In keeping with their multiple character, Mochica polities did not collapse all at once or for one single reason. Rather, the collapses (plural) of the Mochicas (also plural) are clearly complex processes that occurred throughout three hundred years and by a combination of factors. The outcomes of these terminal processes were reconfigurations of the north coast societies, first by quite peculiar cultural processes, such as that documented in San Jose de Moro’s Transitional Period (Rucabado and CastiUo 2003), and ultimately by the establishment
Of two distinct regional cultures, Lambayeque, in the Northern Mochica region, and Chimu, in the Southern Mochica region. The environment (Shimada 1994; Moseley and Patterson 1992), foreign invasions (Larco 1945; Willey 1953) and internal instabilities brought about by social conflict (Bawden 2001; Castillo 2001; Shimada 1994) are frequently blamed for the demise of the Mochicas. Close scrutiny makes any of these arguments, by itself, weak and incomplete, particularly those that place the origin of change outside the society. Our position is that if there has to be a common reason for the demise of the Mochica polities it must be the failure of a power strategy based predominantly on the manipulation of materialized expressions of ideology. In all their polities, Mochica elites had connected their fates too tightly with the efficacy of ideology, the power of performance and representation, the production and exchange of ritual objects. For much of their history this strategy had been successful, allowing all Mochicas to grow and prosper, and by necessity it had to have been combined with other sources of power. But, starting in the seventh century AD it clearly did not work any more. Ideological discourse and materializations in rituals, monuments and artifacts, weakened by environmental instability and foreign threats, were unable to legitimate the structure of society, the unequal distribution of socially produced wealth and the monopoly that the elites had in the direction of society. The study of Late Moche sites such as Pampa Grande (Day 1978; Shimada 1994), Galindo (Bawden 1977; Lockard 2005) or San Idelfoso (Dillehay 2001; Swenson 2004) have produced quite differentiated pictures of the last days of the Mochicas. What follows is an account of the process as recorded in long-term occupation sites, the Huacas of Moche and San Jose de Moro, sites that not only account for the end of the Mochicas, but that place this process in a continuous occupation.
Excavations at Huaca de la Luna have revealed a peculiar configuration for the end of the Mochicas. Two occupational phases can be distinguished, the first one from the foundation to the year AD 600, and the second between AD 600 and 800. The first phase corresponds to the development and intensive use of Huaca de la Luna, the performance of the Sacrifice Ceremony, and multiple transformations of the monument. A clear emphasis is given to ritual performance and enormous resources are invested in the construction and transformation of the monument. In the urban center, the lower layers of the occupation also reveal an emphasis on the production and manipulation of ritual artifacts and on burials of individuals costumed as ritual performers. This emphasis ceased around AD 650 when Huaca de la Luna was almost closed and the Mochica population turned its attention to Huaca del Sol. The new building, produced in relatively little time and following a model of platform and ramp more common in the Northern Mochica region, marks a turn and transformation in practices and tradition. Mochica society in this second phase seems oriented to a more secular emphasis, with more attention placed on the production of household goods. We do not claim that this second occupational phase corresponds with a secular state, but that the tendencies towards secularity, more visible later on with Chimu, make their debut at this time (Uceda 2004).
The end of the Mochicas in San Jose de Moro, a ceremonial center and elite cemetery located in the northern Jequetepeque Valley, is quite dissimilar. It, too, implies the abandonment of Mochica traditions, particularly Mochica burial practices and ceramic styles, and conjecturably, of Mochica rituals that led to these burials and required these objects. Funerary practices and ceramics are two cultural features clearly associated with the Mochica elites, so their demise implied the interruption of their production. San Jose de Moro had been a regional ceremonial center where elites and populations at large from the whole Jequetepeque Valley gathered for ceremonial events. Great quantities of chicha
(maize beer) were produced and consumed, and when required, buried with the dead. The regional integration and coordination role of the site continued after the Mochicas vanished—chicha was still produced there in large quantities, and members of the elites were still buried there.
The collapse of the Mochicas in San Jose de Moro, in contrast to the collapse at Huaca de la Luna, is rather abrupt, even though the site was not abandoned, but was continually occupied during the Transitional Period when the local tradition was reconfigured. Relatively large quantities of foreign ceramics appear associated with local burials during the transition, including the Wari, Nieveria, Atarco, Pativilca, Cajamarca in several phases, and Chachapoyas styles. They participated in the formation of a proper Transitional style, a sort of post Moche tradition with many formal characteristics that coalesced in Lambayeque and Chimu. Foreign ceramics were incorporated in local burials as a small external contribution that, most likely, emphasized a peculiar aspect of an individual’s identity. But within the Jequetepeque Valley we can detect many distinct terminal processes. Wari ceramics, of excellent quality, are found almost only in San Jose de Moro, while Cerro Chepen exhibits what seems to be highland architecture (Rosas 2005). Other Late Moche sites, like San Idelfonso (Swenson 2004), or Portachuelo de Charcape (Johnson ms.), reveal a situation that seems to be more standard, that is to say, where the Mochica occupation ceased and the site was abandoned. These differences seem to be an outcome of the previously discussed fragmentary configuration of the valley, where each local polity was free to establish alliances and affiliations with local or foreign societies, and thus show different kinds and intensities of affinities in their artifactual compositions.
If the Mochica were, as Bawden has argued (2001), basically a political ideology, their collapse should have been the end of the efficacy of Mochica elite ideas and material expressions of the strategies of legitimization and control, of idiosyncratic ways of ritual performance, and of particularly Mochica social organization. However, life continued on the north coast after the Mochicas were gone: the irrigation systems that the Mochicas built continued functioning, as many do today, as did the technologies they had developed for making copper look like gold. Of all things Mochica, religion was the one thing most dramatically transformed, as it was probably—more than anything else—associated with the way the Mochicas had ruled the land. We do not agree with the idea that the Mochicas simply melted down into the Chimu or the Lambayeque, or that we can recognize them in their heirs. Rather, the Mochicas—as a system, as a way to control the land and give sense to society, as an explanation for the universe—collapsed and disappeared, their leaders failed and vanished, many of their settlements and temples were emptied and abandoned. The collapse of the Mochicas implies that a reconfiguration was needed to bring order back, to return legitimacy and wealth to the north coast of Peru (Baines and Yoffee 1998). Furthermore, the Mochicas are not the Chimu or the Lambayeque. We can not study one extrapolating from the other. Finally, societies, both past and present, do collapse.
World History
