>>11012156

(Please read from the start)

“Architecture and artifacts

Cahuachi's architecture and its organization are characteristic of a ceremonial center, and is not urban (Silverman 1986: 186). At Cahuachi, there are mound and room constructions, a structure called the “Great Temple”, walls that form corridors and passageways, as well as major walls, circular depressions, cylindrical shafts on top of mounds, and kanchas. 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. The following analyses are largely based on Strong's excavations and Silverman's survey and reanalysis of the site.

There are about 40 mounds at Cahuachi. Some mounds had rooms on top of them, others did not, some are considered to be “temples,” and still others were used for burials. But furthermore, the majority of the mounds at Cahuachi are overwhelmingly never actual “habitation mounds”. Strong originally classified these mounds as “habitation mounds” but Silverman argues that they are not domestic, which is in keeping with her assertion that Cahuachi was a non-urban ceremonial center. For some examples of the types of mounds at Cahuachi Silverman focuses on cuts and survey of Units 5, 6, and 7. The core of Unit 5 is a natural hill that was artificially raised through construction and fills. The fill contained bundles and intertwined vegetal fibers, earth, rock, and garbage (Silverman 1986: 187). The mound has a lot more fill than other mounds because it was artificially raised by placing alternating layers of these vegetal fills. Unit 5 also had several circular depressions, or “cache pits” according to Strong, and only a few contained small amounts of corn cobs and beans. The walls were made of adobe with a sand foundation, and is a construction technique interspersed throughout Cahuachi.

Then more fill was placed behind the wall and in front of the hill. This fill consisted of vegetal fiber, lumps of adobe, sand, a few sherds that prove that the construction of the mound cannot predate Nasca 3 dates. Another interesting addition to the fills contents were the presence of offerings like a cache of maize, a large plainware, oxidized olla. The fact that these offerings were made alludes to a ceremonial function of the unit. At Unit 6 Strong originally classified the construction as a Middle Nasca temple that was built over a Late Paracas domestic dwelling, but the association of the circular pits also dug there with Paracas 10-Nasca pottery and the dwellings should not necessarily be classified as Late Paracas. Here, also, there are adobe walls used to retain fill at this unit, just like at Unit 5. There was a wattle and daub wall found underneath, and is a previous occupation of the area that was of a domestic nature, but by Occupation 3 (after the wattle and daub occupation) the construction of the actual mound was for a non-habitation purpose, and this is evidenced by the lack of habitation structure refuse.

Unit 7 was also originally classified by Strong as a residential space, but Silverman points out that there is an extraordinary amount of decorated pottery and special artifacts, such as an obsidian knife, embroidered fringed borders, a comb of cactus spines and cane, and a fine engraved gourd, and at best was perhaps the living space for priests.

Cahuachi's layout largely depends on already existing topographical features, but it can also be said that it has a "mound-kancha" pattern, It is called this because there is a lot of open, or rather empty, space at Cahuachi. Instead of bunches of construction taking up a space, the mounds at Cahuachi would be better described as islands (SIlverman 1993:90). 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 (Silverman 2002: 135). It is easily accessible from virtually any direction, with no walls, or moats, or anything blocking entrance into the site.

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. One of the more well-known mounds at Cahuachi came to be called by Strong the "Great Temple." 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.”

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>>11023450

(Please read from the start)

“Rooms are not found on all mounds. For the rooms that do exist, the walls of are built out of adobe. There are a few different types of adobe clay present at the site, and are sometime mixed together in the construction of walls and rooms. The types of adobe include: beige, yellow, or grey. All of the rooms also had a final layer of mud. There are very few walls that had been painted. The walls were usually not very high (not exceeding one meter) and were very thick (Silverman 1986: 196). The use of huarango posts in the construction of rooms and walls is also common at Cahuachi.

The major walls at Cahuachi were very carefully constructed and well made. The layers of adobe used to build them are carefully regular, and had two final layers of mud plaster, as well as a white wash finish.

The Room of the Posts is said to have some sort of ancestor worship association because of the use of huarango posts. In this region, huarango is sometimes used to symbolize ancestry, sort of like the biblical tree of life. These “ancestor posts” are further supported by the structures apparent use as a burial place, and a special carved huarango post that depicts a human face and flute (Silverman 1993: 193). Another interesting aspect to consider and is supportive of an ancestral interpretation is that the radiocarbon dates on some of the posts are earlier than Strong's Nasca 5 dates of the area, which can be explained because perhaps they were not erected at the same time, but at important, symbolic life events, or that since they hold special significance that they were reused from an earlier structure (Silverman 1993:193). In one of the walls of the Room there is a niche and two small depressions within that, containing spondylus shell (Silverman 1993, 179).

[…]”

>> The worship or the cult of the ancestors exists in many cultures. I’ve skipped parts with more details about pottery. I think studying it is important, for specific researchers, but not when it comes to where I’m going. We just need to know the basics of it in this thread.

“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. The varying sizes of mounds at the site do, however, provide a basis for distinguishing the social groups that created them. Mounds all over the Nasca drainage system were created by the local social groups in the region, and, as one would assume, the larger groups were the ones who built and maintained the largest temple mounds, while the lesser mounds were built by much smaller groups (Silverman, 2002: 166).

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 (Silverman 2002: 166). Cahuachi, as a religious pilgrimage destination, also leads to the assumption of community-wide participation and cooperation. 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 (Silverman 2002: 166).

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. Nasca society in terms of its location in the Rio Grande de Nazca drainage system also played its part in their sociopolitics. By observing and even literally mapping out the filtration gallery system – which determined settlement patterns as well – provided exclusive knowledge to those that were discerning of it, able to manipulate that knowledge, and therefore allowing for significant positions of power or control. These individuals were most likely "priests" or "shamans" (Silverman 2002: 198).”

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