As more data become available the nature of Mochica power starts to show more emphasis on ideology and on social relations than on coercion, military power, or even economic centralizations or dependencies. Following Mann’s (1986) proposal for the study of power
As the combination of different sources, it is apparent that for the Mochicas power was configured as strategies that combined different sources depending on circumstances, historical backgrounds, traditions and resources. Thus, to discuss Mochica power is to study the ways in which different Mochica elites, in different political settings and times, and under distinct circumstances used ideology, economics, politics and coercion to configure strategies to gain control and legitimize their social position. Some of the things that we can be certain of are that the Mochicas were an elitist society, thus featuring social contradictions and unequal access to resources that were at any given time a source of social turmoil. Continuous and uninterrupted occupations of sites and long-term developmental processes, among other things, attest to the fact that Mochica power, in any of its configurations, was successful for long periods of time. The collapse(s) of the Mochicas ultimately can be attributed to the failure of the strategies that had worked for them, possibly because of bad calculations of circumstances and capacities, combined with unexpected and foreign factors (see final section).
Given the right circumstances any of four sources of power could have become preeminent over the other. Military power must have been critical to face a foreign threat or to take advantage of the opportunity to conquer a weak neighbor. Economic planning and control of resources must have been decisive in years of droughts or heavy rains. Political interactions between the elites of different regions must have been central in strategies of legitimacy. Marriages among royal houses must have been, at some points, more effective than military action. But among all sources of power the one that seems to be more permanent, and to which the other sources gravitate, is ideology and its materializations. The Mochicas invested more resources in constructing and maintaining temples than any other infrastructure, and within these buildings they performed rituals that, according to iconographic evidence and archaeological data, required the investment of enormous amounts of resources. The production of ritual artifacts was one of the most prominent activities among the Mochicas and in relation to it technologies were advanced and commercial relations established. It was under ritual circumstances that war became ceremonial battle and taxation became a form of contribution for the wellbeing of society. The Mochica elites themselves became material expressions of their ideological system, impersonating the principal deities and supernatural beings in ritual performance (Donnan and Castillo 1994; Alva 2004).
World History
