We explore a Moche artifact and how it’s changing our understanding of leadership in the ancient Moche world. In this post, you will find the YouTube video exploring these artifacts, and a full video transcript (with relevant sources and links).
YouTube Video
YouTube Video Transcript
Here, you will find the complete transcript of the video in the previous section with hyperlinked references/citations.
Intro
For the last few years, researchers at the site Pañamarca in the Nepeña Valley of northwestern Peru have been uncovering colorful Moche wall paintings from over 1000 years ago.
After they record them, they cover them back up.
Why? Well, if these ancient murals remain exposed to the elements without a full conservation program, we might lose them forever. We know this because that’s pretty much what happened to the first murals that were unearthed in the 1950s. So at the end of each field season, the researchers of the Archaeological Landscapes of Pañamarca project document, stabilize, and then rebury these paintings.
They’ve been finding amazing artwork, but in 2024, they found something that no one had seen before at the site and in Peru – a throne room for a queen.
Hi! I’m Dr. Smiti Nathan, and I’m an archaeologist. In this video, we’re going to explore this artifact and how it’s changing our understanding of leadership in the ancient Moche world.
The Moche
To understand why this find matters, we need to talk briefly about the Moche and how they functioned, especially their leadership.
Now, when you think of what we might have been traditionally taught about an ancient civilization or society, a large empire or state with a single leader might come to mind. This was not the case with the Moche. Instead, scholars think that there were various polities and groups that existed across a 700 km area in what’s now modern-day Peru. What brought them together was a shared artistic and architectural tradition that flourished from around 100-850CE.
The site of Pañamarca, which sits atop a granite hill, was one of those polities. In fact, it seems to be the southernmost major center in the Moche World. There were people living there before it became part of the Moche world; however, the site was transformed once it became part of the Moche sphere. The monumental center was rebuilt, and temples and buildings were decorated with what the site is now famous for – its colorful murals. These images are diverse and depict a range of ritual and epic scenes, with subjects ranging from humans to the divine. As far as we know, the Moche did not have what we would easily recognize as a writing system. So these murals help us understand some of the narratives they held and created.
Now, mural paintings were common throughout ancient Peru and other areas in ancient Central and South America. For example, we find murals at the famous Mexican sites, Tenochtitlan and Teotihuacan, the Mayan sites of San Bartolo and Calakmul, and the ancient Peruvian sites Huacas de Moche and El Brujo.
So murals at Pañamarca were a known find, but a throne room for a queen had never been uncovered at Pañamarca or in Peru. So let’s see what’s inside this throne room.
The Throne Room
The throne room was found inside a pillared hall that the project director, Jessica Ortiz Zevallos, has named “The Hall of the Moche Imaginary”. Radiocarbon dating suggests that this hall was built around 650 CE. The walls in this hall are covered with paintings that showcase aspects of Moche ritual and beliefs.
In previous field seasons at Pañamarca, researchers had already documented some of the paintings in this hall. They included finely dressed people, warriors with animal features, and battles between a mythic hero and his sea-based enemies.
So painted walls here weren’t new. What was new was what researchers found when they excavated further into this part of the hall in 2024. They uncovered four different painted scenes, all depicting a powerful woman.
In one mural, we see a crowned woman holding a scepter. There is a procession of men behind her carrying objects that include textiles and her crown, complete with braids. Below this procession is an entire textile workshop of women spinning and weaving, which is actually rare to see depicted Moche art.
As researchers studied the various scenes, they noticed that this particular woman was being depicted again and again. She was strongly associated with the night sky’s crescent moon, the sea and its various creatures, and textile arts, including weaving and spinning.
But how did the researchers come to the conclusion that this was a throne room for a queen?
Well, they found a throne.
At the center of the hall sat a painted adobe throne, positioned to face directly toward the Pacific Ocean.
And guess what was painted on the interior surfaces of the throne itself? The same woman.
The Woman
Now you might be wondering, How did they know that this individual was a woman?”
It’s a fair question. The way we understand sex and gender today might not be the same way people in the past understood it. And while we do create categories to help make sense of what we’re seeing in the archaeological record, scholars are becoming more aware of the ways our modern views can shape how we interpret the past.
When it comes to the Moche, scholars have interpreted gender through artistic visual markers, such as clothing, objects associated with individuals, and hairstyles. These markers can be found across artistic mediums that include pottery and murals.
In fact, in the 1980s, two scholars proposed that certain figures depicted at Pañamarca were supernatural women. They arrived at the gender part of their conclusion based on hairstyle, specifically two long, spirally bound locks. They mentioned that this hairstyle appeared to be exclusive to women in other artistic depictions where the body was shown nude.
Now it’s worth saying, that this is the scholar’s interpretation of the patterns they’re seeing in the art. Like all interpretations, it has its limitations. For example, it’s challenging to really know how an artist or depicted individual viewed gender identity. This doesn’t discount the framework that these scholars have come up with, but it’s important to know that it’s one that will continue to be reflected upon and refined based on further scholarship, analysis, and findings.
In fact, when it comes to identifying the role of Pañamarca individual, the researchers have anticipated that fellow scholars will debate whether this woman was queen, a priestess, or even a goddess.
Queen or Goddess?
But here’s why they think, she was a queen.
The throne’s back support shows erosion and that kind of wear that typically comes from repeated use over time. If the throne was meant to be a symbolic placeholder for a goddess, then it doesn’t make sense for that type of wear to be there. In addition, researchers recovered greenstone beads, fine threads, and even human hair near the throne, which they believe supports the notion that someone actually sat there. While the researchers are unsure if they have enough material from the hair to conduct a full DNA analysis.
Could this woman have been a priestess? It’s possible. Scholars have previously identified what they considered priestesses in Moche art and have even found burials of women they interpreted to be priestesses. Fellow scholars have looked at this interpretation and wondered if they could have also been political leaders.
The line between political leader, religious ruler, and even divine entity might not have been as clear-cut. In fact, in the past, some scholars thought that those polities we mentioned before were ruled by king divinities. Recent scholars have suggested that there could have been queen-divinities or leadership without the divine aspect. Whatever the intersection with religious life and the divine might have been, recent research, including the work at Pañamarca, is helping rewrite past narratives that assumed that it was mainly men who held power and leadership roles.
Outro
Now as this find highlights, there is definitely room for interpretation regarding multiple aspects of this artifact. What I find really commendable about this project is that the researchers decided to share their findings, photographs, and reconstructions of the murals, with the broader public shortly after their 2024 field season. Now, typically in archaeology, researchers wait until a peer-reviewed publication before releasing their findings publicly. Sometimes there are protocols from the country’s government that a site might be in, but often there’s a significant amount of analysis to do once the field season wraps. Also, scholars need time to sit with the data and fully develop their interpretation.
But this project decided to do something different. Yes, the team was already doing a significant amount of their documentation and conservation work in the field, in real time. However, they made the decision to share what they had found as they were still shaping their interpretation and awaiting to do certain analysis, like with the DNA from the hair they found. This allows others to access the material and potentially come to their own conclusions, even if those conclusions differ from the researchers’. And as we’ve seen throughout this video, there’s plenty here still to debate.
While these murals and this artifact get reburied after each field season, the team has shared them with the world and they are changing the story of who actually led parts of the Moche world.
This video is part of our artifact of the day series, where we take a quick look at one intriguing object from the past. If you’re interested in watching another artifact of the day video, check out the video here.
Credits
Brooke Norton: Series Lead, Co-Producer, Researcher, Scriptwriter
Noor Hanania: Lead Video Editor, Peer Reviewer, Logo Designer
Anya Gruber: Peer Reviewer
Sneh P. Patel: Peer Reviewer
Smiti Nathan: Director, Co-Producer, Support Video Editor, Researcher, Scriptwriter
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