In 2015, Peruvian and international archaeologists met in Trujillo to share their recent research in the Moche, Chicama, and Virú Valleys on Peru's north coast. This volume, dedicated to the memory of the influential Moche scholar Dr. Santiago Uceda Castillo, collects the conference papers. The Trujillo region has long been the focus of archaeological investigation, from pioneering work by the likes of Bennett, Bird, and Willey to the influential contributions of the Chan Chan-Moche Valley Project in the 1960s and 1970s. Most chapters in this volume respond explicitly to the paradigms and chronologies generated by this past work by questioning, revising, or complicating previous understandings of prehispanic social and political organization in these valleys.
As an Andeanist located in the United States, sometimes I find it difficult to access the extensive recent research on the north coast of Peru. Too often, data languish in reports or unpublished theses; new results are presented at conferences with audiences limited by academic schedules, travel funding, and visas. In the absence of new publications, I continue to cite classic edited volumes from the 1980s and 1990s. As the research reported in this volume attests, it is time to rethink many of these classic models in the light of new evidence.
The volume contains 14 chapters, mostly in Spanish, along with a highly useful introduction by editors Gabriel Prieto and Alicia Boswell and a tribute to Dr. Uceda by Henry Gayoso. It is organized chronologically, with several clusters of chapters that speak to each other geographically and chronologically.
The first chapter, by Prieto and coauthors, uses petrographic, formal, stylistic, and residue analyses to describe early ceramics at Gramalote, a seaside community occupied between 1500 and 1200 BC. In contrast to models proposing that ceramics were first adopted for ritual or political functions, Prieto and coauthors find that Gramalote residents used the earliest ceramics for quotidian cooking activities. Domestic ceramics expressed local ideologies in the context of daily food consumption, whereas bottles produced at larger centers communicated a broadly shared symbolic vocabulary.
The chapter by Jordan Downey and Jean-François Millaire reconsiders Virú Valley chronologies. Careful seriation of domestic wares through correspondence analysis, anchored by a series of radiocarbon dates, allows them to propose a refined chronological sequence that emphasizes cultural and ethnic continuity over abrupt cultural change. Brian Billman and colleagues present data from Cerro León, an Early Intermediate Period site in the middle Moche Valley. They use multiple lines of evidence, including burials, residential architecture, cuisine, ceramics, and activities like discard and cleaning, to argue that Cerro León residents were mostly ethnically highland people they call Culle. This reconstruction of Cerro León social identity allows them to evaluate existing models of coast–highland interaction and argue that, in this area, such relationships were based on peaceful alliance and exchange.
The next chapters present new evidence from ongoing work at the Huacas de Moche. Henry Gayoso reports on his investigations at Huaca las Estrellas, to the south of Moche, which suggest it was a Gallinazo palace. Enrique Zavaleta discusses new excavations at a platform in the urban sector of Moche, originally identified by members of the Chan Chan-Moche Valley Project. New excavations uncovered complex architecture, including a circular structure like that depicted in Moche iconography, and elite male burials. To Zavaleta, these data support a secularization of power later in the Moche period. Celeste Gagnon presents a bioarchaeological assessment of health at Moche: she finds more stress in Moche residents than in earlier Salinar and Gallinazo populations, despite the greater social stability of the Moche period. Finally, Moises Tufinio's chapter describes recent investigations at Huaca del Sol. Initially the residence of a powerful leader, Huaca del Sol became a focus of ceremonial and burial activity later in the Moche period and in the subsequent Middle Horizon. Taken together, these chapters highlight the remarkable advances made in more than two decades of investigation at the Huacas de Moche.
Moving north, Régulo Franco's chapter reports recent research at Huaca el Castillo, at the Chicama Valley site of Mocollope, which likely represented the seat of a local lord within a valley-wide hierarchy headed by powerful El Brujo. Ari Caramanica's survey results from the Pampa de Mocán call into question the link between sociopolitical complexity and irrigation agriculture, showing that a mobile population farmed this area intensively and developed an opportunistic food production system that flourished in the context of environmental instability.
A final set of chapters focuses on the Chimú and Inca periods. Feren Castillo Luján's chapter uses recent excavations of Early Chimú burials at Huaca de la Luna—along with later Moche dates from Luna and new ceramic typologies elsewhere on the coast—to rethink Mackey's Chimú ceramic sequence. Nadia Gamarra and colleagues report on exciting new work at Chan Chan. They document the reuse of a funerary platform located outside major compound walls, where intrusive, secondary burials respected older platform architecture in a pattern that suggests long-term social memory and ancestor veneration. I hope that more insights from these ongoing investigations at the Chimú capital will follow. Patrick Mullins documents how frontier dynamics affected the lives of local populations in the middle and upper valleys during the Chimú and Inca periods. Alicia Boswell's work at Cerro Huancha, Collambay, suggests ways that local chaupiyunga leaders may have gained authority and access to new exchange systems after the Inca conquest. Both Mullins and Boswell offer important insights into local experiences in imperial peripheries. Finally, Jean Hudson compares ethnoarchaeological data to Moche Valley archaeological fish assemblages, identifying long-term continuities in maritime exploitation strategies.
Despite a few quality issues in its production, this is a highly useful and well-illustrated volume. Importantly, it makes available new data at multiple scales that require us to rethink old narratives about prehispanic life on Peru's north coast.
