CHAN CHAN-MOCHE VALLEY PROJECT

Beginning in 1972 Harvard University and the University of California, Los Angeles, carried out a series of archaeological excavations at the Huacas at Moche in an effort to place the Chimú culture within a regional and chronological perspective, these include:

THERESA LANGE-TOPIC in 1972 excavated a funerary platform near the Huaca del Sol and also studied two residential sectors. The discovery of enclosures of a private nature and the existence of a throne suggested to her that the Huaca de la Luna served as the residence of elites while the Huaca del Sol was related to public and administrative functions.

CHARLES HASTINGS AND MICHAEL MOSELEY published in 1975 their studies of the western profile of the Huaca del Sol, where they defined eight construction phases. Based on the marked adobes and segmentary construction of the Huaca they proposed that the labor used to build the Huaca del Sol was similar to the mit'a, the rotational labor system of the Inca.

CHRISTOPHER DONNAN AND CAROL MACKEY in 1978 published the results of the excavations and a catalogue of burials and tombs found at the Huacas in an effort to establish local burial patterns, dating from Salinar to Colonial times.

MACKEY AND HASTINGS in 1982 described and illustrated the multicolored murals from the Huaca de la Luna discovered while cleaning the mural recorded by Garrido. They defined the superposition of three murals and proposed that although the murals were Moche in date, the iconography suggested that they also were influenced by the later Wari style.