Getting High in Peru: Sican Temples (Huacas)

Getting High in Peru: Sican Temples (Huacas)

            In my previous posting about the Sican and my visit to the Sican Archaeological Museum (Oct 10) featuring the Sican lord/king buried upside down, I did not take you to the Huaca (temple) sites. With this posting, I am taking you there.

            I’m beginning with the model from the Sican museum showing in back what a mudbrick Huaca from the past looks like today and the model in front. Huacas were about 40 m (130’ +) in height, and perhaps one million mudbricks were made and used to make a Huaca pyramid. The mudbricks in the foreground of one image with signs inscribed is an example of what the archaeologists have found and is believed to be the mark of the maker or the family that made and contributed the mudbricks. To me, based on my 40 years in Middle Eastern archaeology, this means that there may be an archive with records of who made how many mudbricks, but no archives have yet to be recovered. 

 Photograph of a Huaca (Temple) in rear (130+ feet in height)

 and model of in foreground

 Here, the model is in background and the "signed" mudbricks in foreground

    After our visit to the museum, we drove a short distance to the Bosque de Pomac, the location for some of the Huacas and tombs which contained the artifacts on display in the museum. The Sican were skilled metalworkers, artisans, and highly successful in farming due to their skill in developing irrigation systems. The elite were buried in elaborate tombs near or in the Huacas, and the commoners were buried below the floors of their homes or shops.

Signs explaining the Huaca

Note credit to this Huaca for the Sican knife

 

We got close to birds--here vultures preening each other's heads

A good omen?

     We climbed the Huaca Las Ventanas to view the surrounding terrain with several Huacas in view. It was near this Huaca that The National Geographic News reported in December 2011 that archaeologists have recovered a burial with the remains of at least 100 adult males plus two children in an apparent mass sacrifice, plus the remains of an apparent beer bash (local corn-beer chicha).  Even the ceramic beer mugs were smashed. The brewery was located near the pit, perhaps indicating a beer fest for the dead in which the mugs (drinking cups in the sculptural shape of a head, a mug) were then smashed. Some of the adults were decapitated and around 20 heads were recovered nearby, but it not known if the heads went with the decapitated adults. It is believed that this burial-beer bash occurred between AD 900 and 1100, and that this burial ceremony may have been for a Sican lord buried nearby. 

Bottom of Huaca Las Ventanas looking up at two visitors

Mudbrick structures at the base of the Huaca

 

Examples of their ceramics including "mugs" in top row

 

 

 

On top of the eroded Huaca Las Ventanas with another behind

Huacas surround this one

 

Eroded mudbricks once plastered and painted

The next paragraph will involve the 2 Huacas behind Profe

The author with Profe on top of Huaca Las Ventanas

     While we were on top of Huaca Las Ventanas, an unusual story was related to us concerning what archaeologists discovered on top of a nearby Huaca. I remember photographing a visual in the museum relating to this story. The roofs or coverings on top of Huacas are supported by wood posts. In this case, the archaeologists found skeletal remains of a young woman tied to the base of each wood post set in the ground below the walking surface. Using archaeological jargon from the Middle East, we call this a foundation deposit. You sacrifice, in these cases, a young woman to help ensure that the god would provide a long life for this Huaca and the people who worship here. According to the signage in the museum this was also the case for some of the posts here at Las Ventanas. There is much we do not know of the Sican, but this we know, that since their god, their priests and their elite were unable to counter the 30 years of drought due to El Nino, the people rebelled, burned the Huacas (but not their homes), and moved west to Tucume, around AD 1050. This is where we will go next in the next posting to finish the story of the Sican.

These two Huacas were among those Huacas with the gruesome discovery

Closeup of the Huaca

Museum depiction of the find

Drawing of post and skeleton, left; photo of post and remains, right

The ground on which we were walking was strewn with pottery sherds

From the top of Las Ventanas there is Mt. Tecume where the Sican will move

.

 

Our final visit here is to Huaca Del Oro

It was at this Huaca where the East West Tombs illustrated in the Museum were recovered

"Oro" of course means "gold"

Again, the rows of eroded mudbricks are still clearly defined.