CHAN CHAN, PERU AD 950-1440 by Abbye A. Gorin
Largest pre-Columbian South American urban center
One of mankind's fascinating stories of the past is the rise and fall of the Kingdom of Chimor, AD 950-1440. The Chimú empire stretched along the Peruvian coast for about 800 miles from Tumbez in the north to Lima in the south. Chan Chan, the capital city, was the largest pre-Columbian South American urban center. It was located in the Moche Valley, one of many valleys that characterize the Peruvian coastal landscape.
Tradition speaks of a hero named Nam-lap. He founded a dynasty that ruled the Lambayeque Valley prior to its conquest by the Chimú people. The ethnohistoric account tells us that Nam-lap came to the to the north coastal area in a fleet of balsa rafts with his wife, a harem, courtiers, and a greenstone idol called Yam-pallec.
The Nam-lap style balsa raft or reed boat became part of the Chimú artists' design vocabulary and appears in an extraordinary mud plaster allegorical-type frieze at Chan Chan. Caballitos (little horses), as the reed boats are called today, are the local style fishing boats one sees plying the Pacific coastal waters a short distance from Chan Chan. The balsa raft is only one of many cultural traditions in the vicinity of Chan Chan that has continued through time up to the present. When one compares the fac es of contemporary indigenous people with ancient sculptured faces on portrait ceramic vessels, the likeness is strikingly similar.
At its zenith Chan Chan had an estimated population of fifty thousand inhabitants, and it covered about twenty-five square kilometers (approximately fifteen miles) of coastal plains. Today Chan Chan covers about six square kilometers (approximately three and a half miles). Chan Chan is an adobe city. It is a remarkable example of desert architecture designed and built with local materials to cope with the harsh coastal environment.
Distinguished architectural features
The core of the city has ten large walled rectangular enclosures, monumental in scale, called ciudadelas (citadels). In recent years six of the ciudadelas were named in honor of explorers and archaeologists who worked in the site: Squier, Bandelier, Uhle, Tschudi, Rivero, Velarde, and Tello. The other ciudadelas are designated as Gran Chimú, Chaihuac, and Laberinto. There are also smaller scattered structures called huacas (shrines).
The average enclosed area of a ciudadela is 170,000 square yards, or the approximate area of twenty-six football fields. Each ciudadela is surrounded by walls approximately ten meters (approximately thirty feet) high. Each structure has many internal wall s which form a maze of corridors, rooms, forms, and artistic expressions of an elite urban center.
The purpose of the unusually high adobe walls has intrigued explorers and scholars for years and many explanations have been offered. One interpretation ties the Andean tale of Nam-lap with Chan Chan, a city of kings. But a more recent study based on wind tunnel experiments by Steve Gorin, Ph.D. strongly suggests that the high walls are an architectural solution to control dust and sand and to reduce the effects of the high winds. The high walls also act as passive solar collectors. They insulate against hot temperature during the day; at night when the temperature falls, the walls slowly release the heat collected during the hot daylight hours.
A system of dating the order in which the ciudadelas were built has been devised by Alan Kolata, Ph.D. The Kolata analysis is based on the shapes of adobe bricks and the shapes of an internal U-shaped form called audienca. The strategic location of the audiencas are a Chimú expression of administrative control over the storage and distribution of goods as a bureaucratic headquarters. These two chronologies, bricks and audiencas, used together explain the architectural growth pattern of the city which is a key to understanding the birth, expansion, and ultimate contraction of the Chimú state.
The pre-industrialized Chimú society not only excelled in architecture and engineering but in hydrology, farming, and the arts. Their system of canals brought water from the Andes, and their knowledge of wachaques (sunken gardens dug to near water table w here plants reach for water as required) stabilized food production and created surplus stocks in a land where it almost never rains. This ancient form of food cultivation is still practiced on the coastal desert.
The Chimú artisans were excellent goldsmiths. One can postulate that the deity image on a gold kero (beaker) was the designer's vision of Nam-lap. The Chimú also mastered ceramics, weavings, and feather working too. A unique art form perfected by these desert people was the mud plaster sculpture that decorated internal walls in the ciudadelas. The well planned and executed mud plaster wall friezes send a clear signal that the ciudadelas were the domain of the privileged elite. The Chimú people never developed a formal handwriting system, but insights into the story of their society are told in their architecture and decorative arts.
Remarkable achievement in pioneer urbanism
The Chimor Empire fell under Inca domination about AD 1440, about the time Columbus discovered America. By AD 1470 Chan Chan was abandoned by the Incas and Chimú squatters moved in. The damage caused by squatters was minor compared to the systematic mining operations for gold and silver carried out by the Spanish conquerors in the colonial period, 1532-1821.
With the Andes rising at the back of the city and the roaring Pacific Ocean at the front, Chimú planners called for civil architecture of grand scale to harmonize with the immense desert landscape. The massive building program is proof that the hierarchy had the ability to stabilize the economy and mobilize and control large labor forces. The few religious centers that were built, huacas, are an indicator of a waning priestly element.
Chan Chan represents the highest architectural and land-use dreams of the Lords of Chimor. It is truly an expression of ancient human experience. Although this remarkable achievement in pioneer urbanism is dissolving back into the desert sand, the spirit of Nam-lap still reigns.
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