eyes?). Was he making a statement that he was related to their god? You will see two women, one in a childbirth position and the other positioned as a midwife helping bring forth a new life. This burial seems to be saying that the elite person/king believed that he would be reborn. The lady lying would bear and give him birth; the other lady, a midwife, would help bring him out of the womb. This interpretation is based on the remains as they were positioned in the tomb. This tomb also contained two juveniles. The archaeologists recovered more than one ton of artifacts from this tomb. The diorama with the man wearing gold and in a gilt litter is also from this tomb. The litter could have been the one that he was carried in in life.  Most of the grave goods were of arsenic bronze, some high karat gold, and others of silver and gold alloy. The amount of high quality grave goods determined your class. The visual of the beads—that mass of shells and semi-precious stones weighs 80 Kg (176 lb). 

Diorama of the East tomb with the king (?) buried upside down

 The two ladies, one to bear the reborn king (?)

and the other to help deliver

 The bodies of two juveniles accompanied the king/lord.

You can see the placement of the grave goods below

 The two ladies

 Imported grave goods--shells

The king/lord

Some of the gold before extraction

The gilt litter that may have carried the king/lord

A closeup of the king/lord with some of his interred gold

 

 Illustration of how the gold was buried in a wood case

Examples of the skilled gold craft

 The Sican god once again

One of the gold crowns with the bird-eyed (?) god

Another crown

 

 Still another crown

And another

Still another

Still another

Not a brain but the176 lbs of beads/necklaces

The bodies of the elite were buried deep 11 to 15 meters deep (therefore the recent finds of the Lords of Sican), and they were buried in a sitting position with the one exception above. The other diorama, from the West Tomb, is also from the Huaca with the lord in seated position. Twenty-two females and one male juvenile accompany him, and they are lying around him.

The Lord/Elite

Closeup with the gold god mask

The other interred women plus one juvenile male

 The King/Lord (?) wearing some of his regalia

Peruvian archaeologists are learning more about the Sican culture every year, and more Sican tombs have been recovered that are not displayed here. There are oral legends of the Sican culture that are becoming understood with the excavation of the Huacas in the Chiclayo area.

Many of you have seen the treasures of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, at least in the National Geographic; the Sican treasures can rival King Tut’s. The Sican artists were highly skilled, and this culture was basically unknown to us a generation ago. Come on down to Peru.

The final visual shows the famed ceremonial knife, the tumi. I have seen replicas of them in numerous souvenir shops. It is Sican, pre-Inca.

In the next posting, we will visit the Huacas of the Sican.

Paz,
Neal Bierling