Pyramids in Peru give evidence of opulent realm

Press, 10 January 1986, Page 14

Pyramids in Peru give evidence of opulent realm

By

DONALD FREDERICK,

National

Georgraphic News Service

A complex of 50 truncated pyramids, the remains of 14 torture victims, and more than 1800 elaborate textiles have been discovered at a pre-Columbian site called Pacatnamu in northern Peru. Some of the victims, all male, had been beheaded; all were mutilated.

Situated on a high bluff overlooking the mouth of the Jequetepeque River and the Pacific Ocean, the settlement was surrounded on two sides by deep trenches and 400 yards of massive walls, in one section 23 feet high and 30 feet wide. Towering 125-foot cliffs on the other sides created a Masadalike setting. “A large defensive force could have stood on that wall,” says Dr Christopher B. Donnan, who directed the excavation at Pacatnamu. He is a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. “The walls were completed in just a few years,” he says. “It was an enormous job.”

The administrative centre of an independent kingdom, Pacatnamu rose to prominence under the Chimu people about A.D. 1100 and flourished for 250 years. “The organisation and administrative skills developed by the peoples of these coastal kingdoms were much more sophisticated than those practised by the Incas who eventually conquered them,” says Dr Donnan. Emerging about A.D. 900, the Chimus used taxation in the form of labour to build their large structures and inter-valley irrigation systems. Expanding from their capital, Chan Chan, about 60 miles south of Pacatnamu, the Chimus became the largest, richest, and most powerful people to challenge the Incas before falling to them about 1464.

The pyramids at Pacatnamu reflected this opulence. Each was flanked by a a palace complex of spacious courts, corridors, and rooms that housed the elite. The largest pyramid — the first of two excavated by Dr Donnan and his team so far — measured 30 feet

high and 180 by 210 feet long at the base. About three football fields could fit in the walled ceremonial compound next to the pyramid. Exquisite miniature garments that might have been used in rituals were found among the thousands of textiles that turned up in the compounds and other places on the site.

Master weavers, the Chimu fashioned fabrics from their looms fine enough to catch the fancy of the king. Working with looms like those still in use in the Andean highlands, Peru’s pre-Columbian weavers mastered the intricacies of tapestry, twill, gauze, and double cloth to produce fabrics that compared favourably with the finest textiles of medieval Europe.

A fragment of textile perfectly preserved in the dry climate by a covering of wind-blown sand created the most interest, however. “It’s an artistic portrayal showing activities that went on in one of the ceremonial quadrangles,” explains Dr Donnan, whose work at Pacatnamu has been supported by the National Geographic Society. The textile shows elaborately costumed people dancing, weaving, sacrificing llamas, and raising goblets as though proposing a toast. Dr Donnan found evidence of all these activities in the same quadrangle where the piece of cloth was discovered. The raised architecture where the two toasting figures were seated resembled a cluster of elevated platforms located near the entrance. The dancers could have performed on large clay plazas of varying sizes inside the quadrangle. Abundant weaving materials such as balls of yam, bobbins, and spindle whorls uncovered nearby indicated that weavers were present.

The depiction of two individuals sacrificing llamas was of particular interest because llamas, care-

fully wrapped in textiles, were found ritually buried beneath the o floors of two rooms inside the quadrangle. “In each instance,” says Dr Donnan, “a single Hama was found; its chest had been cut open, but there . was no other evidence of injury. » The correlation between what is ’ shown on the textile and what was - excavated suggests that staging ; these ceremonial activities was a, primary function inside the quadrangle. This remarkable textile allows us to view these activities " through the eyes of people who -- practised them centuries before the first Europeans arrived.” “ But life was not all parties and sewing circles in Chimu times. A ’> grisly coHection of 14 mutilated . male bodies was found in a trench near a doorway leading to a major " ceremonial complex. “They were tossed in there over, a period of perhaps three months, exposed to the vultures, and left to decompose, implying a purposeful desecration,” says Dr Donnan. ■ Ranging in age from 15 to 35, • some had been beheaded, others had lost limbs, and four had been jabbed repeatedly with spear-like weapons.

“Although one can only speculate ;? as to the identity of the tortured 14, - their ages and sex, together with, the evidence of many old injuries ■■ on their skeletons, make it reason- ■ able to suggest that they were war - prisoners,” says John Verano, a 1 physical anthropologist who as- ; sisted Dr Donnan at the site. There is a chance that some of,, Pacatnamu’s warriors later suf- •> fered the same fate. The city was suddenly abandoned about A.D. 1350, around the time that armies from Chan Chan were ravaging the nearby Jequetepeque Valley and trying to consolidate independent kingdoms such as Pacatnamu into their empire.