In an ancient temple in Peru, archaeologists have found the remains of six members of the Moche society who lived in South America around 1,500 years ago. DNA analyzes now show that these people were all closely related to one another – further evidence of the familial power structure among the elites of the Moche civilization. The dead include a woman known as Señora de Cao. According to the rich grave goods, she had a much higher social status than her male relatives. Among the dead were two teenagers who were apparently strangled and ritually sacrificed. This suggests for the first time that the Moche also practiced sacrificial rituals involving young relatives.
The Moche society inhabited nine river valleys on the northern coast of what is now Peru from about 300 to 950 AD. It was a hierarchical and highly developed civilization, as evidenced by the remains of urban complexes with monumental temples and an irrigation network, as well as metal and ceramic crafts. What life and the religious and political power structures there looked like back then is only partially known. However, archaeological finds show that the authorities in Moche society were often women, fought wars, impersonated deities and took part in rituals. There is also evidence of pilgrimages and alliances between the individual Moche valleys.
Some finds also suggest that the elites of this society were usually related to each other and passed on their social status through inheritance. However, there has been no clear evidence of this so far, especially since written documents from the Moche do not exist.
Were the Moche elites related to each other?
A team led by Jeffrey Quilter from Harvard University has now examined whether the Moche elites were related to each other. To do this, the researchers examined the remains of six dead people who were buried in a temple in the Chicama Valley in Peru around 500 AD. The 30 meter high pyramid-like and painted clay temple Huaca Cao Viejo was a sacred place for the Moche, and the dead were therefore of high rank. Among those buried were four adults and two teenagers, each of whom lay in a grave with an adult. One of the women is known as Señora de Cao. The researchers examined the family relationships and the origins of the dead using DNA and isotope analyzes of the bones and teeth.
The evaluations showed that all six individuals were biologically related to each other. They belonged to a family whose family tree spanned at least four generations. Three of the four adults were men between 20 and 30 years old, wrapped in clothes and cloths. These included two of Señora de Cao’s brothers and a grandfather who died around 40 years before the other dead, as DNA analyzes show. The Señora was also around 30 years old. She lay in a grave off to the side, wrapped in even more cloth and with far more and higher quality grave goods than the men, including ceremonial spear throwers and clubs, gold crowns and nose jewelry. “The male weapons and nose ornaments and the female objects suggest that the Señora de Cao was of very high status,” said Quilter and his colleagues. Of the men, only one of the señora’s brothers was buried together with plenty of feathers, metal and ceramic jewelry; the others had hardly any grave goods. This “suggests that ideas about wealth and status in Moche culture were complicated,” the team said.
Nephew and niece sacrificed as grave goods
The young people in the graves, aged around 12 to 15, were a nephew and a niece of the señora – the children of her two brothers. While the boy lay with his father, the girl did not lie with his father but with his aunt. The condition and position of the bones of the two young people also suggest that they were placed with the adults as an offering: they did not lie flat on their backs like the other dead, but rather curled up in the graves. “A cord around the neck indicates death by strangulation, a well-known form of human sacrifice in Moche culture,” Quilter and his colleagues report. The fact that all of the dead, with the exception of the grandfather, died and were buried around the same time also suggests that the young people died as victims.
Most of the dead likely grew up near the temple in the Chicama Valley, isotope analysis showed. They also ate a similar diet, eating lots of corn and seafood proteins. The señora’s niece, on the other hand, had a different diet and lived before her death in a place outside the Chicama Valley, far from her parents’ home, probably in the highlands of the Andes. “The fact that a close relative grew up far away and was then sacrificed along with her relative provides a lot of food for thought. “It supports other evidence that both local and interregional Moche politics were strongly based on kinship,” said Quilter and his colleagues.
Important role of women and relatives among the Moche
Archaeologists conclude from the finds that the Moche elites were not only closely related to one another, as suspected, but also carried out ritual sacrifices involving close relatives. The finds in Peru are the first direct evidence of such a sacrificial ritual. It may have served to “strengthen family ties and connect the deceased with the ancestors and the divine,” the team suspects. The findings also confirm that women held high status among the Moche: “The discovery of the Señora de Cao has shown that women did indeed hold high status in the Moche period – at least two centuries before the time of San José de Moro (where the Moche buried priestesses) and a thousand years before Spanish accounts of politically important women,” the team writes.
Source: Jeffrey Quilter (Harvard University); Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, doi: 10.1073/pnas.2416321121