Archaeologists working on the desert coast of northern Peru have uncovered funerary chambers containing the tombs of three members of the Moche elite. The discovery included numerous offerings of ceramic pottery and copper ornaments, indicating the high status of the buried individuals, and is helping shed light on the structure of Moche civilisation in the middle Moche period of AD 300-500.
The Moche are perennially overshadowed in Peruvian archaeology by the attention-grabbing – and much later – Inca, whom Spanish chroniclers claimed founded the first organised state in the region. They were wrong. Because the Moche had no tradition of writing, the jury remains out on whether they were Peru’s first empire, ruling from the Huacas de Moche, a site sprawling over about 100ha near modern Trujillo (see CWA 67), or just a haphazard collection of city-states strung out for around 400km along the country’s arid northern Pacific coast. There, the desert is broken by glacier-fed rivers flowing from the Andes, and it was the Moche’s ability to irrigate these valleys that sowed the seeds of their success. Many now suspect the truth about how centralised they were combines a southern state centred on Moche, with northern groups adopting elements of Moche traditions. What is certain is that the Moche elite had a penchant for spectacular costumes boasting sumptuous accessories in gold, silver, and copper.
Excavations by Walter Alva in 1987 at the pyramid of Huaca Rajada, near the modern Peruvian village of Sipán, demonstrated the splendour of undisturbed elite tombs. Looters had been in the process of ransacking the site, when a disgruntled member of the gang tipped off police. Among the extraordinary discoveries made at the site was the burial of a man aged 35 to 45 years old, who had received an extravagant send off. As well as more than a thousand pots and an apparent bodyguard – whose feet had been removed, presumably to ensure he stayed at his post throughout eternity – the deceased was accompanied by kingly regalia in the Moche style. These include a gold face-mask, headdresses, necklaces, and three sets of exquisite earspools (see CWA 35). Little wonder, then, that the man became known as the Lord of Sipán.
Over two decades later, another remarkable tomb was discovered at Huaca El Pueblo, an eroded adobe pyramid site, near the city of Úcupe in the Zaña Valley of Lambayeque province, about 750km north of Lima and approximately a dozen kilometres from Sipán. Despite this distance, it was clear that there were strong parallels with the Sipán tombs. The individual interred at Úcupe was a male in his 30s wearing two funerary masks, as well as a gleaming costume incorporating a stunning array of gold and copper metalwork, which guaranteed a literally dazzling look. Inevitably, the man has become known as the Lord of Úcupe, but he was also memorably nicknamed the ‘King of Bling’ by Canadian archaeologist Steve Bourget, who excavated the tomb.
Chambers of secrets
Huaca El Pueblo still had more secrets to share, though, and in December 2018 further chambers were located within it, just a few metres from the Lord of Úcupe’s resting place. The tombs date to AD 300-400 and include burials of a man, probably a military leader, with a baby and woman interred together in a neighbouring chamber. The funerary chambers were built of adobe bricks, and the tombs contained layers of funerary offerings including copper masks, jewellery, crowns, and hundreds of finely worked ceramic vases.
‘This is the main discovery regarding the Mochica civilisation in the last ten years, as Úcupe was the main centre of the Mochica in Zaña Valley,’ said Edgar Bracamonte Lévano, an archaeologist in Walter Alva’s team, based at the Royal Tombs of Sipán Museum. ‘What’s most surprising about this discovery is that we found one chamber containing a woman and a child 2-6 months of age, with copper funerary masks over the child’s head, but the masks do not correspond in size to the baby – they are adult-sized masks.’
The Sipán Moches were clearly connected with those of Úcupe, but tomb discoveries reveal slight differences in character. The Lord of Sipán’s tomb had a sceptre, for instance, probably signifying royal power, while the Lord of Úcupe’s tomb did not. Equally, the Lord of Sipán’s tomb contained wooden coffins – the first to be reported from the Americas – while the Lord of Úcupe’s tomb, and the newly discovered ones, were not equipped with caskets.
On the other hand, the tombs of Úcupe display an architectural similarity to tombs discovered at the Huaca Dos Cabezas site in Jequetepeque valley, just one valley to the south of Zaña. The ceramics uncovered at the two sites also show stylistic similarities, including shape, polish, design, and decoration.
Based on the latest discoveries at Úcupe and past findings in Huaca Dos Cabezas and Sipán, the team suspects that there were two key moments in Moche history. In the first, during the early Moche period from AD 100-300, the inhabitants of Úcupe were ideologically related to those of Jequetepeque, with these links expressed by the similarity of iconography in their architecture and geometric patterns in wall murals. Masks and decorations display the same style, but it is not a form found in Sipán. The second moment occurred in the middle Moche period of AD 300-500, when the Moche of Úcupe became politically connected and perhaps even subservient to those of Sipán, judging by the funerary objects uncovered in the recently examined tombs, which were likely to have been produced in Sipán.
Inside the tombs
So what about the burials themselves? The first excavation uncovered the five-level tomb of a baby, whose face was obscured by a large mask, while various funerary goods surrounded the body. ‘Usually objects in a chamber are related to the person who’s entombed there’, said Bracamonte. ‘In this case, the baby would never have used that mask, so the objects clearly were offerings to the baby.’
Other grave goods include a vessel depicting a possible shaman, a necklace made from a Spondylus shell that came from the Ecuadorian coast, plumes, a large copper mask over the baby’s chest/stomach, and two complete sacrificed llamas. The baby was clearly born into the Moche elite and, judging by the mask, headband, and copper breastplate, had expectations of belonging to the warrior caste.
A woman, whose burial and grave goods filled two levels, was laid to rest with the child. Her offerings include a crown, pendants, earrings, and a mask made with silver won from the Cajamarca mines in the Andes. The woman’s precise social standing is unknown, but her ornaments are associated with the Moche nobility. Other offerings included a ceramic decorated with a dignitary and their throne, as well as pots emblazoned with erotic images. Vessels carrying similar scenes were also placed next to the baby, perhaps reflecting an element of the Moche belief system about the cycle of life and death.
The second chamber contained the tomb of a man who was apparently a high-ranking Moche warrior. His tomb consisted of nine levels of offerings, including the head, arms, and legs of a llama. He was dressed in regalia including multiple crowns over his head and chest, and surrounded with finely worked sculptured bottles in the early middle Moche style.
The next step for the team is conserving these findings. Preservation experts at the Royal Tombs of Sipán Museum are currently analysing the different ceramics, metals, and textiles to get a sense of the networks that furnished Úcupe society with both their raw materials and finished goods. DNA tests are also planned to determine the relationship between the deceased individuals, as well as between those from nearby tombs and indeed the people interred at Sipán. This should shed light on whether the Sipán and Zaña Moches belonged to the same population.
The Huaca El Pueblo site is not completely excavated yet, and is endangered by occasional heavy rains, which partially collapsed the tomb of the woman and baby, as well as tomb robbers. Future work will hopefully shed light on the level and nature of links between the Moche of Úcupe, Sipán, and Jequetepeque valley. A priority is understanding the political relationship between the Lord of Úcupe and the Lord of Sipán and the Moche of Huaca Dos Cabezas. Resolving this promises to help answer the key question of the organisation and nature of the Moche civilisation across the northern Peruvian coast.
With thanks to Dr Edgar Bracamonte, Dr Walter Alva, and the staff of the Museum of the Royal Tombs of Sipán.