Huaca San Marcos

The Huaca San Marcos is part of the Maranga Archaeological Complex that includes numerous pyramids, enclosures, walled roads, irrigation ditches and squares, located in the lower valley of the Rímac River in the area between Colonial avenues to the north, La Marina avenues to the south, Universitaria to the east and Faucett to the west in the current city of Lima, capital of Peru. Today this large archaeological area is very destroyed due to the urban advance of the city and the construction of the university city of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, the Naval Hospital, the Catholic University, the "Parque de las Leyendas" zoo. and many modern developments.

Background

The Huaca San Marcos, due to its monumentality and proximity to Lima, received the attention of various scholars since the 19th century, such as the English traveler Thomas J. Hutchinson (1873), who published a treatise on the archaeological remains of Peru with emphasis on the Central Coast. , in which he mentioned the Maranga Archaeological Complex, which he called "Huatica" following what was mentioned by Cerdan and Pontero in 1793. However, it should be noted that it was an erroneous name since "Huatica" was actually the name that the Spanish gave to the old "Huadca" irrigation canal that existed east of Maranga. Within "Huatica" Hutchinson identified the "Huacas Pando", taking the name of a nearby hacienda, which were made up of three "huacas", known today as Huaca San Marcos, Huaca Concha and Huaca Middendorff. This study provided reports on the form and construction materials of these archaeological monuments. (Hutchinson, 1873: 276-280).

The German traveler E.W. Middendorff (1894: 56-69) also published his travels through Peru in which he highlights a plan of what he called the "City of Huadca", the current Maranga Archaeological Complex, falling into an error similar to that of Hutchinson. . On this plan (accompanied by extensive and very detailed descriptions) you can locate mounds 16, 18 and 19 that correspond to the Huaca San Marcos; Furthermore, Middendorff was the first to affirm that in this archaeological complex there were two construction moments, the first corresponding to the small adobe buildings located to the north (such as the Huaca San Marcos) and another to the south, where there were large buildings made with rammed earth.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the first scientific excavations were carried out, since the previous ones had only been visits accompanied by plans and descriptions. In 1903 the German archaeologist Max Uhle carried out excavations at the top of the Huaca, discovering a series of large fragmented vessels in a place that he considered "the temple's supply depot" and that he assigned to the "Proto-Lima" style (Uhle 1908: 248). In 1925, the Ecuadorian archaeologist Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño excavated the Huacas San Marcos, Concha and Middendorff, (called by this author Huacas "First", "Second" and "Third" respectively). His work led to the discovery of numerous human burials, ceramics of various types in tombs and architectural fillings, also carrying out a detailed classification and description of the materials he discovered. Also in 1925, the archaeologist Alfred L. Kroeber excavated the Huacas Middendorff and San Marcos, which he named the same as Middendorff (Huacas 16 and 17 respectively). In the Huaca San Marcos he excavated one unit on Platform 4, three on Platform 5 and one in the cut made by Av. Progreso. Villar Córdoba (1935: 192-202) called the Huaca San Marcos "Aramburú", because it was within the jurisdiction of the hacienda of the same name. The Huaca San Marcos also appears in a series of inventories of archaeological monuments of Metropolitan Lima where very general data are recorded about its location and its architectural characteristics (Bonavia, Matos and Caycho 1962-63; Milla Villena 1974; Ravines 1985; Williams et al. 1989).

Description

The Huaca San Marcos is a terraced pyramidal mound, which currently measures 332 meters. long, 137 meters. wide at the north end and 32 meters. high at the southern end, built with small rectangular adobes (called "adobitos"), also using the wall but in smaller quantities. These elements make up walls that delimit various types of structures such as enclosures and passageways, as well as ramps, stairs, sidewalks, etc. which are covered with tons of pebbles and sand from the same natural soil of Lima and also with the rubble of older structures, which make up fills that serve as support for new structures that were built on top of the previous ones. The continuous remodeling of the building constituted several construction phases that overlapped each other, thus growing the building upwards and to the sides.

The Huaca San Marcos has an area of 62,732.83 m2. It was originally made up of a central body, made up of 5 platforms (Platforms 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5), three more attached to said body, adjacent to the west with the Naval Hospital (Platforms 6, 7 and 8) and another destroyed in the 1920s with the construction of the current Av. Venezuela. The orientation of the Huaca San Marcos (taking the longest side as axis) is 25º NE, aligned, like the entire set of early buildings in Maranga, perpendicular to the coastline located 2 km southwest of the site (Canziani 1987 : 10).

Post Enclosure

Platform 3 of the Huaca San Marcos is located in the central part of the monument and shows several moments of architectural remodeling, one of which included an enclosure with 64 huarango trunks (Acacia macracantha) vertically and aligned. We still do not know the function of these logs, although there is a possibility that some may have been used to support a roof. The enclosure was delimited by four walls, and could be entered through three openings, one main in the central part, and the other two towards the west and east. The central entrance led to a ramp located at the south end of the enclosure. Through it one ascended to a bench, from where the ritual activities that took place there were controlled. It is possible that this enclosure was one of the most important environments of the Huaca around 600 years AD. It belongs to the transition period between phases Maranga V and VI of the Regional Integration period.

Tinajas Enclosures

Platform 4 is located south of Platform III, it has a high section located to the south and a low section to the north. In the upper part there are six rectangular enclosures numbered from 1 to 6. In enclosures 3, 4 and 6, holes containing huarango posts were found, which would indicate that these rooms were roofed. In the enclosures, large vessels placed in holes that would have served as food or drink deposits stand out. All the architecture of this sector is made using the "bookcase" adobites technique. The Tinajas Campuses would be operating around 500-550 in the late periods of Regional Developments and early in the Regional Integration Period.

Pyrography Mates

On Platform 2, built with the technique of cast adobites, a garbage deposit was found that covered an older passage. The garbage contained remains of plants, bones, fish residues, mollusks and fragmented plain tissues, as well as abundant Nievería and Pachacámac ceramics (Middle Horizon period). In this context, a sacrificed dog, three pyrography mates and a quipu were also discovered.

One of these mates presents two panels with pyrography figures, made with a fine, incandescent instrument. Four warriors were represented in full combat, with fierce faces and wide eyes. Two of them carry weapons and trophy heads; They are richly dressed and wear sandals. These types of representations are not found in the Lima tradition but are very common in the Moche iconography of the northern coast, which would indicate northern influences. However, the treatment of the characters is similar to that observed in Late Nasca iconography; which also suggests a southern influence.

Workshop for making luxury objects in Spondylus princeps shell

Excavations carried out at the southern end of Platform 5, the highest and most extensive of the pyramid, made it possible to define a series of structures made with large adobes and adobes, belonging to the Maranga VI period, which show successive architectural remodeling. Whole shells, fragments, discoidal beads and polished plates of the mollusk Spondylus princeps appeared among the fillings from the latest remodeling. We are proposing the existence of a series of workshops where beads for necklaces and plates were made from these shells; workshops that would have been dismantled and their remains used in filling for architectural remodeling.

Spondylus princeps is a bivalve mollusk whose shell had a very important symbolic role for societies located in the Central Andes. Their original habitat is in the tropical marine ecosystem of the Ecuadorian coast, thousands of kilometers away from the various archaeological contexts of the central Andean area where they have been found.

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