Archaeologists discover Ancient, Pillared Halls at Pañamarca, Peru

In its most recent field season, the Archaeological Landscapes of Pañamarca (Paisajes Arqueológicos de Pañamarca) research project discovered unprecedented painted architecture at the site. The research project, first founded in 2018, is designed to understand the activities that took place at Pañamarca and its surroundings in the ancient past. It is a collaboration between Peruvian and US archaeologists, art historians, and conservators with support from the National Geographic Society, the Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia University, and the Avenir Conservation Center at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

Pañamarca is the southernmost monumental center of the Moche culture—a society that made their homes in the coastal valleys of northern Peru between about 350 and 850 CE. Moche archaeology is well known for its rich, elite tombs, impressive architecture and artworks, and elaborate religious artifacts and imagery. Constructed atop a granite hill in the lower Nepeña Valley, Pañamarca consists of an imposing stepped adobe platform, two lower—yet expansive—adobe platforms, a large adobe walled plaza, and numerous other structures including a Formative-period masonry building. 

Pañamarca is best known for its colorful wall paintings, first published in the 1950s. Found within the plaza and platforms, they depict priests and warriors in procession, battles between supernatural beings, an unusual two-faced man, and scenes of ceremonial activities related to human captives. But a throne room for a queen has never been seen before at Pañamarca, nor anywhere else in ancient Peru.

The adobe throne was found within what project director Jessica Ortiz Zevallos has named the “Hall of the Moche Imaginary” (Sala del Imaginario Moche). It is surrounded by walls and pillars depicting four different scenes of a powerful woman, in some instances receiving visitors in procession and, in another, seated upon a throne.

Prior seasons of the project’s research documented a bevy of painted surfaces within this hall, including paintings of elegantly dressed men and women, warriors with spider, deer, canid, and serpent features, and multiple battles between the Moche mythic hero and his enemies from the sea.

The powerful woman painted on the walls and pillars of the throne room—as well as on the interior surfaces of the throne itself—is associated with the crescent moon, with the sea and its creatures, and with the arts of spinning and weaving. Mural paintings uncovered in July include a rare scene of an entire workshop of women spinning and weaving, as well as a procession of men carrying textiles and the female leader’s crown, complete with her braids. “Pañamarca continues to surprise us,” remarks Lisa Trever, professor of art history at Columbia University, “not only for the ceaseless creativity of its painters but also because their works are overturning our expectations of gender roles in the ancient Moche world.”

Scholars will debate whether the woman painted on the walls of the throne room is human or mythical (a priestess, goddess, or queen). But the physical evidence of the throne, including the erosion to its back support and the recovery of greenstone beads, fine threads, and even human hair, make clear that it was occupied by a real living person—and the evidence all points to a seventh-century woman leader of Pañamarca.

The project’s excavations on Pañamarca’s plaza have also revealed a monumental structure that was entirely unknown to prior research. The Hall of the Braided Serpents (Sala de las Serpientes Trenzadas) was also built with wide square pillars. Many of these pillars were arrayed with paintings of intertwining serpents with human legs—a motif not seen elsewhere in Moche art. Other surfaces were decorated with images of warriors, anthropomorphized weapons, and a large monster chasing a man. The Hall of the Braided Serpents underwent multiple renewal events that included copious material offerings—most notably textiles—burning events, the careful capping of floors, and the whitewashing of previously decorated walls. “Perched above the plaza, this hall offered a prominent position—almost like box seats at a theater or stadium—from which to observe the goings-on down below, while it also provided private spaces for its privileged occupants,” explains archaeologist Michele L. Koons of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

The archaeological intervention at Pañamarca goes hand-in-hand with conservation efforts. Painted architecture is excavated, stabilized, documented, and studied by a highly skilled team of specialists who also combine artisanal practices of pencil and watercolor illustration with state-of-the art methods of three-dimensional digital recordings, to create detailed documentation of the painted architecture and its archaeological information.

Due to their fragility, the mural paintings of Pañamarca are not currently accessible to tourism. “If left open to the elements without a permanent conservation program on site, the invaluable murals of Pañamarca would begin to deteriorate immediately, as we know happened to the murals first uncovered in the 1950s. Therefore, at the end of each of our seasons, and following the regulations and recommendations of the Ministry of Culture, we cover the excavations to ensure the long-term conservation of this important cultural heritage.” says project archaeologist José Antonio Ochatoma Cabrera. “We are pleased to be able to invest in the construction of substantial roofs and windbreaks that—together with those built by Peru’s Ministry of Culture—are designed to ensure the preservation of Pañamarca’s painted architecture,” adds project director Jessica Ortiz Zevallos.

“At the same time,” she notes, “our team is working tirelessly to create digital renderings of everything we have uncovered, which we have been sharing in multiple forms—in interpretive panels at the site entrance donated by our project, in scholarly publications and conferences, with national and international media, and in online platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and the website Pañamarca Digital, launched in 2023.”

The archaeological research program at Pañamarca is supervised by archaeologists and conservators from Peru’s Ministry of Culture headquarters in Lima and the regional office of the Dirección Desconcentrada de Cultura de Ancash.

Main Image: A painting of an enthroned woman speaking to a bird-man occupies a pillar next to the throne in the Hall of the Moche Imaginary