The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas Volume I, II, and III

358 Izumi Shimada
the lead in many of these advances. For example, the dramatic rescue
from looters and subsequent excavations of well-preserved, early Mochica
"royal" tombs at Sipan in the mid-Lambayeque Valley by the Briining
Museum team generated considerable interest worldwide. Concurrently,
archaeologists at the National University of Trujillo and National Institute
of Culture, Trujillo Branch, have been conducting fieldwork at
major Mochica sites (Pyramid of the Moon or Huaca de la Luna at
Moche and Huaca El Brujo or El Cao Viejo in the Moche and Chicama
valleys, respectively) and Gallinazo sites (e.g., Tomaval in the Virii
Valley). Meanwhile, the Upper Piura Project of the Archaeology Specialty
of Catholic University (Lima), in conjunction with members of the
Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, has begun to clarify
the regional cultural chronology and the enigmatic relationship between
the Viciis and Mochica cultures. A 1993 international colloquium on
Mochica archaeology revealed both widespread recognition of the need
to reassess conventional views on basic issues (discussed later) and continuing
overemphasis on tombs and monumental architecture in Mochica
archaeology. Recent advances also have underlined the importance of
interaction (trade?) between southern Ecuador, on the one hand, and the
North Highlands and Piura-Lambayeque zone of the north coast of Peru,
on the other, for coevolution of cultural complexity in both areas.
Changing Interpretive Frameworks
An unintentional but nonetheless important outcome of the aforementioned
archaeological research has been a long-overdue critical assessment
of conventional conceptual schemes dating back to the 1930s. These
schemes view cultural developments in terms of "Culture Areas" (or their
later reformulation, "Archaeological Regions") and the related "Culture
Core-Margin" dichotomy. The entire stretch of the Andes was tripartitioned
into North, Central, and South Andes based on persistent, overlapping
distributions of a constellation of environmental and cultural
features and traits. Each Culture Area was further divided into many
subareas based on the distribution of diagnostic ceramic styles of the
ERD cultures and the presumed "heartlands" or "cores." Apparent stylistic
homogeneity was taken to reflect political unity. Adoption of these
subdivisions and assumptions inevitably invited a static core—margin dichotomy
with persistent debate over boundaries. In the north coast
subarea, the small Moche Valley had been long regarded as the core area
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