Chankillo as a Fortification and Post-Chavín Warfare in Casma, Peru

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Peering into the Night: Transition, Sociopolitical Organization, and Economic Dynamics after the Dusk of Chavín in the North Central Andes" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Chankillo is a large ceremonial center in the Casma Valley, northern coast of Peru, built in 250 BC to worship the sun. It contains, besides the earliest astronomical observatory known to date in the Americas, an impressive hilltop fort. Previously, the dominant view on the function of this building was as a setting for ritual battles. However, research aimed at evaluating whether it is really a fortification revealed evidence for its attack, destruction, forced abandonment, and burial. The hilltop building was a fortified temple, built to protect the sacred space and symbols of the site, not the population at large, from religious wars fought to destroy rival huacas. Many aspects of this fortification, especially the violent desecration of its temple, suggest socially distant fighting parties of a different religious ideology, not the complementary groups expected in ritual tinku battles. Rather than competition over scarce resources in a circumscribed environment, the breakdown of social relationships and the emergence of rival ideologies after the collapse of Chavín civilization seem to have been the driving forces behind the onset of warfare in the post-Chavín world.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Peering into the Night: Transition, Sociopolitical Organization, and Economic Dynamics after the Dusk of Chavín in the North Central Andes

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33290