Moche Political Ideology

General Principles and Strategies

1. The Moche Archaeological record is basically the language of political ideology. Architecture tells us much about residential and demographic patterns, labor organization and agricultural management. However, the “diagnostic” artifacts that identify Moche culture basically comprise a special language that asserts the ideology of power used by the ruling elites of the various Moche polities to establish and continually renew their authority.

2. The basic principles upon which Moche political ideology were based and which dictate the form of the archaeological record are:

- The mountain metaphor

- Communal mythology and ritual

- Cosmic balance

- Ancestral Reverence

- Shamanistic practice

- Reciprocal gift giving

- Sacrifice

3. These principles are the same that have been documented for over 500 years in the Andean world both at the basic ayllu level and in indigenous complex societies as the foundations of social cohesion and continuity. They continue to operate today in traditional areas of society either as the sole basis of social integration as in the more remote Andean regions, or as part of society significantly affected by European influence as on the North Coast.

Specific Moche Principles and Strategies

The Mountain Metaphor and its Ritual Implications

1. Just as the highland peoples saw their communities as inextricably tied to the forces of nature embodied in the Mountain, so did the people of the north coast, in a somewhat modified way that fitted their different environmental context.

2. To coastal people the mountains were the places - always visible but always distant - where the rain fell, creating the rivers that ran through their desert homes, bringing life and permitting the construction of human society. Like all Andean people the north coastal groups viewed these special places as the homes of powerful spiritual forces (the apu), able to either benefit or damage them, and places where ancestral forces also dwelt. Thus the mountains were the most prominent foci for shamanistic ritual aimed at mobilizing natural and ancestral force on behalf of cosmic balance and group success. It was to the mountains that shamans traveled in their ritual trances. Today it is to mountains that that north coast curanderos often go to learn their vocations. Thus mountains, their supernatural forces, and the rituals connected to them, represent very common themes in Moche elite art as one of the principal elements in community religious belief and related political ideology.

3. Moche rulers replicated these places of supernatural power as the central symbols of their political order. The great Moche platform mounds [or sacred places (huacas)], in addition to being centers of secular administration, were artificial mountains where religious practitioners performed rituals that in kind were very similar to those carried out by shamans in the actual mountains. In Moche society, however, the shamans were also rulers who entered the spirit world through appropriately ritualized ceremony to perform the formal rites that brought advantage and continuity to their wider society. At the same time they elevated their personal significance as arbiters of the cosmic balance without which this would not be possible. In carrying out this shamanistic function rulers used the power of the mountain and the cultural beliefs and practices associated with it to justify their positions ideologically in a way that was familiar and acceptable to their subjects, and to link their governing system to this basic religious conception.

The Myths and Rituals of Political Authority

1. Although we cannot be certain, it is probable that the rituals depicted on Moche pottery and mural art were drawn from long-lasting myths of communal origin and history on the north coast of Peru. Certainly, in the best known of these rituals - the Sacrifice Ritual - the image of the Sacrificer has a long history in North Coast art, appearing in Initial Period and Early Horizon Cupisnique art, suggesting that the theme possessed long historic significance. Thus the Moche transformation of these community/kinship myths into the ideology of “state” political control was accomplished in the context of continuity, familiarity, and unchanged meaning, the most propitious setting for ideological success.

2. Several Rituals are frequently depicted on Moche narrative pottery. Such rituals include the Burial Theme, the Sacrifice Ritual, the Confrontation Theme and the Sacred Hunt. Christopher Donnan, the preeminent Moche ceramic analyst has convincingly shown that all Moche narrative ceramic art with the exception of the portrait vessels portray scenes from this limited inventory of ritual themes, thus that this elite art form was purely a vehicle of ideological communication. The best studied of these rituals is the Sacrifice Ritual which was the culminating event in a ritual cycle that both reinforced the power of local elites and linked the various Moche polities in region-wide ritual practices that helped maintain the wider political pattern of the region.

3. The ritual cycle that culminates in the Sacrifice Ritual allows us to identify the basic elements of north coast political ideology and its origins in the Moche period. In all probability the other rituals noted above shared the same foundations. In summary, the Sacrifice Ritual was the culminating part in a series of events, all prominently depicted in Moche art, which included:

- Ritual Battle (tinku) between pairs of Moche elite warriors of different polities in the desert between them.

- Capture, and arraignment of prisoners.

- Preparation and Sacrifice of the captives on platforms during public ceremonies of social cohesion.

4. Ritual Battle would have had the effect of linking different local polities as ritual partners in the way that contemporary tinku does today. By emphasizing the distinctions between them tinku reinforces identity while at the same time linking the elites of the various polities in an exclusive ritual and ideological network that both cements their connection to conceptual traditions and underlines their hierarchical separation from the bulk of the population who were not involved except as ritual observers at the culminating sacrifice ceremony.

5. The Capture and Arraignment ceremony divested the prisoners of their clothes and identities as many rituals of transition do today to their principal participants. This places the prisoner outside of the daily social arena and prepares him for the entrance to sacred time and space where the supernatural is attained on behalf of the living.

6. The Sacrifice Ceremony involved the giving of the gift of human blood as the most precious gift possible to the broader natural forces. Blood in this sense was given as a reciprocal gift to Nature in return for the continued flow of water (falling on the mountain) and the fecundity that ensued as a gift from Pacha Mama, ensuring the survival of the human community. Sacrifice represents the ceremonial instance of modern day shamanistic sacrifice noted in a previous lecture and helped maintain cosmic balance of contradictory forces through reciprocity.

Ancestral Reverence and Moche Political Ideology

1. In the case of the well-known “Royal Tombs” of Sipán Moche rulers, accompanied by the paraphernalia of the Sacrifice ceremony in which they had been the principal officiates, were buried within a platform mound.

2. This practice in the expanded official ideological context of Moche political strategy had the effect of linking an honored community ancestor and his enduring spiritual force with the most sacred place (the Mountain) of the Moche cosmos. Moreover by making this link on the supernatural level it entered the realm of unchanging permanence. This convergence of supernatural forces both heightened the potency of the sacred place and of the political system associated with it.

3. Again basic Andean beliefs surrounding the power of a dead ancestor and the spiritual force of sacred places are connected (as with the Inca dynastic mummies) to support the prevailing social order in the timeless perpetuity of the supernatural.