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213 Chapter 12 o Moche and Wari during the Middle Horizon on the North Coast of Peru Claude Chapdelaine T he major goal of this paper is to provide an overview of recent archaeological researches on the North Coast of Peru in order to contribute to the discussion of the relation between the Moche and Wari polities. The recognition of Wari as a predatory state and a likely candidate for establishing the first empire in South America has produced an intellectual climate favoring the widespread physical presence of this expansionist polity based on the presence of Wari artifacts. The North Coast of Peru was once considered as part of the Wari Empire. While that hypothesis was never consolidated with solid archaeological data, it is worth examining the possibility of exchange, interaction, and global influence between the Moche and Wari polities, although it is clear that the latter was much bigger. During the 1970s and 1980s, several scenarios were produced to explain the fast decline of Moche and the abandonment of its capital located in the Moche Valley (Bawden 1996; Moseley 1992). A series of catastrophic events, including a severe drought and mega El Niños, were used to explain its rapid collapse (Shimada et al. 1991). A Wari conquest was also suggested, but never demonstrated as a viable hypothesis (Topic 1991). Underlying these scenarios was a broadly accepted proposal that the expansionist Moche state flourished during the stylistic Phase IV, that the state ended with the Early Intermediate Period around AD 600, and that Wari dominated the area by the beginningof the Middle Horizon (Isbell 2000). The Moche V polities established at Pampa Grande (Shimada 1994) and at Galindo (Bawden1996)weremoreregionalinscaleandculturally less diversified than the previous Moche Phase IV. These polities flourished briefly before the final decline of the Moche civilization around AD 800. The Moche V polities were considered contemporaneous with Wari and, as such, should illustrate a strong highland influence in architecture, material culture, symbolism, and sociopolitical organization. This scenario is now too simplistic to explain the complex relation between Moche and Wari. The new chronology for several southern Moche sites indicates that the Horizon system is inappropriate since it was conceived to order polities as monolithic entities in distinct time periods. It is now evident that some polities encompass the timeline dividing the Early Intermediate Period (EIP) and the Middle Horizon (MH). It was believed that the Moche were a dynamic culture on the NorthCoastintheEIPandthatWariarrivedduringthe MH to conquer the area. This scenario is now considered incorrect. First, the Moche were not a single monolithic group, especially at the sociopolitical level, and based 214 CLAUDE CHA PDELA INE on several lines of evidence they are generally divided into two broad geographic entities: the Northern and Southern Moche (Castillo and Donnan 1994; Castillo and Uceda 2008). They both continued into the MH as two distinct spheres, both showing no evidence for a Wari conquest of the Moche realm. A reassessment of Moche political economy, Moche chronology, and Wari influence on the North Coast leadstoverydifferentconclusionsregardingtherelationship between the Wari and Moche polities. New data on the Moche are challenging the old interpretations, and they will be presented after we review our current understanding of the Moche geopolitical framework. The Moche The Moche culture developed on the North Coast of Peru. Its geographic core encompasses ten valleys, from northtosouth:Leche,Lambayeque,Zaña,Jequetepeque, Chicama, Moche, Virú, Chao, Santa, and Nepeña. Its influence has been proposed to extend to the north to include the Piura Valley and to the south to incorporate intoitsrealmtheCasma,Culebras,andHuarmeyvalleys (Figure12.1).Inmostofthecorevalleys,theMocheoccupation is limited to the lower and middle portions. The upper valleys were never occupied or controlled by the elites who were established near the coast. The Moche are thus a coastal culture relying heavily on agriculture, complemented by fishing and herding llamas. The Moche culture has captured the imagination since the middle of the twentieth century with its distinctive ceramic imagery and diversity (Donnan 1978, 2004). This interest led to major archaeological projects in different valleys. The general understanding of the time was that Moche was a monolithic culture organized into a single political unit. Scholars have always been divided about the nature of the sociopolitical organization of the Moche, but the dominant paradigm established in the 1970s argued that the Moche achieved the first state-level organization in the Andes and that Huacas de Moche served as the ruling capital (Moseley 1992:166–178). Although Huacas de Moche is still considered...

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