Moche Sacred Place

The Huaca : The Place of Power

The basic Moche platform mound was a massive mud brick structure incorporating ascending terraces connected by ramps. Huge terraces, connected to the platform by means of ramps and flights of steps, often abutted the central architectural element, visually emphasizing it and expanding the space available for the ceremonial that formed a vital part of its function. Archaeological studies indicate that these structures supported summit rooms whose roofs were often elaborately embellished by war-clubs, decorative combs, or animal adornments. Open to the front, these rooms were approached by steps and contained daises or "thrones." From painted depictions it is clear that they were the focus of the important ritual dramas that were conducted on the platforms.

While platforms in general were built throughout the North Coast, they varied considerably in details of size, form, and construction method. Moreover, the major destruction that time and vandalism have afflicted on many platforms make it impossible to determine at this stage how far they conformed to a precise architectural canon. However, general correspondence of form and locational context strongly indicates that they manifest a common concept regarding the use of architecture as the focus of central political authority and its accompanying symbolism of power.

It was on the broad terraces and summits of these symbolic mountains with their aura of spiritual power and fertilizing force that the rituals of power took place. It was here that crowds from the surrounding valleys congregated at times of religious festival and political ceremony to participate in the events that strengthened their sense of communal identity and to celebrate the prevailing social order. It was here, overawed by their surroundings, that they transcended the constraints of daily life to enter sacred space and time and commune with their ancestral heritage. It was here, high above, that their leaders conducted the rituals by whose means they penetrated the world of the spirits to assure the fecundity of their arid land. It was here that, in the drama of ritual sacrifice, the blood of humans created the vital connection between physical and supernatural dimensions of Moche experience and allowed shaman-rulers to sustain the cosmological balance upon which rested the fortunes of their society.

However, there was another means by which platforms served as the places where the physical and metaphysical domains of the Moche universe converged. While most served as the places where rituals of power were enacted and the rulers who conducted them most conspicuously manifested their positions of authority in society, some also represented the most elaborate Moche burial monuments. In this role they again identified rulers with the supernatural bases of their authority. By interring the dead members of the ruling, complete with the symbols of their political position, these great structures ensured their continuing active role in society as sacred presences whose influence transcended time and physical existence. In this sense, the platforms served the same purpose as the pyramids of Egypt.

Platforms possessed deep symbolic meaning. Politically, this meaning was calculated to ensure that the reins of power remained in the hands of the rulers of Moche society. Platforms were visual embodiments of the power inherent in the spiritual forces of the natural world and of the myths of Moche group identity and history, all of which were revealed in daily life through ritual enactment. By associating this powerful ritual system with a dominant architectural form, Moche rulers trans-formed physical context itself into the central component of the symbolic system that manifested and asserted Moche political ideology. As centers of ritual and the eternal abodes of its elite the massive adobe platforms articulated deep Andean structural belief pertaining to myth, cosmological balance, spir-ituality, and time, to proclaim the centrality and immutability of the social order that sustained the ruling group. These great symbolic edifices were the primary centers of social integration. They were the places where power was manifested most po-tently in the social domain. It is not by chance that the popular name for these platforms is the Quechua word for sacred place - Huaca - a meaning that projects the awe and religious aura that surrounded these from Moche times to the present.