Moche Culture (100 BC. - 700 AD. AD)
The Moche culture is the largest of the coastal region through ancient. Since the capital of the Moche Valley of Moche River, a few kilometers from the present city of Trujillo, it overlooks a very agricultural area, with rivers down to the Pacific. This is a very warlike society, which gives an important role in the war and confrontation. Wars are sometimes organized ritual to obtain prisoners to sacrifice. The arts are particularly refined, both in the field of pottery in jewelry and sculpture.
Architecture
The architectural elements of this culture are truncated pyramids (huaca) in adobe (stone raw material most often used in coastal structures) as the Pyramid of the Sun, or Huaca del Sol Moche, which measures 228 x 156 x 18 m. His five bodies stacked, recessed relative to each other, support a pyramid with six degrees above (h: 23 m), making a ceremonial site and burial (Royal Tombs) exceptional.
Ceramics
The Moche culture is the only culture that creates real scenes with complex interaction of multiple characters, including his funeral pottery. Specialists distinguish five different phases, recognizable by the shape of the loop stirrup-spout. The sets are varied between modeling, terrain, cutting, painting, or the line drawing, all in shades of claret on cream in general. Sometimes, these pots can also be black (phase 3) or slips gray or multicolored (Phase 5). The change has to be more realistic, life and greater complexity, and the Moche pottery is the first part in the conquest of the expression (people laughing). The themes are rich and varied: cats, warriors on the round shield, mace, cotton tunic and helmet, or shamans chewed coca mixed with lime.
Metallurgy
Moche metallurgy is the most technically advanced in Peru. Gold, silver and copper are used, often in a metal alloy called tumbaga, which is given a golden appearance by chemical treatment (acid plant). Moche artists also perform the gilding and silvering of copper, by dissolving the precious metal in a corrosive solution which is immersed part. The inlay of other metals, semi-precious stones, or shells are also common. Many techniques of formatting can be mentioned: cutting, marking, cutting, embossing, rejected, pouring into molds simple or lost wax granulation, braiding ... Joints are made by folding and then welded.
All this to produce highly varied, with zoomorphic or anthropomorphic iconography, as funerary masks, gauntlets, necklaces, pectorals, jewelry ... Earrings in gold and precious stones (turquoise, pearl, spondylus, lapis lazuli) preserved at the Museum of Gold Lima are particularly famous. The mosaic pattern is represented in a warrior-billed bird.
We must also mention the relatively recent discovery in the Huaca de Sipan tomb of the Lord of Sipan, which contains many items of jewelry. The room set up in an adobe pyramid with successive enlargements contained extremely rich ornaments: gold jewelry, silver and turquoise, shroud sewn with copper gilded wooden coffin ... Beside the warrior were different characters of both sexes and a dog.
Pucara Culture (200 av. AD - 200 AD. AD)
This civilization developed around Lake Titicaca.
Architecture
Pucara The architecture is very important in that it prefigures the architecture of Tiwanaku, best online casino with its apparatus of large blocks of stone rectangular well trained
Sculpture
Human and animal figures in the round are the main events of the sculpture Pucara. In general, the shapes following the contours of the block, inscribed in a rectangle, but they are softened, rounded. The theme of head-hunting is often represented in the round, but on the stelae and carved slabs as the stele of lightning, which comes precisely from the site of Pucara.
territories of the empires of the Middle Horizon: Huari and Tiwanaku
The Horizon medium (500 - 900)
Culture Tiwanaku
The culture of Tiwanaku is located in the Bolivian highlands. If its activity begins through old, it reaches its greatest development on the horizon means, where it grows alongside the Huari civilization. This empire is coming to both the south of Peru, Bolivia and northern Chile.
The capital is the site of Tiwanaku, located at very high altitudes, between La Paz and Lake Titicaca in a region with very cold climate where vegetation grows only rarely. Agriculture is therefore appropriate, with productions like the typical Andean tuber crop or raising llamas and alpacas. A flourishing trade is organized, caravans starting from the highlands to the Pacific, allowing a strong interaction between coast and highlands.
The site of Tiwanaku
Heads-rafters, citing Chavin art at Tiahuanaco
The site of Tiwanaku is a civic-religious center or remaining buildings built in drive. The work of the stone (architecture and sculpture) is sufficiently large, the blocks were assembled jointed with bronze studs, or tenons, mortises and slots. Using this technique, as well as other features, are a sort of return to ancient sources, including Chavin.
The sun gate, Tiwanaku, with the center a god with sticks from Chavin
The Akapana is a natural hill, enlarged to form a pyramid of 210 m square and 15 m in height. It has a semi-subterranean temple with a courtyard with lowered heads-hold (recall Chavin), and a giant monolith of andesite 3x4m, the sun gate, which is decorated with reliefs depicting deities like scepters on the stele Raimondi. The palace of sarcophagi, meanwhile, has several rooms with roofs supported by pillars, and Pumapunku is a large open space with blocks decorated with moldings, niches and geometric patterns.
Sculpture
Example monolithic sculpture of Tiahuanaco
The sculpture as that of Tiahuanaco Chavin is incorporated into the architecture. A clear stylistic evolution takes place from a certain realism (lines and curved surfaces) to more entrenched attitudes and sculptures more prismatic. The Ponce monolith, or the monolith El Fraile, belonging to the site of Tiahuanaco, are examples of this style geometrized to the extreme, the figures remain in a cramped form of column.
Ceramics
The most typical is the pottery vase keru a large goblet with flared edges, often decorated with a puma head in the round and used for libations. The decor in turn is marked by a large full color (red, blue, gray, tan, black), with geometric patterns (Greek) and figured (pumas, condors, men) inspired by the Nazca iconography.