{"id":82,"date":"2010-08-20T05:10:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-20T04:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/?p=82"},"modified":"2016-09-18T16:49:50","modified_gmt":"2016-09-18T15:49:50","slug":"peru-trip-4-el-brujo-huaca-de-la-luna-chan-chan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/peru-trip-4-el-brujo-huaca-de-la-luna-chan-chan\/","title":{"rendered":"Peru Trip #4 – El Brujo, Huaca de La Luna, Chan Chan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Huaca<\/a>
\nAnother long day with another punishing schedule, but SO worth it. Picked up from the hotel at 7am for a 90min journey to El Brujo, to visit the very celebrated Senora de Cao – the only Moche Queen discovered so far, clearly as powerful as the Lords of Sipan in her day (c250CE) with her own pyramid with all the usual Moche accompaniments.
\nBut El Brujo is more than just her pyramid – here, too, is Huaca Prieta, the as yet unexcavated 2500BCE pyramid of the pre-ceramic originators of the El Brujo complex, followed later by the Cupisnique, and later still by the Moche, and the Chimu, and even a Dominican Church built by the Spanish. To this day, the local ‘brujo’s, (shamen) still practice their folk magic at the Moche Huaca El Brujo (named after them) facing the Huaca de Cao, the only part of the site so far excavated, opened to the public with an impressive museum, in April 2010.<\/p>\n

There’s been 5000 years continuous sacred occupation of this same site,
\noverlooking the crashing waves of the pacific. A truly stunning site,
\nwith my first sight of how the Moche ceramic style appears in
\nhigh-relief on the walls of their temples! In this warrior culture,
\nwhere soldiers paired off for ritual battle, the loser was stripped
\nnaked, chained, and led to the top of the pyramid to be beheaded, where
\nhis blood would sanctify the martial rite, and be presented in the
\nceremonial cup to the Lord (or in this case Lady) to be drunk in
\ncelebration of the life-death cycle epitomised in their primary deity,
\nAi-Apaec: the beheading lord of death and creation.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Senora<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Wall<\/p>\n

\nBut I was yet in for a real treat. For our next stop was Huaca de La
\nLuna. Two huge pyramids with a small town in between them, one slightly
\nlarger than the other, named by the Spanish as the Temple of the Sun,
\nand then looted and destroyed, the other, smaller, named Temple of the
\nMoon, left alone for the archaeologists to discover, as late as 1990,
\nthat there are five temples here, one built literally on top of the
\nother, like the top halves of Russian dolls. It seems after about a
\ncentury a particular ruling elite would simply completely renew, burying
\nthe previous set wholesale by building directly on top of their temple –
\na new temple for the new ruling elite, but all in essentially the same
\ncultural style – five times over, here at Huaca de La Luna. What has
\nbeen revealed is just simply stunning! Here is taster – check out Flickr for the MANY photos I took of this site.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Ai-Apaec\"<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Glimpse<\/p>\n

\nThis entire complex was just truly stunning and left me quite
\ngob-smacked. My guide told me, as we stood a little away from three
\nsuited gentlemen in heated discussion, that they were the principal
\narchaeologists who had discovered and were managing the excavation of
\nthe site, debating the need for and likelihood of getting substantial
\nnew funding to continue the work. This is already a World Memorial Fund
\nsite, but needs more help from the EU, the US, etc etc. <\/p>\n

\nLast of the day, then, after a delightful seafood lunch overlooking the
\nwaves crashing onto the pacific shore at Huanchaco Beach, nearby, was
\nthe rather disappointing mud walls of the Chan Chan archaeological site.
\nThis vast Chimu city, 14km square, was simply abandoned and looted
\nwhen the Spanish arrived, and not covered up like the Moche pyramids
\nthat preceded it. No paint survives, therefore, and the reliefs are
\nbarely distinguishable. What is on show is reconstructed, and
\nunremittingly brown. Alone, on a day without the glories of the Moche,
\nit might have been impressive, if only for its size and extent.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\nAnd then the flight from Trujillo back to Lima, a late dinner at the
\nHaiti Cafe near my hotel, and a very very welcome bed, after writing
\nthis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another long day with another punishing schedule, but SO worth it. Picked up from the hotel at 7am for a 90min journey to El Brujo, to visit the very celebrated Senora de Cao – the only Moche Queen discovered so far, clearly as powerful as the Lords of Sipan in her day (c250CE) with her … Continue reading “Peru Trip #4 – El Brujo, Huaca de La Luna, Chan Chan”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archaeology","category-journeyman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":907,"href":"http:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions\/907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kreps.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}