The Archaeological Identification of an Ancient Peruvian Pilgrimage Center

Author(s): Helaine Silverman

Source: World Archaeology, Vol. 26, No. 1, Archaeology of Pilgrimage, (Jun., 1994), pp. 1-18
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/124860
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The archaeological identification of an
ancient Peruvian pilgrimage center

Helaine Silverman

Religion played a major role in ancient societies and is especially manifest in the
archaeological record at 'cult places' and in their associated ritual paraphernalia
(Rutkowski 1972: preface). Cult places are inbued with sanctity; they are the loci at which
rites, sacrifices and other actions related to religious beliefs were performed. Rutkowski
(1972) has defined a variety of cult places in the ancient Aegean and provides objectively
evaluable, tangible features by which these cult places may be recognized; many of the
Aegean criteria are applicable to other world areas or suggest fruitful directions for
definition. Still, the identification of a site as an ancient cult place does not tell us much
about religion, the role it played, or its particular sociopolitical context. Rather,
archaeologists must try to determine what kinds of activities occurred in these sacred
settings: when, why, who participated (i.e. which individuals, social groups, other
membership groups), in what way, and what this reveals about the structure and function
of different institutions and interpersonal/intergroup relations within society.
The ceremonial center is a particular kind of cult place. At the risk of tautology, a
ceremonial center is a place where ceremonies/rituals pertaining to religious beliefs took
place. But this is not enough of a definition since naturally occurring features of the
landscape imbued with sanctity would be included. A ceremonial center is different from
other cult places in being a built environment, even if constructed on an already sacred
landscape. However, built does not necessarily imply volumetric mass. For instance, the
entire geoglyph-marked Pampa de Nazca (Aveni 1990a; Silverman 1990a) is a built but
non-volumetric ceremonial environment. And DeBoer and Blitz (1991) provide an
example of contemporary unmonumental ceremonial centers among the Chachi Indians of
tropical coastal Ecuador. But for most archaeologists the concept of ceremonial center
implies a concentration of large-scale, non-domestic architecture that is permanently and
overtly devoted to manifestly religious activities. This approach is clear in the two classic
definitions of ceremonial centers in the Peruvianist literature, in addition to the other
debatable criteria that are stipulated:
ceremonial centers are clusters of huacas (pyramid-temples) usually with some minor
construction in the immediate vicinity which may have served as living quarters for a
limited population.
(Schaedel 1967: 232)

World Archaeology Volume 26 No. 1 Archaeology of Pilgrimage

? Routledge 1994 0043-8243
2 Helaine Silverman

A ceremonial center is a grouping of public buildings housing common facilities, such as

shrines, meeting places, markets, and law courts, which is used seasonally or at
prescribed intervals by the population of a considerable surrounding area. Between the
occasions when a ceremonial center is used it is either closed and empty or houses only a
small permanent population of caretaker personnel. The general population which
makes use of the center may be entirely dispersed in the surrounding countryside, or it
may be clustered in urban centers.
(Rowe 1963: 4)

Monumental ceremonial centers and the social formations to which they corresponded
differ qualitatively from societies at whose domestic settlements multifunctional space
periodically/occasionally served as the locus of ritual life, or which had functionally
discrete ceremonial space that nevertheless was encapsulated within communities (e.g. the
Real Alto site; see Lathrap, Marcos and Zeidler 1977), or was itself the encapsulation and
representation of cosmological principles (e.g. Reichel-Dolmatoff 1971, on the Desana;
for a general statement, see Eliade 1960).
Ceremonial centers and natural cult places are not mutually exclusive in a cultural
evolutionary sense. Societies did not move inexorably from animistic religions with natural
shrines to priestly ones requiring theatrical settings. Rather, in many cases around the
world, there was coexistence. For instance, the Incas had a plethora of natural and
modified natural shrines (see Niles 1987: chap. 5) in addition to magnificent masonry
temples of the state religion.
Because of the emphasis on monumental religious architecture, most archaeologists
argue that ceremonial centers occur only in the context of complex societies. Indeed, this
widely shared opinion is at the heart of the debate over the nature of the subsistence
economy and sociopolitical organization in late Preceramic (c. 2500-1800 BC) coastal
Peru (Moseley 1975; Quilter and Stocker 1983; Raymond 1981; Wilson 1981). In complex
societies ceremonial centers are a discrete constituent element of a differentiated
settlement pattern (Peebles and Kus 1977). Shimada (1991: liv) has described a concentric
or sectorial settlement system 'in which peripherally situated settlements were in constant
communication and had a set of long-term social and ritual obligations to the religious
center. In this view the nucleus is a center not in terms of population density or size but
rather in terms of interaction.' Nevertheless, far from them being the empty ceremonial
centers idealized in the older literature (e.g. Rowe 1963 and Schaedel 1967, cited above),
recent research around the world has shown that many of these sacred places also had
substantial residential populations (see e.g. Becker 1979). This makes the occurrence of
true empty ceremonial centers noteworthy.
The pilgrimage center is a particular kind of ceremonial center. It is the repository of
that which is most sacred for participating pilgrims: the place itself is deemed sacred and/or
is where a sacred object is kept/present. Its defining characteristic is the attraction of
devotees from a large, often multiethnic and/or multinational catchment area. Pilgrims
travel to a pilgrimage center in order to carry out religious devotions; they are not resident
at the shrine. Whereas a ceremonial center services a local population, is maintained by
that population, and has a small to significantly sized socioeconomically diverse residential
population, the pilgrimage center is noteworthy for its ability to draw a transient
 Identification of an ancient Peruvian pilgrimage center 3

population of worshippers from across a social, political, economic, cultural and spatial
spectrum and, in so doing, to synthesize critical social and cultural elements from wider
patterns of belief and practice in a region or regions. Morinis and Crumrine (1991: 3, 7)
refer appropriately to the 'regional cultural field' and 'plural social fields' of the
pilgrimage.
There is an evolutionary urban potential in these sacred places. A ceremonial center
may grow in importance over time (either through its own inherent characteristics and/or
because of its sociopolitical and/or economic context) to become a pilgrimage locus and,
eventually, a city (e.g. Wheatley 1971; Wolf 1951; cf. Rowe 1963: 20). Such was the case,
for instance, with Pachacamac on the central coast of Peru (see summary and bibliography
in Shimada 1991). And Norman Hammond (1984:1), writing of the Postclassic Maya of
Yucatan, notes that the fortunes of Cozumel and Chichen Itza 'were intimately connected
with the economic and political fortunes of the local populace, and both seem to have been
connected with the development and florescence of the widespread commercial network
established around the Yucatan Peninsula by the Putun Maya'.
Furthermore, the convergence of pilgrims at historically and culturally strategic sites
(which are not necessarily economically strategic in location or role) can act as a causal
agent, among others, in the processes of sociocultural cohesion for heterogeneous groups,
thereby facilitating the coalescence of a national identity; this has been suggested, for
instance, for modern Mexico (Camara Barbachano and Reyes Couturier 1975) and Peru
(Rostworowski de Diez Canseco 1992). Indeed, Camara Barbachano and Reyes
Couturier (1975) have specifically argued that the existence of sanctuaries and pilgrimages
is a phenomenon that is embedded in the contradictory centripetal and centrifugal,
horizontal and vertical social relations of complex society and must be analyzed in the
context within which the specific relationships motivated by the pilgrimage developed. In
terms of the precolumbian Andes, Urbano (1991: 348) states that in the ancient Andes
pilgrimage was associated with the origin of peoples or nations and that 'to make a
pilgrimage is not only to establish peoples or nations or give to each one of them the body
of a nation and its proper personality, but also to make known symbols by means of which
these nations celebrate not only their differences, but also their common characteristics'.
The symbols to which Urbano refers had material correlates in the art and handicrafts of
the archaeological cultures we study as well as in unrecoverable attributes. And Morinis
and Crumrine (1991: 4) observe that the 'ritual, iconography, myth, and meaning of a
pilgrimage are usually wholly representative of patterns within the areas from which
pilgrims are drawn.' This being so, it is possible to identify the catchment area of a
pilgrimage shrine and consider its sociopolitical dynamics (e.g. Shimada 1981 and 1985, on
Batan Grande; for Cahuachi, see below).
Whereas the ceremonial center is a built environment, the pilgrimage center need not
be. In contemporary Latin America the focus of a pilgrimage is often a rock, a cave, a
spring, or other feature of the natural landscape at which apparitions miraculously have
appeared (Morinis and Crumrine 1991: 5). In the precolumbian Andes, natural features
and created ones (e.g. pyramid mound-huacas, idols) were imbued with sanctity and
sacred power. The natural irruption of the sacred could be left unmodified by man or, as an
act of devotion, an edifice or group of edifices was built over, around, or near it (e.g.
Chavin de Huantar, Cahuachi, Tiwanaku, Batan Grande, Pachacamac; see Burger 1991;
4 Helaine Silverman

Figure1 Southcoast of Peru:the locationof Cahuachiis indicated.

Kolata and Ponce Sangines 1991; Shimada 1981; 1985; 1991; Silverman 1990b).
Traditionally, the spectacular north coast site of Pacatnami, located on a narrow spur of
land projecting into the Pacific Ocean from the lower Jequetepeque Valley, has been
viewed as a pilgrimage as well as ceremonial center (Doering 1967:22; Keatinge
1982: 219-22). Donnan (1986: 23), however, has challenged this interpretation stating
that:
no ceramics or artifactual material have been found that clearly indicate that anyone
other than members of the local valley population is buried at Pacatnamfi. Furthermore,
the vast majority of ceramic sherds found in test pits within the architectural complexes
represent fragments of simple utilitarian vessels - not the elite ritual ware we would
expect to find at a major ceremonial center. ... . Nevertheless, Pacatnamu clearly
constitutes one of the largest concentrations of ceremonial architecture on the North
Coast .... Pacatnamui undoubtedly served as a focus of ceremonial activity and
political power for the population of the lower Jequetepeque Valley.
Donnan's statement touches to the core of this article: how do we recognize pilgrimage in
the archaeological record?
For many years the great early Nasca site of Cahuachi, in the center of the Nazca Valley
in the heart of the Rio Grande de Nazca drainage on the south coast of Peru (Fig. 1), was
interpreted as one of the key sites in an alleged urban tradition on the south coast
 1

Figure 2 Central and eastern zones of Cahuachi.

6 Helaine Silverman

(e.g. Rowe 1963). In the remainder of this article I will expand upon the introductory
theoretical remarks presented above to argue that Cahuachi was a distinctly non-urban
settlement, a ceremonial center that achieved a 'now-you-see-it, now-you-don't' quasi-
urban configuration through pilgrimage. I consider the kinds of evidence that can be used
to attribute a pilgrimage function to an ancient site in the absence of written records, and
the role that pilgrimage played in one particular sociopolitical context.

Cahuachi as a non-domestic site

Cahuachi is the largest and most complex site of the Nasca culture which flourished on
the desert south coast of Peru in the Early Intermediate Period, c. AD 1-700 (Fig. 2;
Silverman 1988: fig. 2). Cahuachi has been canonized in the archaeological literature as a
city or urban settlement (Rowe 1963; Lanning 1967; Lumbreras 1974; 1981; Matos 1980).
My recent excavations and survey at the site, however, yielded no evidence in support of
Cahuachi's alleged urban nature (Silverman 1993). One of Cahuachi's two major walls,
Unit 16, encloses approximately 20,000m2 of empty space and several modified mounds
and natural hills west of this (see Fig. 2). Excavation within this central enclosure
(Silverman 1988: fig. 9) did not produce a dense agglutination of habitation remains, as
was expected, based on the similarity of layout between Cahuachi's central zone and the
contemporary, major Nasca habitation site of Tambo Viejo in the Acari Valley where
thousands of evenly sized, small contiguous rooms are enclosed by a continuous ridge,
south of which is a plaza, and south of that another habitation area (Menzel and Riddell
1986: 24-5; Silverman 1988: fig. 11). Rather, within Unit 16 two thin apisonados or earth
surfaces compacted by foot-traffic were revealed; postholes (Silverman 1988: fig. 12) and
scant potsherds were associated with these apisonados. Sterile soil lay almost immedi-
ately below. Cahuachi's other major wall, Unit 4, encloses mound architecture of a
ceremonial nature (Units 1, 2, 8, and 10 on Fig. 2). Twenty-three test pits placed across
the site's open spaces (Silverman 1988: fig. 10) likewise produced few domestic remains;
indeed, most were sterile or virtually so (Silverman 1993: chap. 11). In the 125 hectares
of open or unconstructed space at the site - corresponding to almost 85 per cent of
Cahuachi's total area - no evidence of a large, residential, domestic occupation was
found.
The remaining 15 per cent of Cahuachi consists of modified hills, the semi-artificial
mounds which are the site's monumental architecture (Plate 1). Analysis of the cuts
excavated by Strong (1957) on several mounds at Cahuachi revealed that these were not
habitational as had been claimed (e.g. Matos 1980: 488; Strong 1957), but rather
platform mounds created with construction fill contained by thick adobe walls. An intact
temple precinct was discovered on Unit 19, a small mound on the western side of the
central area of the site (Silverman 1987). The remains of ritual paraphernalia observed
on the surface of many of these mounds and recovered in excavation (Silverman 1993:
chaps 5, 12, 13, 16 and 18; Strong 1957), paucity of quotidian artifacts, and lack of
associated domestic architecture strongly suggest that Cahuachi's approximately forty
semi-artificial mounds of varying size and form correspond to ceremonial rather than
domestic constructions.
 Identification of an ancient Peruvian pilgrimage center 7

Plate1 Aerialview of centralzone of Cahuachi.

The identification of Cahuachi as a pilgrimage center

On the basis of the data briefly outlined above, I contend that, rather than being a major
habitation site, Cahuachi was the great, early Nasca ceremonial center. Depending on the
day, however, Cahuachi could be bustling with activity or virtually depopulated. I suggest
that Cahuachi came to life frequently and cyclically through pilgrimage carried out by
8 Helaine Silverman

means of a ritual calendar of the kind known to have existed in the Central Andes in late
prehispanic times (see Zuidema 1964). It was pilgrimage that generated the refuse
(quotidian and ritual) found in the construction fills of Cahuachi's mounds. During
pilgrimage Cahuachi's mounds were built and repeatedly modified (Silverman 1993: chaps
5, 12 and 13), temporary housing structures made of cane and woven matting were put up
and taken down leaving postholes in apisonados (ibid.: chap. 9), certain individuals were
buried on top of mounds in fine funerary shrouds elaborated at the site (ibid.: chap. 14),
ritual feasting and drinking took place resulting in an enormous amount of broken pottery
fineware and some damaged plainware (ibid.: chap. 16), small-scale areas of surface and
sub-surface ceramic vessels stored food and ritual paraphernalia (for instance, the
three-dimensional embroideries attached to funerary shrouds; ibid.: chap. 12), llamas,
birds, and guinea pigs were sacrificed (ibid.: chap. 12; Strong 1957:31), and votive
offerings ranging from whole pots to human trophy heads were left at the site (Silverman
1993: chaps 15, 16 and 19).
Morinis and Crumrine (1991: 8) indicate that pilgrimage centers are 'geographically and
socially separate from the home community' and that 'the sacred place participates in the
sacred/profane opposition by representing the sacred within the profane sphere. The
shrine is usually remote from the homes of pilgrims, and is bounded off by ecclesiastical
architecture' (ibid.: 10). In a similar vein Eliade (1959: 39) argues that 'holy sites and
sanctuaries are believed to be situated at the center of the world' and that the center is an
absolute fixed point and axis mundi. Cahuachi conforms to these expectations. It is
characterized by ceremonial rather than domestic architecture. It is located in a narrow,
agriculturally problematic part of the Nazca River (ONERN 1971), separated from the
valleys to the north and south of it by the pampas of Atarco and Nazca. Cahuachi's mounds
have a naturally truncated form by virtue of the manner in which their sedimentary strata
erode: I suggest that these hills were huacas or sacred features even before their
modification by man. The area around the huacas was brought into the cultural realm
through the act of enclosure (kancha: see Isbell and Fairchild 1980). Cahuachi's two major
enclosure walls (Units 4 and 16 on Fig. 2) and various smaller ones at the site form a variety
of three- and four-sided enclosures (kanchas). I suggest that the addition of walls of
delineation - where such were not provided by nature - did more than create enclosed
areas of space; it served to distinguish and create an artificial, cultural province from the
unmodified expanse outside its border; it converted natural space into cultural space,
untamed space into man-made, human and controllable space, profane space into sacred
space. And Cahuachi was made sacred by the nature of activities performed there.
Furthermore, Cahuachi is associated with what must have been seen, in ancient times, as a
magical source of water. The immediate Cahuachi locale is legitimately renowned as a
place 'donde aflora el agua' ('where water emerges'), although a great quantity of such
water is not implied nor does it exist; this physical property is due to the meeting of water
table and ground surface at this point (see Silverman 1993: chap. 2). Cahuachi manifests an
Eliadian axis mundi nature in its connection to the underworld via this subsurface water
which emerges to the surface here. Indeed, it is conceivable that a connection was
perceived between Cahuachi and Cerro Blanco, Nazca's sacred mountain and reputed
source of the underground aquifer (Reinhard 1985; Urton 1984). Thus, Cahuachi became
Center in Eliade's (1959) sense of the word. In so arguing, however, my position differs
 Identification of an ancient Peruvian pilgrimage center 9

somewhat from Eliade's. He sees religious space as a given. I see it, at least in part and
sometimes, as created.
The interpretation of Cahuachi as a pilgrimage center also rests on comparison of
Cahuachi's spatial patterns and material remains to those found at other ancient Andean
ceremonial centers known or believed to have had a pilgrimage function. The most
important spatial/architectural feature of Cahuachi is its multiple mounds rather than a
monolithic architectural religious focus. There are few sites in the Central Andes that
share this feature with Cahuachi (Batan Grande, Pacatnamfi and Pachacamac come to
mind) and each of these has been argued to be a pilgrimage center with their multiplicity of
mounds corresponding to the social groups that built and used them (see e.g. Jimenez
Borja and Bueno Mendoza 1970, on the pyramid with ramp pattern at Pachacamac;
Keatinge 1982: 220, for Pacatnamu). In addition, diverse contemporary ceramic styles are
found at Pachacamac, Pacatnamu, and Batan Grande (Keatinge 1982:220-1; Shimada
1981: 410, 425; 1991:1; Uhle 1903). Major walls separate the inferred residential sectors
from religious quarters at Pachacamac and Pacatnamu (Keatinge 1982; Shimada 1991: lvi)
and a major wall (Unit 4) enclosed Cahuachi's central acropolis of ceremonial architecture
and another wall (Unit 16) defined the major plaza which, I argue below, was a place of
congregation for pilgrims. Cahuachi and the religious precincts of Batan Grande (Shimada
1981) were separate from habitation areas. Pacatnamu (dramatically projecting into the
sea), Batan Grande (with its natural huaca at Cerro Chaparri: Shimada 1981:440-1),
Pachacamac (built on a promontory at the junction of irrigated valley, desert plain, and
ocean), and Cahuachi (constructed over natural huacas) all share physical features that
defined their landscapes as sacred. Batan Grande, Pacatnamui, and Cahuachi developed
on land not of the best quality for agriculture. In contrast to other pilgrimage centers, such
as Pachacamac and Batan Grande, where there is a juxtaposition of worship and
commerce (on this point, see Turner and Turner 1978: 38, for Christian pilgrimage), at
Cahuachi we do not see the development of a notable economic function; this may explain,
in part, the lack of a large, permanent, heterogeneous population at the site.
The pilgrimage function of Cahuachi can also be argued on the basis of an ethnographic
analogy to the sanctuary of the Virgin of the Rosary of Yauca, a modern-day Catholic
pilgrimage shrine in the Ica Valley, also on the south coast (see Silverman 1990b for full
details). The cult of the Virgin of Yauca could be classified as a fourth-order shrine. It is
not international like the Virgin of Guadalupe nor national like Sefior de los Milagros
whose church is in Lima. It is regional but not on a par with Sefior de Luren, also in Ica. It is
not, however, a local shrine (see Sallnow 1982).
The sanctuary is located about 30 km east of the city of Ica, in the middle of a desolate,
sandy plain in a side-branch of the Ica Valley that is undergoing drastic desiccation. Local
informants speak of the Yauca area's huacas or natural shrines. Like Cahuachi, Yauca is
reached by crossing a bleak, barren plain. In the case of Cahuachi, if coming from the
north, one crosses the Pampa de Nazca and from the south the Pampa de Atarco to arrive
at the site.
Visited weeks before its festival (the first Sunday in October), the Yauca shrine is a
lonely spot (Plate 2). Its austere white church is closed because there is no priest in
residence. The houses around the large (c. 10,000m2) plaza are abandoned and in varying
degrees of disrepair. The plaza surface is a broken apisonado with little evidence of the
10 Helaine Silverman

Plate2 The sanctuaryof the Virginof the Rosaryof Yaucabefore its pilgrimage.

activities that take place yearly. Some corn husks, a bit of broken glass, broken china, a
fragment of rope, bits of textile, and some loose canes were observed in the plaza during
this first visit. Behind the abandoned houses surrounding the plaza there was a greater
concentration of refuse. The place has a strong echo; the same feature was observed at
Cahuachi between Units 12 and 13 during a similar, quiet day.
I revisited the sanctuary at Yauca ten days before the festival to observe the 'sweeping of
the plaza'. I inquired of those at the shrine why they were sweeping, since I had observed
that the plaza was basically clean. Informants, however, had a different impression. The
faithful thus came with their new brooms, carrying shawls and plastic sacks and
enthusiastically swept the plaza, removing the loose dirt and burro excrement and the few
other surface remains already noted. This dirt was thrown out behind the plaza in the plain
through which the dry Yauca River runs. Wind blows the refuse up against the backs of the
plaza houses, catching it there; the rest of the dirt is carried away by the wind in other
directions or washed away by the river when it occasionally floods. Following the brief
sweeping, the shrine was again deserted.
What a change occurred the next week when I returned to the sanctuary for the actual
pilgrimage. By late Friday afternoon the sanctuary was filling up with pilgrims who arrived
by public transportation, in private car, by truck, or on foot. Many of those who had made
a promise to the Virgin arrived by crossing the dry Yauca plain on foot on a six- to
eight-hour trek from Ica under the hot, spring sun. As is the case with Christian pilgrimage
in general, pilgrims pass a series of smaller religious way-stations en route to the shrine
(Turner and Turner 1978: 23). In Yauca these are natural and man-made stops: a special
 Identification of an ancient Peruvian pilgrimage center 11

huarango tree, a little dry river that charges during the summer when it rains in the
highlands, and several crosses.
By Saturday there were thousands of persons camping outside the plaza area, on the
terrace of the church itself, sleeping in the cars and trucks, or being lodged in the
previously abandoned houses. The houses are loosely analogous to the temple-huacas
built and maintained by the social groups that worshiped at Cahuachi, although the
analogy is closer with the guest-houses maintained by the Chachi at Punta Venado (see
DeBoer and Blitz 1991). Through pilgrimage the previously empty Yauca plaza was
transformed into a teeming city and great marketplace (Plates 3 and 4). Its plaza was
close-packed with cane-and-mat kiosks selling food, alcoholic beverages (beer and
moonshine), and soft-drinks. Among the ephemeral structures serving as restaurants
circulated pedestrian hawkers of cold drinks, ice pops, and sweet bean paste from Chincha
in its enticing, white gum-sealed gourd containers. On the main staircase of the church,
and on the terrace on which the church rests, were vendors of religious paraphernalia such
as candles, images, orations and amulets.
A well-known painted Nasca textile (see Sawyer 1979: figs 14-16, 18 and 20) shows
hundreds of human figures wearing costumes that range from simple loincloths to
elaborate ensembles of mouthmasks, turbans or peaked hats, shell collars, sleeved shirts
and fancy skirts. The figures hold a variety of crops, staffs, war clubs and throwing sticks.
Some are dancing with gourd rattles. Where would hundreds of Nasca farmers, all dressed
up in their ritual finery and carrying agricultural produce have congregated? Cahuachi is a
likely place and the painted scene could well represent a rite of agricultural fertility in
which the otherwise dispersed Nasca farming population participated. Indeed, Sawyer
reconstructs the original size of the textile as over 2.5 m high and over 4 m wide with at least
1,500 figures; he suggests plausibly that it would have adorned a temple wall. Tello (1931)
illustrates a modeled Nasca ceramic scene that may be showing a Nasca family on
pilgrimage.
It was only on Sunday, at the moment of removing the Virgin and the four little assistant
altar Virgins from the church, that a partial cessation in secular activity was noted when a
procession lined up behind the priests and litters. After that, the throng of pilgrims quickly
abandoned the site.
I returned to Yauca the next day, Monday, to watch the process of abandonment of the
pilgrimage center, and especially to note the material condition of the site, once
abandoned. The shrine was filthy. Refuse, left by the thousands of pilgrims, littered the
site surface: food remains, toppled hearths, broken glasses and plates, lots of plastic bags
and paper blowing about. Once the kiosk owners had rolled up the mat walls of their stands
and pulled up the cane stakes, there was virtually no trace of the Brigadoon that had
existed the day before. The 'city' was dismembered as quickly as it had been installed. The
vendors left the shrine in this littered condition claiming that the wind would soon carry
away all of the refuse. Three months later, when I returned to Yauca, it was almost as
devoid of surface materials as it had been several weeks before the ceremonial sweeping of
the plaza.
The pattern of material remains at Yauca corresponds quite closely to the situation
encountered at Cahuachi. I interpret Cahuachi's larger kanchas, particularly the one
formed by the Unit 16 wall, as plazas where pilgrims to the ceremonial center congregated.
12 Helaine Silverman

Plates 3 and 4 The plaza at the Yauca sanctuary fills with thousands of pilgrims as well as service
personnel during the weekend of the pilgrimage.
 Identification of an ancient Peruvian pilgrimage center 13

At Cahuachi scant food remains and other garbage were found in a feature of circular and
irregular depressions excavated into an ash-stained section of the Unit 16 apisonado
(Silverman 1993: fig. 9.5). This is analogous to the faint burn stains on the Yauca plaza
apisonado only months after the vigorous cooking episode. The postholes in the apisonado
of Cahuachi's great plaza (ibid.: fig. 9.3) are analogous to those left at Yauca when the
temporary structures in that plaza were dismantled. The broken china discarded on
Yauca's plaza during pilgrimage is analogous to the pieces of fineware and plainware
recovered on Cahuachi's apisonado. The refuse that accumulated at Yauca either blew
away or was swept off the plaza premises to be disposed of elsewhere. Cahuachi's plazas
were essentially clean and I suggest that the site was being kept clean by wind and man.
The lack of stratified kitchen middens at Cahuachi has been noted by various researchers. I
suggest that the refuse that accumulated during the cyclical use of Cahuachi blew away,
was removed by dumping near or in the Nazca River valley bottom, to be carried away by
periodic and sometimes intense floods, and/or was recycled in the construction fills with
which Cahuachi's monumental architecture was built. Whereas at Yauca the infrequent
use of the site served to permit the wind to maintain the plaza clean and sweeping was more
of a perfunctory ritual gesture than a hygienic act, at Cahuachi, where the use of the
shrine(s) was frequent and intense, wind alone was not a sufficient cleaning agency and
sweeping may have been necessary to maintain the ritual purity of the zone (see Douglas
1966: chaps 1 and 2; Burger and Salazar-Burger 1985; Urton 1984), as well as a certain
level of sanitation.
Ethnographic studies of contemporary pilgrimage have shown that patterns of human
movement in pilgrimage may take on cosmological significance, as journeys to shrines are
identified with macrocosmic cycles or movement among astral bodies (see Morinis and
Crumrine 1991: 5) or other forces, or are the physical manifestation of profound
ideological beliefs and cultural practices (e.g. McEwan and van de Guchte 1991, based on
Zuidema's study of the capac hucha human sacrifice ritual). Pilgrims appropriate and
kinesthetically map space; they transform landscapes into a continuous sacred topogra-
phy. Following Sallnow (1987) I have argued that the Nazca Lines, the geoglyph-marked
Pampa de Nazca opposite Cahuachi, were an integral part of Nasca sacred space and that
some lines were routes of pilgrimage to and from Cahuachi and the socio-religious
territory of particular social groups. Pilgrims danced, tranced, and masked on and across
many of the straight, zig-zag, and figural markings in addition to marking the pilgrimage
route with stone cairns and new lines (Silverman 1990a and b). Aveni (1990b: 83) observed
a significant clustering of radial line centers on the pampa opposite Cahuachi and he posits
a ceque-like function for these (ibid.: 50-71, 110-12). The ceques were imaginary straight
lines that radiated out from Inca Cuzco and were a mnemonic device imposed on Cuzco's
natural and man-made landscape that served to integrate an astronomical-ecological
calendar of ritual obligations within highly structured principles of space and time in the
religious, political and social spheres of human action (see Zuideman 1964, inter alia, for a
complete description and analysis of the Inca ceque system of Cuzco). If Aveni is correct,
the ordered radiality on the pampa is the physical evidence of a pre-Inca ceque system.
14 Helaine Silverman

The sociopolitical context of pilgrimage at Cahuachi

Pilgrimage is a universal experience and knowledge of other pilgrimages can be used to put
Cahuachi in sociopolitical context in spite of the temporal and cultural chasms across time
and world areas. Pilgrimage is an institution and a set of behaviors that occur in a regional
cultural field and encompass ritual performances by actors occupying different social
positions or status. Pilgrimage provides the opportunity for change in social hierarchy. The
pilgrimage is congruent with the 'cultural patterns of its field of patrons' (Morinis and
Crumrine 1991: 4). It is familiar yet geographically (distance and physical setting) and
spatially (architectural environment) remote/separate/differentiated enough to achieve a
sacred aura and so be able to assert its prestige and power over a field of competitive
players.
Victor Turner (1979: 143) has written that 'performances of ritual are distinct phases in
the social process, whereby groups adjust to internal changes and adapt to their external
environment'. Pilgrimage is the stage par excellence for ritual performance. Whatever
other activities may have taken place at Cahuachi - political, economic, social - these were
clothed in ritual. Although local-level and social group-specific religious activities
undoubtedly were carried out in domestic settlements and local ceremonial centers, Nasca
religion and its associated ceremonialism were most fully played out at Cahuachi.
Given that Cahuachi did not have the sufficient residential population with which to build
its mounds, it can be argued that the site's public architecture was erected during pilgrimage
episodes to the site when the necessary labor was at hand. The source of that labour has been
identified. Intensive and systematic site surveys carried out in the Rio Grande de Nazca
drainage in recent years have revealed the presence of hundreds of habitation sites
contemporary with Cahuachi in the surrounding valleys (Browne 1992; Browne and
Baraybar 1988; Silverman 1990a; 1993: chap. 23). These sites were dispersed over a large,
geographically fractured landscape (Silverman 1993: chap. 2). Like DeBoer and Blitz
(1991: 62) for the ceremonial centers of the Chachi, I argue that Cahuachi was an empty
ceremonial center, a non-urban site that serviced and was maintained by a dispersed, rural
population composed of people of the same cultural tradition (Nasca) who periodically
aggregated to reassert social identity, exchange information concerning both local and more
global matters, and expose and attempt to alleviate internal disputes. During pilgrimage
episodes that brought the otherwise dispersed Nasca population together, Cahuachi was the
locus where early Nasca social hierarchy was manifested, tested and worked out.
No other Nasca site is comparable to Cahuachi in form, layout, and material culture,
although one agglutinated habitation site in the Ingenio Valley rivals Cahuachi in size
(Silverman 1990a). Cahuachi was clearly the paramount ceremonial center of the ancient
Nasca world and corresponds to Peebles and Kus' (1977) central place. Early Nasca society
meets virtually all of the criteria of the chiefdom level of integration (Silverman 1993:
chap. 23). Yet pigeon-holing a social formation into a unilineal and universal evolutionary
typology of cultural development tells us little about it (Silverman 1990a; 1993: chap. 23).
Crumrine (1969: 2) has indicated that participation in ceremonial activities is a crucial
mechanism for maintaining social links among distant villages of social groups. I have
argued that the risk-filled geo-ecological nature of the multi-tributary Rio Grande de
Nazca drainage made such support systems desirable (see Silverman 1993: chap. 2);
 Identification of an ancient Peruvian pilgrimage center 15

furthermore, they were necessary for ensuring the peaceful transit of pilgrims across the
territory of other groups. Nevertheless, other environmental aspects of Turner and
Turner's (1978) 'organism-environment field' have not been identified for Cahuachi (nor
for any of the other precolumbian pilgrimage centers of the Central Andes). Turner and
Turner (1978: 231) have written that:

pilgrimage should be regarded not merely as an ideal model but as an institution with a
history. Each pilgrimage, of any length, is vulnerable to the history of its period and
must come to terms with shifts of political geography. Pilgrimage is more responsive to
social change and popular moods than liturgical ritual, fixed by rubric.

Pilgrimage has local, regional, and even international dimensions. Continued fieldwork
and data analysis will enable us to reconstruct the social, political and economic landscape
within which Cahuachi functioned as the paramount religious center and pilgrimage shrine
of the early Nasca world and the factors that brought about its decline.
16.vi.93 Department of Anthropology
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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Abstract

Silverman, H.
The archaeological identification of an ancient Peruvian pilgrimage center

Nasca society of the south coast of Peru has been interpreted as a small militaristic empire led from
an urban capital called Cahuachi. Recent investigations, however, yielded no data in support of that
reconstruction. Rather, excavations at Cahuachi revealed the site to be an empty ceremonial center
with little evidence of a dense, permanent, domestic occupation. Yet, in the construction fills of the
site's many mounds, there is a quantity of refuse, including the remains of ritual paraphernalia and
quotidian artifacts. The lack of permanent domestic settlement, but evidence of intensive site use, is
explained by postulating episodic pilgrimage activities. This model is supported by comparison of
Cahuachi's spatial patterns and material remains to those found at other Central Andean pilgrimage
centers, ancient and modern.