The Moche civilization (; alternatively, the Moche culture or the Early, Pre- or Proto-Chimú) flourished in northern Peru from about 100 to 800 AD, during the Regional Development Epoch. The capital of a Southern Moche polity was near present-day Moche, Trujillo, Peru, with several other, possibly independent, regions under Moche influence.

Many scholars contend that the Moche were not politically organized as a monolithic empire or state. Rather, they were likely a group of autonomous polities that shared a common culture, as seen in the rich iconography and monumental architecture that survives today.The Moche are particularly noted for their elaborately painted ceramics, gold work, monumental constructions (huacas), and irrigation systems.

Moche history may be broadly divided into three periods: the emergence of the Moche culture in Early Moche (100–300 AD), the expansion and flourishing during Middle Moche (300–600 AD), and the urban nucleation and subsequent collapse in Late Moche (500–800 AD).

The Salinar culture reigned on the north coast of Peru from 200 BC–200 AD. According to some scholars, this was a short transition period between the Cupisnique and the Moche cultures.

There are considerable parallels between Moche and Cupisnique iconography and ceramic designs, including the iconography of the "Spider god".

Moche cultural sphere

The Moche cultural sphere is centered on several valleys on the north coast of Peru in the regions of La Libertad, Lambayeque, Jequetepeque, Chicama, Moche, Virú, Chao, Santa, and Nepena. It occupied 250 miles of desert coastline and up to 50 miles inland.

The Huaca del Sol, a pyramidal adobe structure on the Rio Moche, was the largest pre-Columbian structure in Peru. It was partly destroyed when Spanish Conquistadors looted its graves for gold in the 16th century. The nearby Huaca de la Luna is better preserved, with many of its interior walls still filled with many colorful murals and complex iconography. The site has been under professional archaeological excavation since the early 1990s.

Other major Moche sites include Sipán, Loma Negra, Dos Cabezas, Pacatnamu, the El Brujo complex, Mocollope, Cerro Mayal, Galindo, Huanchaco, and Pañamarka.

Their adobe huacas have been mostly destroyed by looters and natural forces over the last 1,300 years. The surviving ones show that the coloring of their murals was quite vibrant.

Southern and Northern Moche

thumb|300px|Map of the region of the Bishopric of Trujillo shows the two different Mochica cultures.

Two distinct regions of the Moche civilization have been identified, Southern and Northern Moche, with each area probably corresponding to a different political entity. In the past, Moche was thought to be one single culture, region, and state system. The idea of the Moche being two separate regions came to be through studying changes in Moche pottery over time. This concept was proposed by Rafael Larco Hoyle, who is the founder of current Moche studies, and it was so widely accepted that for many years, only a small number of radiocarbon analyses were done for the Moche.

The Southern Moche region, believed to be the heartland of the culture, originally comprised the Chicama and Moche valleys, and was first described by Rafael Larco Hoyle.

The Northern Moche region includes three valley systems:

Differences between the Northern Mochicas and the Southern Mochicas

The best known differences are:

{| class="wikitable"

! || Northern Mochica || Southern Mochica

|-

| Goldsmithing || ||

|-

| Huacos portraits || ||

|-

| Buildings with ramp || ||

|-

| Larco 5-Phase Ceramic Sequence || ||

|-

| Great and wide valleys || ||

|-

| Archaeological heirs || Sicanes || Chimus

|}

Material culture

Ceramics

Moche pottery is some of the most varied in the world. Pottery has been the distinguishing feature of the Moche culture for many reasons. It is known for being highly decorated and standardized and led people to believe the Moche had been part of a corporate state system.

The use of mold technology is evident, which would have enabled the mass production of certain forms. But Moche ceramics vary widely in shape and theme, with most important social activities documented in pottery, including war, agriculture, metalwork, weaving, and erotica. Specifically, the architectural vessels, which are pots that resemble buildings. They also include elites and warriors.

Traditional north coast Peruvian ceramic art uses a limited palette, relying primarily on red and white colors, fineline painting, fully modeled clay, veristic figures, and stirrup spouts. Moche ceramics created between 150 and 800 AD epitomize this style. Moche pots have been found not just at major north coast archaeological sites, such as Huaca de la luna, Huaca del sol, and Sipán, but also at small villages and unrecorded burial sites as well. Common types of pottery in Moche burials included floreros, cántaros, stirrup spout bottles, and cancheros. Single and stirrup-spout bottles are not shaped in a practical manner for pouring or filling with liquid. The only confirmed purpose of these ceramics is grave goods.

thumb|center|500px| [[Huaca del Sol (Temple of the Sun), Moche cultural capital, south of the modern city of Trujillo]]

At least 500 Moche ceramics have sexual themes. The most frequently depicted act is anal sex, with scenes of vaginal penetration being very rare. Most pairs are heterosexual, with carefully carved genitalia to show that the anus, rather than the vagina, is being penetrated. Often an infant is depicted breastfeeding while the couple has sex. Fellatio is sometimes represented, but cunnilingus is absent. Some depict male skeletons masturbating, or being masturbated by living women.

Because irrigation was the source of wealth and foundation of the empire, the Moche culture emphasized the importance of circulation and flow. Expanding upon this, Moche artwork frequently depicted the passage of fluids, particularly life fluids through vulnerable human orifices. There are countless images of defeated warriors losing life fluids through their nose, or helpless victims getting their eyes torn out by birds or captors.

The coloration of Moche pottery is often simple, with yellowish cream and rich red used almost exclusively on elite pieces. White and black are rarely used. The Moche are known for their portraiture pottery. The pottery portraits created by the Moche appear to represent actual individuals. Many of the portraits are of individuals with physical disfigurements or genetic defects. Some pottery represented animals, such as a pot with foxes running up a spiral ramp. The foxes are flat paintings, but the rungs of the spiral ramp are made of small, three-dimensional sculpted snails.

The realistic detail in Moche ceramics may have helped them serve as didactic models. Older generations could pass down general knowledge about reciprocity and embodiment to younger generations through such portrayals. The sex pots could teach about procreation, sexual pleasure, cultural and social norms, a sort of immortality, the transfer of life and souls, transformation, and the relationship between the two cyclical views of nature and life.

Textiles

Extreme weather and fragility of garments mean that relatively few examples of Moche textiles exist. However, limited quantities have been found in tombs, especially of higher-status members of society. Many of the remaining garments are incomplete articles, partially broken down. The relative presence of these fabrics, as well as which patterns were used, varies chronologically throughout Moche culture. Too few relics exist from early Moche culture to draw conclusive findings. Textiles from around 450 AD uniquely include a male head cloth—which is not readily found elsewhere. Twill and gauze weaving is also common among samples from this period, though by the 500-800 AD range, these patterns become much less abundant. However, more monochrome, homogenized relics suggest mass-production may have become more common by 500-800 AD. Descendants of Moche people today continue to have strong weaving traditions.

It is the Moche ceramic tradition that had previously been given the most attention in Archaeology, though this is beginning to change as archaeologists continue to discover ties between iconography on ceramic and other parts of Moche art. Just as important to Moche craftsmanship and culture is metallurgy. The skill required to create these objects is perhaps some of the finest the world has ever known.

The first Moche metalworks entered into the archaeological record were unearthed by Max Uhle at Huaca del Sol and Huaca de Luna during 1899 and 1900, but were largely ignored while Uhle focused on other aspects of the sites. Moche metal work gained attention after Peruvian researcher Rafael Larco Hoyle published Los Mochicas in 1945. Here, he mostly focused on describing the large flared headdresses and brilliantly decorated nose ornaments often found in connection with the Moche elite. The discovery of bronze and gold artifacts buried in the Warrior Priest tomb at the Huaca de la Cruz site one year later also encouraged further study. The same would happen when burial grounds at the site now known as Loma Negra in the Piura Valley were unearthed by looters finding a wealth of gold, silver, and copper objects along with ceramic vessels. While Moche art as a whole is very much independent of the Chavín style, many recurring motifs found across Moche art, including the metalwork, also seem to have their roots in Chavín culture. Moche art continues the tradition of anthropomorphic figures as well as characters with prominent fangs, although the fangs are usually less pronounced than Chavín art and not present quite as often. That is not to say that the Moche did not leave their own mark on the Anden society. Many of the techniques developed by the Moche, especially their electroplating and gilding techniques used to make copper alloys appear to be almost internally gold or silver, would continue to be used up until the Inca conquest hundreds of years after the Moche's collapse.

Several examples of the molds used to shape the low relief sculptures have been discovered, most are made of a solid metal alloy but wood molds were also used. Researchers Christopher B. Donnan and David A. Scott proved how delicate this process of shaping is when they used a cast of one of the copper alloy molds to recreate the process. They found one of the most important parts of the process is the thickness of the sheet metal. Too thick and it will fail to capture the details of the mold and prove too difficult to shape, but too thin and the metal would winkle and tear.

Religion

thumb|Moche Nariguera depicting the Decapitator, gold with turquoise and [[chrysocolla inlays. Museo Oro del Peru, Lima]]

alt=|thumb|Moche "Decapitator" mural at [[Huaca de la Luna]]

Both iconography and the finds of human skeletons in ritual contexts seem to indicate that human sacrifice played a significant part in Moche religious practices. In some sacrifice scenes on ceramics, there is a mythical creature called the animal lunar/moon animal, which is placed above a prisoner's head. This shows the significance of human sacrifice. When the artist places the creature there, the viewer can assume the prisoner's fate. These rites appear to have involved the elite as key actors in a spectacle of costumed participants, monumental settings and possibly the ritual consumption of blood. The tumi was a crescent-shaped metal knife used in sacrifices. While some scholars, such as Christopher B. Donnan and Izumi Shimada, argue that the sacrificial victims were the losers of ritual battles among local elites, others, such as John Verano and Richard Sutter, suggest that the sacrificial victims were warriors captured in territorial battles between the Moche and other nearby societies. Excavations in plazas near Moche huacas have found groups of people sacrificed together and the skeletons of young men deliberately excarnated, perhaps for temple displays. The sacrifices may have been associated with rites of ancestral renewal and agricultural fertility. Moche iconography features a figure which scholars have nicknamed the "Decapitator"; it is frequently depicted as a spider, but sometimes as a winged creature or a sea monster: together all three features symbolize land, water and air. When the body is included, the figure is usually shown with one arm holding a knife and another holding a severed head by the hair; it has also been depicted as "a human figure with a tiger's mouth and snarling fangs". The "Decapitator" is thought to have figured prominently in the beliefs surrounding the practice of sacrifice.

Social stratification

Although it remains somewhat unclear how geographically divided Moche culture was, scholars are very confident that the Moche were a socially divided society. Beyond royalty, the Moche can be divided into a general upper and lower class, and each class can be further stratified into smaller groups. Intra-class movement was possible within these broad categories, but inter-class switches between them were less feasible. Many pre-contact cultures share a divided structure comparable to the Moche—but each may have unique development.

Although religion seems to have been a centripetal force for the Moche, Other ideological, economic, political, and social factors may have also been leveraged to similar ends. Those lowest in the Moche hierarchy were buried in a simple hole near their household;An incomplete list of possible funerary objects includes copper masks, silver, pottery, and gold goods.

Presence of metal-worked goods is thought to be especially significant with respect to high status.Excavation of dwellings indicates that living conditions of Moche likely also differed based on social standing, but excavation data here remains skewed and not entirely complete so far. possibly a super El Niño, that resulted in 30 years of intense rain and flooding followed by 30 years of drought, and jeopardized their faith in their religion. This super El Niño may have hindered Moche agriculture. Moche agriculture relied considerably on canal-based irrigation from Andes mountain runoff, which a severe drought would have jeopardized.

Excavations in 1938 and 1939 by Rafael Larco Hoyle saw the development of the first interpretations of Moche culture, ranking the Moche as being "high on the list of advanced societies" as a civilization. He listed traits of the Moche culture such as "exquisite artworks" and the "creation of large scale facilities and public works" as a testament to this ranking. News of the discovery was announced by Peruvian and U.S. archaeologists in collaboration with National Geographic in May 2006.

In 2005 an elaborate gold mask thought to depict a sea god, with curving rays radiating from a stone-inlaid feline face, was recovered in London by the Metropolitan Police. Experts believe that the artifact had been looted in the late 1980s from an elite tomb at the Moche site of La Mina. It was returned to Peru in 2006.

In 2013 archaeologists unearthed the eighth of a series of finds of female skeleton that started with the Lady of Cao, together taken as evidence that the Moche were ruled by a succession of priestesses-queens. According to project director Luis Jaime Castillo, "[the] find makes it clear that women didn't just run rituals in this area but governed here and were queens of Moche society". This discovery was made at the large archaeological site of San José de Moro, located close to the town of Chepen, in the Sechura Desert of the Jequetepeque Valley, in La Libertad Region, Peru.

The error of the term "Mochica culture"

thumb|Table summarizing the argument of Waldemar Espinoza Soriano

The prestigious historian Waldemar Espinoza Soriano concludes that the Moche culture should not be called "Mochica"; that this term is exclusive to the Lambayeque culture. This would avoid errors and mistakes in Andean ethnohistory.

See also

  • Chimu Empire, heavily influenced inheritors of the Moche
  • Cultural periods of Peru
  • El Señor de Sipán (the Lord of Sipán)
  • Lord of Úcupe
  • Moche Crawling Feline
  • Vista Alegre, Trujillo
  • Víctor Larco
  • Buenos Aires, Trujillo
  • Moche, Trujillo (Moche City)
  • Viracocha
  • Virú culture

References

Further reading

  • Moche Civilization – World History Encyclopedia
  • Map of current Moche city (Wikimapia)
  • "A Peruvian Woman Warrior of A.D. 450", New York Times article (17 May 2006) by John Noble Wilford.
  • "The Lost Civilisation of Peru", transcript of BBC programme, includes bibliography.
  • Gallery of Moche erotic pottery at the Larco Museum.
  • El Brujo Archaeological project, website with links to National University of Trujillo, IBM, National Geographic and press reports.
  • "Temples of Doom" , Discover article (March 1999) by Heather Pringle.
  • "The Ulluchu fruit: Blood Rituals and Sacrificial Practices Among the Moche People of Ancient Peru" by Francesco Sammarco.
  • "Moche pottery and the practice of war", Horniman Museum video on YouTube channel.
  • Moche Iconography, Dumbarton Oaks online resource linking to digitized roll-out drawings of Moche ceramic fineline iconography.