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.
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Signs explaining the Huaca |
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Note credit to this Huaca for the Sican knife |
We got close to birds--here vultures preening each other's heads
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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.
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Bottom of Huaca Las Ventanas looking up at two visitors |
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Mudbrick structures at the base of the Huaca |
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Examples of their ceramics including "mugs" in top row | | |
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On top of the eroded Huaca Las Ventanas with another behind |
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Huacas surround this one |
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Eroded mudbricks once plastered and painted |
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The next paragraph will involve the 2 Huacas behind Profe |
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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.
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These two Huacas were among those Huacas with the gruesome discovery |
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Closeup of the Huaca |
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Museum depiction of the find |
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Drawing of post and skeleton, left; photo of post and remains, right |
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The ground on which we were walking was strewn with pottery sherds |
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From the top of Las Ventanas there is Mt. Tecume where the Sican will move | . |
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Our final visit here is to Huaca Del Oro |
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It was at this Huaca where the East West Tombs illustrated in the Museum were recovered |
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"Oro" of course means "gold" |
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Again, the rows of eroded mudbricks are still clearly defined. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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