The Chimu
The Moche period declined around 700 AD and the next few centuries are
somewhat confusing. The Wari culture, based in the Ayacucho area of the
central Peruvian Andes, began to expand and its influence was felt as far
north as the Chicama Valley. The next important period in the Trujillo area,
the Chimu, lasted from about 1000 AD to 1470 AD. The Chimu built a capital
at Chan Chan,just north of Trujillo.
Chan Chan is the largest pre-Colombian city in Peru, covering about
28 sq km, and is estimated to have housed about 50,000 people. The Chimu
was a highly organized society - it must have been to have built and supported
a city such as Chan Chan. Its artwork was less exciting than that of the
Moche, tending more to functional mass production than artistic achievement.
Gone, for the most part, is ~e technique of painting pots. Instead, they
were fired by a simpler method than that used by the Moche, producing the
typical blacker seen in many Chimu pottery collections. Despite its poorer
quality, this pottery still shows us life in the Chimu kingdom. Although
the quality of the ceramics declined, metallurgy developed and various alloys,
including bronze, were worked. The Chimu were also exceptionally fine goldsmiths.
It is as an urban society that the Chimu are best remembered. Their
huge capital contained approximately 10,000 dwellings of varying quality
and importance. Buildings were decorated with friezes, the designs molded
into the mud walls, and the more important areas were layered with precious
metals. There were storage bins for food and other products from their empire,
an empire which stretched along the coast from the Gulf of Guayaquil to
Chancay. There were huge walk-in wells, canals, workshops and temples. The
royal dead were buried in mounds with a wealth of funerary offerings.
Chan Chan must have been a dazzling sight at one time. Today, only the
mud walls and a few molded decorations remain and the visitor is amazed
by the huge expanse of the site as much as anything else. The Chimu were
conquered by the Incas in about 1460 but the city was not looted until the
arrival of the Spanish. Heavy rainfall has severely damaged the mud moldings,
though a few survive and others have been restored.
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