Well known, not forgotten
The Moche are not a forgotten people. Since the 1980s their burials have been among the most celebrated finds in South America, and their pottery has been collected and studied since the early twentieth century. “Forgotten” is fair only in the sense that they left no writing and are less familiar to the public than the Inca, who came centuries later. The Moche flourished on the north coast of Peru between roughly 100 and 800 CE, a time known as the Early Intermediate Period, though dates are approximate and vary among scholars. Their own name for themselves is unknown, and “Moche” comes from a river valley.
Land and setting
The north coast of Peru is a desert, cut by rivers that run from the Andes to the Pacific. Settlement was concentrated in the river valleys, where canals fed fields. The Moche heartland lay in valleys such as Moche and Chicama in the south and Lambayeque and Jequetepeque in the north. Archaeologists debate whether the Moche formed a single state or a number of related polities that shared art and religion, and recent work tends toward the second view.
The temples of the Moche Valley
The best-known monuments are the Huaca del Sol and the Huaca de la Luna, near the modern city of Trujillo. “Huaca” is a Quechua word for a sacred place, and here it means a platform mound made of mud brick, or adobe. The Huaca del Sol was once one of the largest adobe structures in the Americas. Much of it was destroyed in the colonial period, when, according to colonial-era accounts, the Spanish diverted a river against it in search of gold, and by later looting. What remains is still a massive ruin.
The Huaca de la Luna is smaller but better preserved. It was rebuilt in successive layers, with new temples constructed over old ones, and its walls carried brightly painted reliefs in multiple colours, including figures with fangs and scenes with a central deity often called the Decapitator. Excavations there uncovered the remains of many men who appear to have been sacrificed. Researchers think they were prisoners, possibly captured in ritual combat. A settlement lay between the two huacas, with workshops, houses and storage areas, so the site was an urban centre as well as a sacred place.
The Lord of Sipan
In 1987 archaeologist Walter Alva and his team began to excavate at Sipan in the Lambayeque Valley, after looters had broken into the site. They found an untouched royal tomb dated to roughly the third century CE and later named the Lord of Sipan. The man was buried in a wooden coffin with an ornate costume made of gold, silver, copper and turquoise, including ear ornaments, a crescent-shaped headdress and a rattle. Around him lay the remains of attendants, including women, guards and a dog, which suggests ritual burial of companions.
Other tombs at Sipan, including that of an earlier ruler known as the Old Lord of Sipan, followed. The find gave direct evidence for the regalia that appears on Moche pottery, which helped to confirm that scenes of a sacrifice ceremony on vessels reflect real rituals. Journalists sometimes compared the find to the Tutankhamun tomb discovery in Egypt. The comparison is loose, but it does express how important the burial was for the region.
Other elite burials
At the El Brujo complex, a tomb found in the early 2000s held a young woman covered in tattoos, buried with weapons, ornaments and offerings; she is known as the Lady of Cao and is thought to have been a powerful ruler around 400 CE. The discovery shows that women could hold high office in at least some Moche communities.
Neighbours and what followed
The Moche lived in the north while the Nazca culture of Peru flourished on the south coast, and the two shared some traits but were distinct. After the Moche decline, the Lambayeque (Sican) culture rose in the north, and later the Chimu kingdom, centred on Chan Chan, dominated the coast until the Inca took it in the Chimu conquest of the later 1400s. Long before the Inca arrived, these cultures were part of the pre-Inca Andean states that shaped later Andean life.
Dating of Moche sites relies on radiocarbon dating of organic material, such as textiles and wood, and on pottery styles. Some dates have been refined as more samples have been analysed.
Looting and conservation
Looting has damaged many sites. The tomb at Sipan was found because looters had raided it, and Alva’s team worked quickly to protect it. Today the Huaca de la Luna and the Sipan finds are the focus of conservation work and museums, including the Museo Tumbas Reales de Sipan, and the Peruvian state protects the sites. Descendant communities on the north coast of Peru continue to be involved in the stewardship of their heritage.