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Cahuachi, in Peru, was a major ceremonial center of the Nazca culture, based from about in the coastal area of Peru's central Andes. It overlooked some of the Nazca lines. The Italian archaeologist Giuseppe Orefici has been excavating at the site for the past few decades. The site contains over 40 mounds topped with adobe structures. The huge architectural complex covers (1.5 km²) at 365 meters above sea level. The American archeologist Helaine Silverman has also conducted long term, multi-stage research and written about the full context of Nazca society at Cahuachi, published in a lengthy study in 1993.
Scholars once thought the site was the capital of the Nazca state but have determined that the permanent population was quite small. They believe that it was a pilgrimage center, whose population increased greatly preceding and during major ceremonial events. New research has suggested that 40 of the mounds were natural hills modified to appear as artificial constructions. Support for the pilgrimage theory comes from archaeological evidence of sparse population at Cahuachi, the spatial patterning of the site, and ethnographic evidence from the Virgin of Yauca pilgrimage in the nearby Ica Valley.
Looting is the greatest problem facing the site today. Most of the burial sites surrounding Cahuachi were not known until recently and are tempting targets for looters.
To the north and south Cahuachi faces two , or flat plain-like terrain: Pampa de San José and Pampa de Atarco, and on these plains is where the famous Nasca lines are found. The Río Grande region's soils are available for irrigation agriculture with limitations. Cahuachi is located off of the valley bottom of the treeless hills and terraces beneath Pampa de Atarco, and has been known to be subject to strong winds that are capable of becoming sandstorms. It is on these treeless hills that formed the core majority of artificial constructions at Cahuachi. There is, also present, sporadic rains and cyclical floods which result in water erosion of the terrain, which made some parts of the valley uninhabitable, which influenced the settlement pattern of Cahuachi.
Cahuachi lies over brown barren river terraces that are characterized by hills, above the bottom of the valley. Hills were modified in various ways to create civic or ceremonial centers.
Among the most extensive research done at Cahuachi was the excavations conducted by archaeologist William Strong. Strong was one of the only archaeologists who took a broad approach to the site, contextualizing it within Nasca society and south coast prehistory. He set out to find stratigraphic evidence that would resolve the gap between Paracas and Nasca styles in the region. He also did settlement pattern studies in order to find out the kinds of activities that went on at Cahuachi. William Duncan Strong's excavations in the early Nasca site of Cahuachi from 1952–1953 found that the site was composed of temples, cemeteries, and house mounds. Following his findings, other scholars within Peruvian archaeology interpreted the site to have been an urban settlement with residential structures. However, more recent excavations and experiments suggests this to be unlikely.
In the early 1980s, archaeologist Helaine Silverman and Italian architect Giuseppe Orefici conducted intensive and extensive archaeological excavations in several areas of the site. This new research was aimed towards finding and clarifying the real character of the site and of Nasca society. Orefici's excavations in 1983 had revealed the evidence ceramic production in the form of an oven; however he has recovered various burial sites, ceremonial drums, and pottery which suggests that the site is indeed a ceremonial center.
Cahuachi is where Helaine Silverman began her dissertation fieldwork on early Nasca society in 1983. She later inferred from her data and analysis how Cahuachi would have functioned as a ceremonial center and its role in state formation and urbanism, within a regional and pan-Andean scope. Silverman's data from the excavations and experiments in 1986, strongly support the claim that the site was indeed a ceremonial centre. Through her work and research, Silverman found no evidence of inhabitants or domestic and residential structures indicating it to be an urban settlement. She suggested that the site was used as a ceremonial center where people periodically performed religious activities. By examining the remains of pottery, Silverman also suggested that pottery was taken and was broken at the site as a part of the activities and rituals taking place at that time. The vegetal and faunal remains also indicated that food was brought to the site and immediately consumed there. Later research also indicated the consumption of hallucinogenic beverages at the site.
Excavations and surveys conducted by Giuseppe Orefici indicate that the site was not a permanent domestic habitat. The site contains around 40 archaeological mounds and progressive excavations of the area found that most of these mounds were not used for habitation, but that it was more likely a religious ceremonial setting.
Monumental refers to the types of Nasca pottery with so-called realistic designs, while Proliferous describes more “conventionalized motifs” with volutes, rays, and points. Gayton and Kroeber established three categorizable characteristics-shape, color, and design- and based on the relationships between these attributes came up with four chronological phases or “substyles” of Nasca pottery:
| + Nasca pottery classifications |
| “Monumental” |
| “Proliferous” |
Because of the frequency of Nasca 3 pottery and its association with architecture at the site, the conclusion is that Cahuachi is early Intermediate Period of the Ica (south coast ceramic periods). Nasca 1 and 2 are represented at a lesser degree, but are still significantly present as well. One of Strong's goals in his research at Cahuachi was "to resolve the temporal relationship between Paracas and Nasca" style pottery, which was still stratigraphically unproven. Stong's conclusions were that the ceremonial structures at Cahuachi date to the "middle Nazca culture phase" (Nazca 3), and not late Nazca. Instead, late Nazca dates were only found to be associated with graves. According to , all later scholars are in basic agreement with Strong.
A special food preparation area evidenced by the presence of a corn popper and the ritual importance of corn in the Andes was also found at Cahuachi. Small storage facilities and vessels that would have contained food and drink only sufficient for short visits to the ceremonial center both support the fact that Cahuachi was not permanently inhabited at all times and therefore most likely did not have intensive agriculture at the site itself. That being said, all these remains had to come from somewhere, and so they can be used as evidence that indicates the types of food most popular and abundant in this area at the time. The presence of the food materials and the absence of most of their cultivation within the site of Cahuachi can also be indicative of trade networks within the surrounding communities.
Caches of maize, huarango pods, as well as a small concentration of shell were all found at Cahuachi, and are, again, considered to have ritual purposes rather than agricultural significance. At one of the more well-known constructions at Cahuachi is the Room of the Posts. Here, in front of a deep niche, were two cylindrical depressions, resembling postholes, and within them were found ten unworked pieces of Spondylus, a shell sacred in the Andean region. Within a round depression excavated in the room they found a cache of huarango pods. 16 whole Pottery and hundreds of sherds-all dating to Nasca 8 style- were also found in the room, along with a cache of blue-painted ají Long pepper, four portable looms, pyroengraved gourd rattles, and plain gourd containers. All were deposited as offerings, which makes sense since this is a ceremonial center. The abundance of the huarango fruit seeds and pods as the site, in both consumable and ritual use, is because it could be grown within the Cahuachi region and therefore was most at hand and used in everyday life, making it life sustaining as well as ritually significant.
All the evidence within this category are relating to ritual and sacrificial purposes rather than direct agricultural practices at Cahuachi. Considering that this was a non-urban center, it seems safe to assume there was no intensive agriculture going on at Cahuachi, and rather any domesticated resource evidence found was brought to Cahuachi from the outside, like nearby cities or towns, and could quite possibly fall more under the category of trade rather than agriculture.
Among ritual or ceremonial remains recovered through Strong's excavations at Cahuachi in unit 2 were things like fine pottery and panpipes. Not all Nasca pottery was produced at Cahuachi. It is much more likely, especially for the fancy pottery, that it was produced in nearby regional centers where this type of craft specialization was prominent, and then brought to and used at Cahuachi, indicative of trade goings on at Cahuachi rather than craft production.
The "Great Cloth" The world largest known textile was found entombed in Cahuachi, the Nasca ceremonial and political center in 1952 during excavation led by William Duncan Strong. Unfortunately the excavation method damaged the cloth and now it's in four pieces in the collection of the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University. The weft selvage was measured as over 5.5 m, but its original length, only estimated during the excavation, would have been at least 50–60 m. The making of this plain weave cloth would have required an estimated 9 million feet of cotton yarn, which certainly involved highly organized labor force. The careful entombment of the Great Cloth at the largest plaza in an otherwise refuse free, sterile area shows the ritual importance of this textile.
Fine ware, of ritual significance, was decorated and was used for burials and also included technologically complex panpipes, which is a form of craft specialization. Family-sized cooking pots are rare at the site. Not all Nasca pottery was produced at Cahuachi. It is much more likely, especially for the fine pottery, that it was produced in nearby regional centers where this type of craft specialization was prominent, and then brought to and used at Cahuachi. Again this fact is more indicative of trade goings on at Cahuachi rather than large scale craft production at the site.
There are about 40 mounds at Cahuachi. Some mounds had rooms on top of them, others did not, some are considered to be “temples,” and still others were used for burials. But furthermore, the majority of the mounds at Cahuachi are overwhelmingly never actual “habitation mounds”. Strong originally classified these mounds as “habitation mounds” but Silverman argues that they are not domestic, which is in keeping with her assertion that Cahuachi was a non-urban ceremonial center. For some examples of the types of mounds at Cahuachi Silverman focuses on cuts and survey of units 5, 6, and 7. The core of unit 5 is a natural hill that was artificially raised through construction and fills. The fill contained bundles and intertwined vegetal fibers, earth, rock, and garbage. The mound has a lot more fill than other mounds because it was artificially raised by placing alternating layers of these vegetal fills. Unit 5 also had several circular depressions, or “cache pits” according to Strong, and only a few contained small amounts of corn cobs and beans. The walls were made of adobe with a sand foundation, and is a construction technique interspersed throughout Cahuachi.
Then more fill was placed behind the wall and in front of the hill. This fill consisted of vegetal fiber, lumps of adobe, sand, a few sherds that prove that the construction of the mound cannot predate Nasca 3 period. Another interesting addition to the fills contents were the presence of offerings like a cache of maize, a large plainware, oxidized olla. The fact that these offerings were made alludes to a ceremonial function of the unit. At unit 6 Strong originally classified the construction as a Middle Nasca temple that was built over a late Paracas domestic dwelling, but the association of the circular Pit cave also dug there with Paracas 10 – Nasca pottery and the dwellings should not necessarily be classified as late Paracas. Here, also, there are adobe walls used to retain fill at this unit, just like at unit 5. There was a wattle and daub wall found underneath, and is a previous occupation of the area that was of a domestic nature, but by occupation stage 3 (after the wattle and daub occupation) the construction of the actual mound was for a non-habitation purpose, and this is evidenced by the lack of habitation structure refuse.
Unit 7 was also originally classified by Strong as a residential space, but Silverman points out that there is an extraordinary amount of decorated pottery and special artifacts, such as an obsidian knife, embroidered fringed borders, a comb of cactus spines and cane, and a fine engraved gourd, and at best was perhaps the living space for priests.
Cahuachi's layout largely depends on already existing topographical features, but it can also be said that it has a "mound-kancha" pattern. It is so named because there is much open, or rather empty, space at Cahuachi. Instead of bunches of construction taking up a space, the mounds at Cahuachi would be better described as islands. Because of the commitment to executing construction around and in convenience to the natural geography, it can be inferred that this may reflect social spatial organization for the site, which is interpretively unrestricted. It is easily accessible from virtually any direction, with no walls, or moats, or anything blocking entrance into the site.
Terracing hills was also a common practice at Cahuachi because it was "energetically and materially cheap" and still produced the appearance of monumental architecture, like large ceremonial mounds or temples. One of the more well-known mounds at Cahuachi came to be called by Strong the “Great Temple”. It is debatable whether or not that this construction is the one and only “Great Temple” at Cahuachi, but it truly did have a ceremonial purpose which is obvious by the large amounts of Nasca 3 pottery, panpipe fragments, llama remains, bird plumage, and other offertory materials recovered.
Rooms are not found on all mounds. For the rooms that do exist, the walls of are built of adobe. There are a few different types of adobe clay present at the site, and are sometime mixed together in the construction of walls and rooms. The types of adobe include: Beige, yellow, or grey. All of the rooms also had a final layer of mud. There are very few walls that had been painted. The walls were usually not very high (not exceeding one meter) and were very thick. The use of Prosopis pallida posts in the construction of rooms and walls is also common at Cahuachi.
The major walls at Cahuachi were carefully constructed and well made. The layers of adobe used to build them are carefully regular, and had two final layers of mud plaster, as well as a white wash finish.
The Room of the Posts is said to have some sort of ancestor worship association because of the use of huarango posts. In this region, huarango is sometimes used to symbolize ancestry, sort of like the biblical tree of life. These “ancestor posts” are further supported by the structures apparent use as a burial place, and a special carved huarango post that depicts a human face and flute. Another interesting aspect to consider and is supportive of an ancestral interpretation is that the radiocarbon dates on some of the posts are earlier than Strong's Nasca 5 dates of the area, which can be explained because perhaps they were not erected at the same time, but at important, symbolic life events, or that since they hold special significance that they were reused from an earlier structure. In one of the walls of the room there is a niche and two small depressions within that, containing spondylus shell.
In addition to the already above mentioned artifacts, there were many plainware and decorated vessels including vases, bowls, bottles with handles, caches, musical instruments, and baskets. Strong dated many of these items to Nasca 5 times. There was also found in the Room of the Posts "four bundles of tied canes conforming to back-strap looms". This versatility could perhaps be due to the fact that people carried all their belongings that they would need for their stay at Cahuachi. Fineware and plainware at Cahuachi was studied by Helaine Silverman where she studied types of vessel shape, painted design and color, and their relative dates and chronology. There are twenty five shape classes described by Gayton and Kroeber. Common vessel shapes at Cahuachi were the "double-spout-and bridge- bottles". The Nasca phase of this class of pottery distributed at Cahuachi is largely phase 3 or undeterminable.
Another notable vessel class is Nasca 1 blackware bowls, early Nasca bowls, dishes, basket vessels, modeled vessels, neckless ollas, and necked ollas. According to Strong's conclusions, Cahuachi's main occupation was during Nasca 3. There was another major earlier Nasca occupation, corresponding to early Nasca 1 and 2, but was not the main occupation of Cahuachi.
The amount of monumental architecture at Cahuachi, however, cannot be explained except for Helaine Silverman's interpretation that Cahuachi held a sacred geography that made it the focus of the Nasca cult, which includes any political aspects that come along with this, such as monumental architecture being symbols of group unity and shared ancestry, while at the same time sending a widespread political message to allies or rivals. Cahuachi, as a religious pilgrimage destination, also leads to the assumption of community-wide participation and cooperation. Furthermore, Cahuachi's obvious influence and importance in Nasca society and the fact that it was primarily a ceremonial center suggests that political power and social differences may not have been exclusively based on the economy. This is further evidenced by a lack of clear mortuary differentiation in early Nasca society and iconographic portrayals of elites, which lead researchers to believe that there could have been at least a group-oriented chiefdom where accumulation of personal wealth was forgone or otherwise unachievable.
The main thing that connected the segments of peoples in the Rio Grande de Nazca drainage system were their Nasca cultural traditions and religious cult where Cahuachi was the center, but only as a temporary pilgrimage site, and otherwise they lived in their own smaller communities with their own separate local ceremonial and domestic foci, and was therefore not politically centralized. Nasca society in terms of its location in the Rio Grande de Nazca drainage system also played its part in their sociopolitics. By observing and even literally mapping out the filtration gallery system – which determined settlement patterns as well – provided exclusive knowledge to those that were discerning of it, able to manipulate that knowledge, and therefore allowing for significant positions of power or control. These individuals were most likely 'priests' or 'shamans'.
Finally, inside the room there are Prosopis pallida positioned upright all over the room. Some are aligned in certain directions, all of different heights, one group has three rows of three all standing together near the western wall, one is even carved into a face playing a flute. Besides the architectural features, there is not much to learn just from the presence of the posts, but the cultural features associated with the Prosopis pallida in the Río Grande de Nazca region is significant. The huarango plant is a shrubby legume native to and grown in this region; it has symbolic ancestral meaning associated with the tree of life and a person's spiritual roots, still held to this day. By looking at cultural beliefs in the region today, some interpreters have inferred that the room had ancestral and genealogical significance. As far as altars go, in the center of the room is a very low, square clay platform, in the middle of which is a round depression. Textile production was one of the few craft specializations that went on at Cahuachi on a regular basis. These fancy textile remains were most likely used as Nasca funerary shrouds or for presumably elite or priestly attire.
Highly stylized painted pottery was found throughout Cahuachi, and had the most religious significance when found in association with burials and offertory remains inside of them. Other remains that held religious purposes at Cahuachi were animal remains. Llama remains, bird plumage used as decoration for Headgear or the like, and guinea pig remains with broken necks and evidence of being sacrificed with their undersides slit open, were evidence of sacrificial rituals that are reminiscent of divination practices, still practiced by some today. Besides the altar in the Room of the Posts as described above, there were circular depressions and niches in the floors and walls of many of the other structures built. All of them contain or contained offertory items, mainly containers or caches of maize, spondylus shell, huarango pods, and blue-painted ají peppers. Other subsurface storage jars found without food in them can be used as evidence of communal feasting. There is little to no evidence of a prominent use of writing at Cahuachi.
There is some very specific iconography going on there, though, that portray masked ritual performers or priests, mythical beings, and ceremonial rites that honor agricultural fertility, as well as going so far as to confirm that farmers even participated in these celebrations as well. Finally, trophy head taking was an important aspect of the Nasca cult, which are displayed on early Nasca pottery where costumed figures hold decapitated human heads.
Pertaining to the elite and the “power” structure of Cahuachi, it was important because it was the main center for people all over the region to come together. Priests could definitely be considered elite because they more than likely got to spend the majority to spend most of their time there, and were therefore able to, as well as had special clothing that was probably manufactured and designed on site, as well as had privileged access to “temples” and rites in which they perform their sacred duties. Religion, as previously discussed, is unanimously a huge part of Nasca culture just from the very fact that Cahuachi exists, and the leaders of this place must have been influential in Cahuachi at the least. However, also previously discussed, the peoples of Nasca 3 times were spread out all over the Río Grande de Nazca drainage system region and were more or less separated into individual groups, where they lived in a most likely independent chiefdom governed areas.
All of the graves vary in amount of mortuary content, from little to none, and vary in types of artifacts included. The most noteworthy aspect of the at Cahuachi, then, is the fact that none would be considered overly elaborate or "rich" when compared to graves of other cultures around this time period. Especially considering that Cahuachi is the largest adobe ceremonial center of its time. There is not an overabundance of pottery in any of the graves where it is found. There are some remnants of food stuffs and spondylus shell, even a small fragment near some skeletal remains of red pigment, but nothing as substantial as the elaborate graves of pre-Columbian cultures that so enthrall the archaeological world.
The bodies themselves were almost all in a flexed position, usually in their sides or sitting, with their bodies, or at least their heads, facing south. Another thing that almost all of the remains had in common was that they were wrapped in, or laid on top of, elaborately woven and embroidered textiles. Textile specialization was one of the few productions that the Nasca people during the apogee of Cahuachi practiced. These textiles came in different colors, varying grave to grave. Some were white, or tan, others were even black, red, or green, and had embroidered or weaved iconography and decoration as well. Textiles at Cahuachi, although second in quantity to Nasca ceramics, are the best indicators of status in a grave. That being said, it is still not that much information, because of the lack of grave goods in general.
One example of differentiation in burials, possibly due to status, was two adult, most likely males, that were both buried within tombs (not associated with each other), but one of them did not have any grave goods at all, while the other contained three pots. Presumably one was of a higher status than the other. However, Nasca ceramics in general are the most abundant artifacts at Cahuachi and carry a variety of different information and meaning. Therefore, there is not enough information or sample to create a hierarchical social classification for the people buried with them of the different types of pottery, besides the distinction between plainware and fineware, and even then who is to say which in each distinction is better?
Other factors need to be considered before there can be a definitive answer, like what were the contents or uses of the vessels and were these actually more important than the vessels themselves? Some Nasca people were wrapped in better woven and decorated textiles than others (). It can be argued that there is a status differentiation in Nasca society based on the iconography and labor investment in textiles and the importance of textile production at Cahuachi. Pertaining to social status as well, some of the burials had deformed head shapes. Causes of death include sacrifice, or death in warfare, and of course more or less natural deaths. Children usually had the most elaborate burials. There were also adult males and females unearthed as well, varying in elaboration equally in their burials. Some of the adult, presumably males, were in poor condition where they had half of their teeth missing well before death and very worn bones, while other graves contained just the opposite: younger adult females, where the wisdom teeth had not broken through yet, with all of the teeth still present and in seemingly normal health as pertaining to the rest of the bones.
Doering found at the front of a tomb, a line of nine trophy heads with plaited hair, and where two of them were on a bed of coca leaves. Silverman's team discovered a young adult male head, and is a classic example of a Nasca trophy head: The head exhibits frontal-occipital cranial deformation. Its eyes, eyebrows, beard, and mustache are present. The dark straight hair is elaborately braided. The skin is preserved but brittle. The scalp exhibits a series of deliberate incisions made with a sharp instrument. The tongue was removed. The lips were sealed with two splinters of huarango wood. A carrying cord emerges through a hole in the frontal bone. The cheeks were stuffed with plainweave cotton cloth.
The context of the head taking, though, is still being widely worked out. There is some contention about whether the trophy heads were taken during actual territorial warfare, or were taken in staged ritualistic battles. The biggest problem that occurs with the idea of territorial conquest and warfare, at least in an early Nasca state, is that there is little to no archaeological evidence of any kind to support it, and so was most likely not the context in which the actual early Nasca shrunken head were found. Archaeological evidence does, however, shows an interesting increase in head hunting, between early and late Nasca times, right around when Cahuachi was finally abandoned, and when a more militaristic lifestyle became prevalent in late Nasca art. This can be taken to mean that while early Nasca times revolved around a religious center, they were stable and able to create Cahuchi, and therefore there was less violent conquest and territorial warfare than at other times.
One aspect about the use or meaning of the trophy heads, is that all can agree that in whatever situation they were acquired in, it was religious/ritualistic in nature. Whether it be the head of an enemy in battle or ritual battle, headtaking was done for reasons of acquiring power, status, or safety from the enemy's soul. There is also iconographic evidence that suggests that after the abandonment of Cahuachi, that as headhunting became more "secularized," the elite class shifted from being made up of priests and ceremonial figureheads, to being successful headhunters.
Some of the painting and decoration on the pottery is Nasca iconography: Nasca iconography can range in subject from trophy heads or warrior head takers, as previously mentioned, and mythical anthropomorphic figures, to everyday subjects that can display a chief or priest, a coca chewer, farmer, fisherman, "impersonator of gods" (masked ritual performer), musician, or llama-tender. These are roles are usually portrayed by men in Nasca pottery. Women are usually displayed carrying firewood, or reclined in "voluptuous seated form", squatting in childbirth, and also chewing coca. These are general images shown in Nasca pottery throughout the Nasca culture, and are not all found specifically at Cahuachi. Nasca pottery did, however, reach "an aesthetic and technological peak in EIP 3, corresponding to the apogee of Cahuachi".
Being that Cahuachi has an abundance of regular pottery, most likely for food and feasting purposes, but also a mass of fine pottery that is mostly associated with burials and ceremonial purposes, and the fact that fine pottery in Nasca society expressed religious as well as world views, there is much iconography to be collected at Cahuachi. Other types of images, like those portrayed in monumental style decorated pottery, display more natural figures, mostly birds. Another interesting aspect of Nasca iconography is what is not portrayed. Children never appear in Nasca iconography. Also, there is no hierarchy of scale in Nasca iconography; there are no figures larger than any others, or surrounded by smaller and therefore inferior images, that would indicate a difference in status or class.
Pottery that dates to Nasca 6 and 7 times found in many of the burials at Cahuachi are also evidence of Cahuachi's use during this time as mainly a burial site. The absence of abundant pottery use and any other evidence of ritual use or otherwise within and around the actual architecture of the site suggest that these constructions were abandoned after Nasca 5 times. The reason for the decline of Cahuachi is as yet, unknown, but the fall of their largest central ceremonial center and heart of the Nasca cult signifies the decline of the entire Nasca culture throughout the region. However, archaeological findings of Orefici suggest that Cahuachi was abandoned around 450–500 , due to a severe drought and after severe mudslides and earthquakes.
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