Trans-temporal Perspectives on the Moche of Northern Peru: Archaeology, Heritage, and Indigeneity

Abstract

The Moche territory in the North Coast of Peru is one of the cultural areas of the Andes that have drawn the most fascination from scholars studying the deep past. It was home to the earliest processes of domestication, urbanism, and social complexity in the New World. Historical narratives about this region have been mainly dominated by archaeologists who have created compartmentalized visions of the territory whose occupation is seen as a sequence of phases, periods, and cultures. Said narratives, I argue, have precluded trans-temporal perceptions of the cultural landscapes of this region where the line between the precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial can be erased in favor of a focus on the multiplicity of experiences of time and history in the territory. This talk attempts to overcome the excessive emphasis on neo-evolutionary frameworks imposed by archaeologists and move towards a multi-scalar and inter-disciplinary approach of space, time, and bodies that inhabited (and still inhabit) the cultural landscapes of this region. Under this approach, ancient landscapes, huacas and huacos are no longer considered relics of a deep past. Instead, they are dynamic actors within an ever-continuous process of Indigenous identity-making, land tenure, heritage (re)appropriation, and ecological and environmental equilibrium with powerful effects in the present.