Cahuachi
[2] The American archeologist Helaine Silverman has also conducted long term, multi-stage research and written about the full context of Nazca society at Cahuachi, published in a lengthy study in 1993.
Cahuachi is located off of the valley bottom of the treeless hills and terraces beneath Pampa de Atarco, and has been known to be subject to strong winds that are capable of becoming sandstorms.
There is, also present, sporadic rains and cyclical floods which result in water erosion of the terrain, which made some parts of the valley uninhabitable, which influenced the settlement pattern of Cahuachi.
In the early 1980s, archaeologist Helaine Silverman and Italian architect Giuseppe Orefici conducted intensive and extensive archaeological excavations in several areas of the site.
[8] Monumental refers to the types of Nasca pottery with so-called realistic designs, while Proliferous describes more “conventionalized motifs” with volutes, rays, and points.
Cahuachi is considered a non-urban ceremonial center, meaning that it was never densely occupied and people did not actually live there long-term, this is evidenced by perishable and temporary “wattle and daub-like” structures (not unlike the ones made today) excavated on site.
The reason for why there is a limited amount of edible plant remains found here is because Cahuachi was not a permanently inhabited place, so any food that was brought there was kept in small storage and quickly consumed.
Small storage facilities and vessels that would have contained food and drink only sufficient for short visits to the ceremonial center both support the fact that Cahuachi was not permanently inhabited at all times and therefore most likely did not have intensive agriculture at the site itself.
All had their heads jerked out of articulation and pristine preservation of their soft tissues allowed Silverman to determine that their undersides had been split open from the neck down, resembling modern-day divination rituals.
Here, in front of a deep niche, were two cylindrical depressions, resembling postholes, and within them were found ten unworked pieces of Spondylus, a shell sacred in the Andean region.
This means that the people who did spend time there, were not there long enough to do things like set up an intensive agricultural system, or contribute to large-scale craft specialization and production.
Cahuachi was, however, a ceremonial center and more importantly a religious destination, so there were people going to and from the site on a regular basis, developing a sort of "pilgrimage trade" system.
Silverman believes that Cahuachi was “a locus of textile production where the shrouds of those special individuals buried at the site and the elaborate costumes worn by Nasca priests and/or ritual performers were produced.” The "Great Cloth" The world largest known textile was found entombed in Cahuachi, the Nasca ceremonial and political center in 1952 during excavation led by William Duncan Strong.
Kanchas are the bounded open spaces beneath and between mounds and can be defined as a walled field or patio area that does not necessarily insinuate any specific function.
[16] Because of the commitment to executing construction around and in convenience to the natural geography, it can be inferred that this may reflect social spatial organization for the site, which is interpretively unrestricted.
Terracing hills was also a common practice at Cahuachi because it was "energetically and materially cheap" and still produced the appearance of monumental architecture, like large ceremonial mounds or temples.
It is debatable whether or not that this construction is the one and only “Great Temple” at Cahuachi, but it truly did have a ceremonial purpose which is obvious by the large amounts of Nasca 3 pottery, panpipe fragments, llama remains, bird plumage, and other offertory materials recovered.
[20] In addition to the already above mentioned artifacts, there were many plainware and decorated vessels including vases, bowls, bottles with handles, caches, musical instruments, and baskets.
[24] Although Cahuachi held a significant position in the communities of Nasca 3 times, it was specifically a ceremonial center and did not have a large residential population, and therefore did not necessarily have a hierarchy of power or leadership like one that would be found at a complex habitational site.
[25] The amount of monumental architecture at Cahuachi, however, cannot be explained except for Helaine Silverman's interpretation that Cahuachi held a sacred geography that made it the focus of the Nasca cult, which includes any political aspects that come along with this, such as monumental architecture being symbols of group unity and shared ancestry, while at the same time sending a widespread political message to allies or rivals.
Furthermore, Cahuachi's obvious influence and importance in Nasca society and the fact that it was primarily a ceremonial center suggests that political power and social differences may not have been exclusively based on the economy.
This is further evidenced by a lack of clear mortuary differentiation in early Nasca society and iconographic portrayals of elites, which lead researchers to believe that there could have been at least a group-oriented chiefdom where accumulation of personal wealth was forgone or otherwise unachievable.
[25] The main thing that connected the segments of peoples in the Rio Grande de Nazca drainage system were their Nasca cultural traditions and religious cult where Cahuachi was the center, but only as a temporary pilgrimage site, and otherwise they lived in their own smaller communities with their own separate local ceremonial and domestic foci, and was therefore not politically centralized.
The room is characterized by well-made adobe walls that even happened to be painted with images pertaining to ceremonial uses such as Nasca panpipes, and rayed faces.
The huarango plant is a shrubby legume native to and grown in this region; it has symbolic ancestral meaning associated with the tree of life and a person's spiritual roots, still held to this day.
However, also previously discussed, the peoples of Nasca 3 times were spread out all over the Río Grande de Nazca drainage system region and were more or less separated into individual groups, where they lived in a most likely independent chiefdom governed areas.
There are some remnants of food stuffs and spondylus shell, even a small fragment near some skeletal remains of red pigment, but nothing as substantial as the elaborate graves of pre-Columbian cultures that so enthrall the archaeological world.
One example of differentiation in burials, possibly due to status, was two adult, most likely males, that were both buried within tombs (not associated with each other), but one of them did not have any grave goods at all, while the other contained three pots.
It has been interpreted that the ritualistic reasoning behind taking the heads was “a ceremonial means of gathering the life – or soul – force of enemies,” and done during warfare where the main purpose of which was territorial expansion.
Some of the painting and decoration on the pottery is Nasca iconography: Nasca iconography can range in subject from trophy heads or warrior head takers, as previously mentioned, and mythical anthropomorphic figures,[30] to everyday subjects that can display a chief or priest, a coca chewer, farmer, fisherman, "impersonator of gods" (masked ritual performer), musician, or llama-tender.
