[2] Archaeologist Izumi Shimada, founder of the Sican Archaeological Project,[3] named the prehistoric culture which he discovered in northwestern Peru.

From remains found in the archaeological locations, researchers have determined that this culture maintained commercial exchange with people from present-day Ecuador (shells and snails), Colombia to the north (emeralds and amber), Chile to the south (blue stone), and the eastern basin of the Marañón River (seeds of gold).

[4] The decline of the Wari Empire and the Middle Cajamarca polity enabled the resurgence in local political and religious identity and autonomy.

Together, these characteristics provide evidence that the Sicán culture had a highly productive economy, clear social differentiation, and an influential religious ideology.

Features such as sculptural representation and the minimization of number of colors (one to three), were common among the art of many earlier cultures that flourished on the north coast of Peru.

The name "Naylamp" was first mentioned by the Spanish chronicler Miguel Cabello Valboa, who referred to the Moche figure "Naymlap" in his 1586 Miscelánea Antártica.

Both the preceding Moche and Wari cultures feature a single dominant male figure, and the upturned eyes characteristic of the Sicán Deity are common to the art and iconography of other Pre-Hispanic societies.

Depictions of the Sicán Deity with tumi knives and trophy heads may indicate his omnipotent control in both human life and the celestial world (Nickle Arts Museum 2006, p. 66; Shimada 2000, p. 52-53).

Workshops, such as the one found at Huaca Sialupe to the west of Batán Grande, likely had both pottery and metalworking production sites (Goldsmith and Shimada 2007, p. 45).

The Paleteada ceramics used the paddle-and-anvil technique to form and decorate pottery, primarily with geometric designs (Cleland and Shimada 1998, p. 112).

[2][6] The great amounts of smelting and/or metalworking sites found in the Lambayeque region point to the convergence of major factors to allow such an occurrence: accessible ore deposits, extensive forests for hardwood to make charcoal, pottery making tradition using efficient kilns, gold working tradition that formed the basis for later metalworking technology, and a demand for goods by the elites (Shimada, Goldstein, Wagner, Bezur 2007, p. 339).

In modern standards, their copper-alloy smelting was inefficient, which could have led to the high number of workshops with multiple furnaces (Shimada and Merkel 1991, p. 85).

From their high status sites, the elites supervised the manufacturing of their precious metal objects for ritual or funerary purposes (Shimada and Merkel 1991, p. 86).

Most of the evidence for these funerary practices has been based on excavations carried out at the Huaca Loro site in the city of Poma, located at Batán Grande, in La Leche Valley, by Izumi Shimada and the SAP.

The most obvious difference in burial type based on social hierarchy was that commoners were buried in simple, shallow graves on the peripheries of the monumental mounds while the elite of Sicán society were buried in deep shaft tombs beneath monumental mounds, as shown in the East and West tombs at Huaca Loro.

The complex internal organization of both East and West Tombs was designed according to specific social and kinship relationships (Shimada et al. 2004).

(Nickle Arts Museum 2006, p. 87; Shimada 2000, p. 56; Bruhns 1994, p. 290) On the other hand, commoner burials had a significantly less amount of grave goods of different types, made of less valuable materials.

(Shimada 2000, p. 56) All together, the construction of the monumental mound at Huaca Loro, the preparation of the East and West Tombs and performance of the associated rituals required careful and complex planning, and considerable material, labor resources and time, and suggests the elite's control and monopoly of power in society.

The sheer size and grandeur of the monumental mounds built above the elite tombs would have been awe-inspiring to Sicán citizens and a symbol the divine nature of the figures buried below.

(Shimada et al. 2004) Colorful murals with religious iconography decorated ceremonial precincts in the temples of the mounds, establishing the sanctity of the ritual space, and reaffirming this connection of the buried elite below to the divine.

This T-shaped area is defined by monumental mounds of Huaca Loro, El Moscón, Las Ventanas, La Merced, and Abejas built between around AD 900 and 1050.

They are a dramatic symbol of the power, wealth and permanence of the Middle Sicán elite and their theocratic state that dominated much of the north coast.

The Sicán used a walled-chamber-and-fill technique (which first appeared on the North Coast during Moche V) for constructing the monumental mound where the walls were created by adobe bricks and mortar in conjunction with chambers of superimposed lattices filled with refuse and other readily available materials.

[2][6][12] Marks on the adobe bricks used to make the mounds are indications of the patrons donating materials and/or labor for the construction of the temples (Shimada 2000, p. 60).

Shimada suggests that the canals at Pampa de Chaparri were developed by the Sican as part of an agro-industrial complex marked by an increase in mining and smelting operations, settlement growth, and the expansion of agriculture.

The construction of this irrigation system, as well as the association of hierarchical social units and canal branches, coincides with the rapid and dramatic growth of the Middle Sican.

[15] The Late Sican period began around 1100 and ended with the conquest of the Lambayeque region by the Chimú kingdom of Chimor circa 1375.

[16] After 30 years of uncertainty in respect to nature, the temples that were the center of Middle Sican religion and elite power were burned and abandoned between 1050 and 1100.

Coupled with the drought that surely weakened agriculture in the area, the tolerance of the common population plummeted, forcing the removal of the political and religious leadership at Sican to save the people.

[2][6][16][17] Agriculture and irrigation were also not affected by the transition of political and religious power, as evidenced by the lack of effects on Pampa de Chaparri and numerous large urban hill-side settlements.