82 FIG. 9: Stirrup vessel, Andean condor. Moche, tomb 2, Dos Cabezas, North Coast, Peru. Middle Moche, 6th–7th century. Terracotta. H: 20 cm. Museo de Sitio de Chan Chan, Trujillo. Inv. reg. nac. 0000178735. © MEG, J. Watts/Ministerio de Cultura del Perú, Lima. ART on View The culture’s technological achievements in areas as varied as manufacturing, agriculture, and architecture continue to command our admiration today. Among other things, these achievements included the development of a technique for gold-plating copper (tumbaga), which was not possible in Europe until the end of the eighteenth century and then only thanks to hydrolysis. Moche temples rivaled the largest pre-industrial European architectural edifices in scale. The Lord of Ucupe’s Tomb Revealed The origins, history, and very nature of the political and religious institutions of this society remain the subjects of heated debates, since it had no written language. Over the last three decades, many Moche sites have been investigated by archaeological missions, the goal of which was to learn more about the context in which this structured state emerged. In the course of these, the sands of the valleys of the Peruvian Coast yielded up complex ceremonial monuments and funerary mausoleums, which housed tombs of unimaginable opulence in the midst of large inhabited areas. The most recent large-scale discovery was the Lord of Ucupe’s tomb, which was excavated in the course of the archaeological digs in the central Zaña Valley during the summer of 2008. Positioned on a funerary platform that runs the length of FIG. 8: Pectoral 1 of the Lord of Ucupe. Moche, Huaca el Pueblo, North Coast, Peru. Middle Moche A, 5th century. Spondylus shell. L: 28 cm. Ministerio de Cultura del Perú, Lima, inv. MTRS-155494. © MEG, J. Watts/Ministerio de Cultura del Perú, Lima. the site’s main temple, it contained the remains of a nobleman along with those of three other individuals who accompanied him. They were interred there in the fifth century with great pomp and ceremony, as the more than 170 objects exhumed along with the bodies— ornaments, weapons, and other regalia made of gold, silver, and copper—clearly demonstrate. The funerary chamber also contained the bones of ritually sacrificed llamas, as well as numerous ceramic vases, textiles, and necklaces made of finely crafted shell. The tomb’s remarkable state of preservation and the nature of the material found in it made it a discovery of a comparable order of importance to those of the Dos Cabezas and Sipán sites excavated in previous decades. The degree of their similarities may even be indicative of a network of communication and exchange that existed between the elites of these places. The discovery of this tomb received extensive media coverage. The BBC, Reuters, Al Jazeera, and National Geographic were among the many that publicized the find, and Archaeology magazine ranked it among the top ten of the most important archaeological discoveries of 2009.
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