death in northern Peru part I

The Incas are so well known that little attention is paid outside of Peru to the various other civilisations that came before them, such as the Moche, the Chimu and the Chachapoya.  But it was the remnants of these earlier civilisations that drew me this time, so I signed up to a two-week Wild Frontiers tour of northern Peru.

We met up in Lima and started with a visit to the Larco Museum with its truly amazing collection of pre-Columbian pottery, jewellery and other relics.  A place that will be well worth a second visit when I next have a work assignment in Peru.

Then we flew north to Trujillo.  The better-known site here is the UNESCO World Heritage listed Chan Chan, with the remains of this great Chimu city covering nearly 30 square kilometres, but I much preferred the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon from the earlier Moche period.  The excavations under way here have recently revealed more than 6,000 square metres of murals and reliefs on the mud walls being uncovered within the Pyramid of the Moon. many in very good condition.  The lower wall here, showing the 'decapitator' god, dates from around 300 AD.

After some time out to enjoy the natural environment (separate post to follow!), we headed further north to the site of Huaca Rajada, or Sipán, where the burial sites of a number of Moche warrior-priests were recently uncovered.  A visit to the archaeological site put eveything into context but another amazing museum showed the remains and the incredible collection of jewellery and other accoutrements with which these important people were buried, including the skeletons of the guards who were buried alongside them, with their feet chopped off to ensure that they never run away from the job.  Like most pre-Columbian sites in the region, the Huaca (pyramid) had been looted, but in this instance the looters had not found two very important tombs so the archaeologists were able to recover the contents in their entirety and display them in this fabulous museum.

Nearly as impressive were the burrowing owls that stood around the site.  The Moche venerated them (there are examples of these owls in pottery form).  I was told that this came from the fact that they move in all three worlds - burrowing into the underworld where the dead go, walking around on the earth with the living, and flying up (at least part way!) to the heavens where the gods live - but as they stood around staring at us with their unblinking yellow eyes it felt to me as though they were guarding the tombs, or even that they were the reincarnated spirits of the Moche rulers, and I wondered if their status came simply from this unnerving presence.