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chapter 1 Looking for Moche Palaces in the Elite Residences of the Huacas of Moche Site Claude Chapdelaine Introduction The Moche civilization is considered a class-structured society and an Archaic State. It is difficult, however, to establish its pristine nature because the North Coast of Peru is known for an early development of public architecture , dating back to the end of the Preceramic period around 2000 B.C. (Moseley 1992; Pozorski and Pozorski 1992). While the Moche civilization inherited the achievements of several preceding complex societies, the Huacas of Moche Site stands out as the first capital city of a multivalley state (Chapdelaine 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003; Shimada 1994; Topic 1982; Wilson 1988, 1999). Within this perspective of a Moche territorial state with a centralized urban center (Figure 1.1), this chapter is an investigation of possible palace locales in and near the monumental building called Huaca de la Luna. Kent Flannery (1998) has designed a ground-plan approach to study the Archaic States. Several criteria are considered, among them the existence of a palace for the king, which represents an interesting difference between chiefdoms and states (Sanders 1974, cited in Flannery 1998:21). The palace, monumental in nature, is the king’s residence, and it should express the power base of the supreme ruler. What was the power base of the Moche ruler? Was this power strong enough to have a palace built, and therefore this monumental residence is a characteristic of the Moche State? It might also be appropriate to verify the existence of a noble class and its elite residences by looking at domestic architecture recently excavated in the urban sector of the Huacas of Moche Site. Moche Palaces In a major conference held at Dumbarton Oaks in October 1998, ‘‘Ancient Palaces of the New World: Form, Function, and Meaning,’’ the Moche civilization was not addressed directly. It would therefore appear that there is no such thing as a Moche palace. Furthermore, although Andeanists believe 24 claude chapdelaine that the first pristine state for their region was Moche, they do not yet have the ground plans of palaces for Moche kings (Flannery 1998:47). Another scholar in the same book shares this statement: ‘‘We know something of their pyramids (huacas) and flamboyant tombs but lack data on whether or not its rulers had palaces’’ (Marcus 1998:75). In this research, it is relevant to ask ourselves what we are looking for that could be considered a Moche palace. It should, of course, be the residence of the supreme ruler. In addition, and at a very hypothetical level, using a list of components based on cross-cultural comparisons (Flannery 1998; ViolletLe -Duc 1996), the palace of the Moche ruler could be composed of: 1. A large monumental structure with high-quality construction and embellishment 2. A residential section with distinctive decoration 3. A large audience room (with an elevated platform or bench for the ruler) to conduct religious, civic, and political duties 4. Several storage rooms to accumulate wealth 5. Rooms for the administration 6. A large enclosure or plaza to permit the gathering of a large segment of the population (this assembly could be done inside or outside the palace grounds) 7. A defensive wall or some defensive features (such as location on top of a hill) Several elements could be added to this list or removed from it. For example , the defensive feature might be replaced by a central location with limited and controlled access to the palace grounds. A religious temple within the palace might be an added feature as well as a burial chamber for the ruler and his family. It should be mentioned that the Moche State could have been a theocracy, in which case religious and military power could have been in the same hands. If this were so, the temple and the palace may have been established together in the same government building. It is also possible to imagine that the palace as a public building could have been the seat of the polity but not the residence of the ruler. However, our basic idea is to consider the Moche palace as a multifunctional building from which the ruling elite was governing a large territorial state (see Wilson 1997 for a critique of the city-state concept applied to the Moche polity). Since we are looking for the palace of the supreme ruler, it is at the Huacas of Moche Site, the state capital, that we should direct...

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