Heritage Aid Foundation

© Lindsay Hasluck, May 2007

Excerpts from ¨The Andean Pre-Historical Urban Planning Tradition¨

Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia 2005

lindsayhasluck@hotmail.com

Ancient climate change and social transformation

¨In South America, it is impossible to speak of man without first considering nature, for she holds sway – she always has done and always will. Nothing here is on our scale. Rivers, mountains, forests – everything is a hindrance, everything is hostile. Man does not seem to have been provided for in the plan of creation of this continent, he is accidental.¨

Louis Baudin[1]

            Climate change has always played a vital role in the evolution and history of humanity. The ending of the last glacial period and the subsequent Holocene warming, rising sea levels and the changing access to old and new resources of food and materials was part of the force that led to the social transformation of agriculture and trade. These were changes that helped in the stages towards sedentary life, urbanism and civilization. In the present and future epochs of global environmental change, the question arises in what other ways have climatic changes in the past led to social transformation and has this any implications for the future?

            In South America climatic changes can be seen in the archaeological record, not only in the variation in plant life, rain fall and geology but also in the social transformation of societies suffering the extreme stress of rapid climatic changes. A fascinating example of this, and the best studied occurrence in South America, is the demise or sudden and radical transformation of the Mochica civilization of the north coast of Peru.

This rapid social transformation at a time of extreme environmental stress is clearly seen in social change represented in city design from the period of the height of the Mochica to the last days when their capital ¨Moche¨ was abandoned and a new capital Pampa Grande formed further north. However what is of interest to us is the design of the nearby provincial capital Galindo and what changes that may have represented. In the design of Galindo can be seen the extreme social changes of the period, even though it remained the city closest to the site of the old capital. A very brief overview will show some key points.

            The climate change which the Moche suffered, although not a cause of the industrial global warming taking place today, was an extreme form of the El Niño effect (the reversing of the Pacific Ocean´s Humboldt current) whose fluctuations continue to effect South America and other parts of the world in cycles of increasing severity. Around 600 AD, while the Moche civilization was at its peak a severe El Niño lasting several decades degraded the irrigated fields, causing loss of arable land to desert and floods, and undermining the ideological system upon which the individualized theocratic politics of the state were based.

            The Mochica at that time held a large polity that spread along the north coast of present day Peru with numerous coastal settlements, although it did not spread into the highlands. Its capital Moche in the Moche Valley is the only site to show true signs of urbanism and planned design while the others served as ceremonial centres for the maintenance of the ideological power and ruling elite. However, the Mochica political structure´s lack of complex administrative and coercive infrastructure, and consequent reliance on the ideologically constructed status of ruling individuals was badly prepared to maintain such a large territorial hegemony in the face of extreme environmental and political pressure. The Mochica people´s disillusionment with their leader´s management of relations with gods, as seen by the population in the ongoing climatic chaos, led to a rejection of the failed ideology and the political system that sustained it.

The capital fell.

The capital, Moche, was partly abandoned and the population centre of the valley moved and reconstituted as a provincial capital, Galindo, further up the valley at a reliable water source. The large Huaca del Sol pyramid in the centre of the city which symbolized the Moche power at the time and the primacy of the site means that its abandonment suggests a hard fall.

In the city of Galindo, as well as in the new capital of Pampa Grande in the northern Lambayeque Valley, it is possible to see a change in the structure of Mochican society and politics in the planned design of the hastily constructed cities, constructed to control the population’s access to the community resources. However the new northern capital Pampa Grande shows in its design that still incorporates public access to the centre, a greater degree of political stability. A design feature missing from the smaller, southern city Galindo, where the El Niño effects were far more severe.

A combination of the environmental stress in the form of droughts and floods and the contemporaneous Wari-Tiwanaku Empire´s political pressure caused the southern part of the Mochica polity to breakaway. It had probably become hostile to its former northern rulers, while refugee pressure and a lesser amount of arable land in the middle valley increased the centralization of power, social stratification and skill specialization, forcing the Mochica to transform their urban society. The disillusionment brought on by the ideological collapse brought about at Galindo an urban design that existed outside of traditional Andean community structures and that would continue into future generations. Bawden concludes that

Urbanism in this context must be seen as a radical response to social crisis, not as a result of smooth evolutionary change. The picture suggests that the resulting society existed in a state of instability in which an embattled elite ruled a highly differentiated population largely through coercion detached from Andean structural sanction.[2]

This stray from accepted Andean social structures would bring about new cities that also were more rigid in their planning for social control than Andean society usually permitted, and created new urban ideas for the north coast, influenced by the Wari-Tiwanaku urban tradition and the force of their planning procedures and Andean-wide influence, and is possibly seen in the wide incorporation for the first time in the Moche valley of urban settlements with stone-walled houses and regular compounds. Interestingly, later, around 1100 AD the Wari-Tiwanaku Empire may also have finally suffered a collapse due to changes in environmental conditions which led to economic and political chaos.

At the time of the Mochica polity´s final collapse (≈ 700 AD) the capital Moche was entirely abandoned. The capital, once believed by archaeologists to have been only a ceremonial centre has after recent investigations been accepted as clearly being an urban centre. The streets between the two huacas show a clear grid style planning and a separation of areas into elite dwellings, artisan production and resource interchange that represents strong social stratification and work specialization. This design reflects a greater secularity and a strong social order.  

Galindo, still in the Moche valley, which was further south than the Lambayeque Valley and had suffered greater environmental and political stress from El Niño effects and the southern political collapse, reflected these changes with greater force in the extreme design for social control and the social hierarchy of the new urban centre. Aspects which were also represented in Pampa Grande but to a lesser degree as it retained greater political stability. The design of Pampa Grande does reflect the Mochica internal stresses; the division of the city into central elite districts with religious buildings and elite artisans, while the agriculturalists and lower artisans lived on the outskirts.

One of the ceremonial structures in the centre of Galindo, based on a platform design rather than a pyramid, reflecting a move away from monumental public architecture, adobe huacas, that had been a large part of north coast religious architectural tradition (photo: L.Hasluck, 2004).

The difference between Pampa Grande and Galindo is that the ideological and political power in Pampa Grande was still strong enough to be able to build the largest huaca pyramid in the Andes. This was achieved quickly in order to stabilize and represent the power of the new government and to maintain much of the old social organization. Pampa Grande had strayed less from the Mochican coastal traditions than Galindo, while in the extreme northern Jaquetepeque Valley, San José de Moro remained little affected by the El Niño stresses and suffering less social changes, remained a virtually unchanged ceremonial centre with surrounding un-nucleated settlements.

Galindo society, however, underwent a large transformation.

The availability of water for irrigation played a large role in the location of Andean cities. When the Mochica transferred and re-formed their provincial capital at Galindo after political collapse, due in great part to environmental stress and lack of water, they chose a location in a mid-valley position beside the main trunk canal that would allow them to harness the increased perennial water supply and river plain lands for irrigated agriculture without occupying arable land, while controlling the narrow neck of the valley and its vital flow of waters. The position of Galindo in the middle valley, and not in the mouth, shows that it was a provincial centre and not involved in inter-valley political control, as had been Moche.

In comparison the later Chimu Empire´s capital Chan Chan, also located at the mouth of the Moche Valley, displays a location choice that reflects its grandiose political designs. Like the Mochica capital of Moche before it, the position on the coastal front was chosen to control the large plains for irrigation, permit growth of the settlement and to control the inter-valley road system, crucial to maintaining a coastal empire.

One of the last, yet most important, social changes to take place during this El Niño period of political reconstruction was freedom of access to internal areas of the cities. Bawden comments on the generally rigid residential access maintained by the late Moche:

In the Mochican urban centres the residential access was strictly controlled and limited mainly to administrators and the artisans who created the brilliant inventory of elite items now regarded as Moche art, for this they can be regarded as specialized symbolic centres of ceremony and power. These were occupied by large variegated populations clustered around the most prominent structures.[1]

In Galindo, Mochican access control design was taken to extreme with the city built in two parts incorporating several quite distinct topographical areas, each naturally segregated from the others. The lower plains district was divided from the upper hillside district by a massive wall and parallel moat allowing limited access from the one to the other. The elite lived in the lower plains (Fig. 121, Plain A1, A2, B) while the labourers lived on the difficult slopes (Hillside A). The city was further divided internally into walled compounds while the religious structures, now platforms rather than true huacas, were in a separate walled compound in the elite plains district on the low slopes (Plain A1, B) where they were visible from the residential area, as were the areas for communal storage, administration and elite artisans.