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Fall of Sican culture
archaeological culture
- 1375
- Batán Grande
- South America
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archaeological culture
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The Sican (also Sicán) culture is the name that archaeologist Izumi Shimada gave to the culture that inhabited what is now the north coast of Peru between about 750 and 1375 CE. According to Shimada, Sican means "temple of the Moon". The Sican culture is also referred to as Lambayeque culture, after the name of the region in Peru. It succeeded the Moche culture. There is still controversy among archeologists and anthropologists over whether the two are separate cultures. The Sican culture is divided into three major periods based on cultural changes as evidenced in archeological artifacts.
Archaeologist Izumi Shimada, founder of the Sican Archaeological Project, named the prehistoric culture which he discovered in northwestern Peru. They succeeded the Moche and preceded Chimor and the Inca Empire, the historical civilization that encountered the Spanish explorers and conquistadors.
The Sican inhabited a coastal territory near the La Leche and Lambayeque Rivers. The archaeological sites span the Lambayeque region, including the Motupe, La Leche, Lambayeque, and Zaña valleys, near modern-day Chiclayo. Numerous sites have been identified in the Batán Grande area of the La Leche Valley.
The climate of the area during Sican occupation was similar to the current climate, despite changes in landscape accumulated in the last 600 years. The drought-and-flood cycles seen in the region for the past 1500 years did not spare the Sican culture. (Goldstein and Shimada 2007, p. 49)
The Early Sican period began around 750 and lasted until 900. The lack of artifacts has limited the development of knowledge about this early period. The Sican were probably descendants of the Moche culture, which fell around 800. Their works shows shared motifs in the artifacts recovered. Similar groups include Cajamarca, Wari, and Pachacamac. From remains found in the archaeological locations, researchers have determined that this culture maintained commercial exchange with people from present-day Ecuador (shells and snails), Colombia to the north (emeralds and amber), Chile to the south (blue stone), and the eastern basin of the Marañón River (seeds of gold). The Lambayeque culture may have been a separate trading people as well. Around 800, the Sican created the city of Poma, located at Batán Grande, in La Leche Valley. Few other Early Sican sites have been discovered.
The Early Sican culture is known for the highly polished, black-finish ceramics found in the La Leche Valley. This black-finish ceramic style began in the Moche culture prior to the Early Sican, and shows the sharing of cultures in the region. Much of the ceramics were examples of a single spout, loop-handle bottle, featuring an anthropomorphic-avian (bird) face at the spout base. The face consisted of bulging eyes, a hooked beak or triangular projection instead of a nose, stylized ears, and no mouth. It appeared to be a predecessor to the related faces of the Sican Deity and the Sican Lord of the Middle Sican culture. (Shimada 2000, p. 51)
Aside from the shared ceramic styles, much of the Early Sican defines a distinguishable culture. While the ceramic styles and iconography show some continuity with previous cultures, the combination of all the influences is Sican. The changing ceramic styles, iconography, and funerary practices reflect a change in religious ideology and cosmology that expressed the Sican culture. Most importantly, the late Early Sican period saw the accumulation of these changes in art style and iconography, coupled with other changes in organization, by which the Sican constructed monumental adobe structures, developed large-scale copper alloy smelting and metalworking, and developed the elaborate funerary tradition that would come to characterize the Middle Sican (Shimada 1985, p. 361). Such changes have been seen by researchers at sites in Batán Grande, including the Huaca del Pueblo site, dated to around 850-900.
The Middle Sican period lasted from 900 to 1100 . This is the period of the Sican's "cultural florescence", and is marked by the emergence of various cultural innovations, some of which were unprecedented in the local area. The decline of the Wari Empire and the Middle Cajamarca polity enabled the resurgence in local political and religious identity and autonomy. The Middle Sican culture is marked by distinctive characteristics in six areas: art and ideology, crafts and technology, funerary customs, long-distance trade, religious cities and monumental temples, and the structure and authority of the state (Shimada 2000, p. 52-61; Shimada 1985, p. 365-369). Together, these characteristics provide evidence that the Sicán culture had a highly productive economy, clear social differentiation, and an influential religious ideology. The religious ideology was the underpinning of the structure of their theocratic state.
Sicán art is representational in style and religious in nature. Features such as sculptural representation and the minimization of number of colors (one to three), were common among the art of many earlier cultures that flourished on the north coast of Peru. Sicán art reconfigured the motifs, conventions, and concepts of these antecedent cultures (mainly the Wari and Moche) into an overall new and unique style. The references to the old ideas, images and ways of antecedent cultures in Sicán art would have been useful in providing prestige and legitimacy to the new Sicán religion which was emerging.
Sicán iconography is dominated by the Sican Deity It decorates all artistic media of the Sicán, including ceramics, metal works, and textiles. Metal objects such as silver beakers also served as important media for Sicán religious expression, often featuring iconography of supernatural figures, processions, and marine elements associated with cosmological beliefs and ritual practice. The icon is most commonly represented with a mask face and upturned eyes. Sometimes it may be shown with avian features, such as beaks, wings, and talons, which are evident in Early Sicán ceramics. These avian features are related to Naylamp, the key figure in Sicán mythology. The name "Naylamp" was first mentioned by the Spanish chronicler Miguel Cabello Valboa, who referred to the Moche figure "Naymlap" in his 1586 Miscelánea Antártica. Later authors believe the form is Mochica Ñañlap, of which the first part is ñañ "waterfowl"; a connexion has been made between the Moche and Chimú cultures and the empire of Chimor and the Mochica language.
Naylamp was said to be the founder of the first dynasty of prehistoric kings in La Leche and Lambayeque valleys. In The Legend of Naylamp, first recorded in the 16th century by the Spanish chronicler Miguel Cabello de Balboa, Naylamp is said to have traveled on a balsa raft by sea to the Lambayeque shores. He founded a large city, and the 12 sons of his eldest son each founded a new city in the Lambayeque region. When Naylamp died, he sprouted wings and flew off to another world (Nickle Arts Museum 2006, p. 18 and 65). Middle Sicán art did not change the concept or representation of the icon of the Sicán Deity. Both the preceding Moche and Wari cultures feature a single dominant male figure, and the upturned eyes characteristic of the Sicán Deity are common to the art and iconography of other Pre-Hispanic societies. The iconography accompanying the Sicán Deity was unique and significant (Nickle Arts Museum 2006, p. 66). Iconography of the moon and the ocean may symbolize the Sicán Deity's involvement in the wellbeing of marine life and fishermen. Iconography related to water signifies the importance of irrigation and agriculture to the Sicán. Other iconography, such as of the sun and moon, symbolizes the importance of duality in both human and celestial life. Depictions of the Sicán Deity with tumi knives and trophy heads may indicate his omnipotent control in both human life and the celestial world (Nickle Arts Museum 2006, p. 66; Shimada 2000, p. 52-53). Through the iconography which the Sicán associated with the icon, anthropologists theorize that the Sicán Deity may have been attributed with power to control all of the celestial forces fundamental to life and abundance (Shimada 2000, p. 53).
The lack of representation of humans in Middle Sicán art emphasizes the omnipresence of the Sicán Deity in Sicán iconography. The only exceptions are representations of the Sicán Lord, the male elite personage, and his entourage. (Shimada 2000, p. 53) Iconography of the Sicán Lord is almost identical to the Sicán Deity, except that he is shown in natural settings and does not have avian features. The Sicán Lord was probably meant to represent an earthly alter-ego of the Deity.
The population of Batán Grande included many skilled artisans. Craft production during the Middle Sican flourished and became one of the leading characteristics of the period. The highly polished black finish ceramics from the Early Sican bloomed in this later phase, along with metallurgy; however, the ceramic technology used in the Middle Sican developed over 2500 years from local pottery production techniques (Shimada and Wagner 2001, p. 26). Workshops, such as the one found at Huaca Sialupe to the west of Batán Grande, likely had both pottery and metalworking production sites (Goldsmith and Shimada 2007, p. 45). Ceramics allowed for a medium to convey political and religious ideology in the forms of storage vessels, architectural ornaments, cooking vessels, sculptures of the Deity or animals, and other types proliferated during this period. The potters likely worked separately from one another, rather than in assembly-line type production. Huaca Sialupe excavations produced clusters of similar kilns using local hardwood for charcoal. Field experiments indicated that the kilns were used either for ceramics or metallurgy (Shimada and Wagner 2001, p. 28). The Paleteada ceramics used the paddle-and-anvil technique to form and decorate pottery, primarily with geometric designs (Cleland and Shimada 1998, p. 112). The monochrome black pottery became widely popular across the region during the Middle Sican as the Sican themselves began to emphasize the black pottery, with the help of the Middle Sican religious prestige. Only the geometric designs continued on the pottery into the Late Sican.
Metallurgy is one of the Sican's greatest legacies, lasting nearly 600 years at Batán Grande (Shimada and Merkel 1991, p. 83). Some Middle Sican workshops showed multicraft production and it is likely the crafts competed for resources, such as fuel for kilns. Middle- and high-status burials both contained the black ceramics, while only the social elite had access to the precious metal object; therefore, metalworking probably was given production preference by the elites (Goldsmith and Shimada 2007, p. 47). Among Sicán metalwork, artisans produced elaborately decorated silver drinking vessels, including beakers, using advanced hammering and repoussé techniques; these objects were closely associated with elite ritual practices. The greatness of Middle Sican metallurgy was the large-scale smelting and diverse use of arsenical copper, which was more ductile and corrosion-resistant than pure copper. The great amounts of smelting and/or metalworking sites found in the Lambayeque region point to the convergence of major factors to allow such an occurrence: accessible ore deposits, extensive forests for hardwood to make charcoal, pottery making tradition using efficient kilns, gold working tradition that formed the basis for later metalworking technology, and a demand for goods by the elites (Shimada, Goldstein, Wagner, Bezur 2007, p. 339). The large number of smelting sites also point to the amount of labor required by using their method. In modern standards, their copper-alloy smelting was inefficient, which could have led to the high number of workshops with multiple furnaces (Shimada and Merkel 1991, p. 85).
Text from the Wikipedia article “Sican culture”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.