Competencias básicas del perfil docente para el logro de una

As with other north coast societies, the Virú culture is identified primarily by its distinctive ceramic styles, in this case two types of negative-resist painted fineware vessels known variously as Virú Negativo (Larco Hoyle 1945b), Gallinazo Negativo A and B (Bennett 1939), and Gallinazo Negative and Carmelo Negative (Bennett 1950; Ford 1949). Larco Hoyle (1945b, 1966) first identified Virú-style vessels from grave lots in the Moche and Virú Valleys in the early 1930s and he considered its origin to be in the Virú Valley. Shortly after Larco Hoyle identified this style, Bennett (1939, 1950)

excavated at the Gallinazo Group and identified three phases within the Virú tradition, which he called Early, Middle and Late. Bennett and other members of the Virú Valley Project identified other Virú-period sites throughout the valley and established the Gallinazo Group as the capital of an integrated polity (Bennett 1950: Strong and Evans 1952; Willey 1953). The origins of Virú culture and the transition from Puerto Morin to Virú society remained uncertain, however in the mid-twentieth century it was sometimes thought that the Virú style had highland origins, mainly because negative-resist painting is more common in the highlands (Kroeber 1944: 63; Strong and Evans 1952: 215). Strong and Evans note that several important Puerto Morin sites were still occupied in Virú times, despite the major shifts in settlement patterns, and there was no overhaul in the use of domestic ceramics, and thus there was likely fundamental cultural continuity, despite the changes that took place.

Based on ceramic evidence, it is thought that the Virú polity was largely confined to the Virú Valley itself although its members interacted with neighbouring valleys, most notably Moche and Chicama to the north. Gallinazo Negative ceramics have only been found in these three valleys (Topic 1982), but it is quite rare outside of Virú and is not even very abundant at the Gallinazo Group or throughout the valley (Bennett 1950: 84;

Billman 1996: 237; Millaire 2009a). However the areal extent of Virú culture has been grossly overestimated due to a misinterpretation of ceramic styles. Alongside the

Gallinazo (Virú) Negative and Carmelo Negative fineware styles, several plainwares with no decoration or with simple, but distinctive, modeled or incised decorations (Castillo Modeled and Castillo Incised styles) were common throughout the entire north coast during Virú times (Collier 1955; Ford 1949; Strong and Evans 1952).5 The Virú Valley Project conflated the association of Castillo-style and Negativo-style ceramics such that the Castillo wares were considered diagnostic of Virú culture, and their widespread distribution was interpreted evidence that Virú society was very widespread. This led Heidi Fogel (1993) to argue that the Gallinazo Group was the capital of a multi-valley state that expanded from the Virú Valley sometime between 100 B.C. and A.D. 200, but her argument was not well-received largely because it lacked solid chronological data to support her argument (Millaire 2010a). As the volume of research increased on the north coast, the relationship between Virú and other societies was questioned. Virú-style ceramics, namely Castillo decorated wares, were found at sites that were primarily Moche. This led Shimada and Maguiña (1994) to argue that Virú was not an expansive state but rather was a separate ethnicity that lived alongside the Moche throughout the north coast.

Jean-François Millaire has recently led the charge away from this expansive view of Virú society to one that sees a very limited Virú polity within a broad pan-north coast ethnic tradition, the tradicíon norcosteña (Millaire 2009a; Millaire and Morlion 2009).

Essentially, the new perspective is that only Gallinazo Negative (hereafter referred to as Virú Negative) and Carmelo Negative vessel types are diagnostic of the Virú culture, and that these are corporate-produced elite vessels that were most popular as burial items and were quickly replaced by Moche vessels in the Chicama and Moche valleys, while

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The term “Gallinazo” is widely used to refer both to the negative-resist ceramic style of the Virú Valley and to the Castillo Modeled and Castillo Incised styles, and it is also used to refer to the Virú culture in general. Millaire (2009a) highlights this problem and argues that “Gallinazo” should be reserved solely for Castillo-style ceramics while “Virú” should be used for corporate-produced negative painted styles, as well as for the culture. I follow his terminology throughout this dissertation.

enjoying somewhat longer usage in Virú (Uceda et al. 2009: 119). Castillo-style ceramics, on the other hand, were utilitarian domestic wares that were used by commoners throughout the north coast for over a millennium and textiles and other cultural manifestations also show broad continuities, highlighting a fundamental ethnic continuity along the entire north coast during the EIP (Donnan 2009; Makowski 2009; Millaire 2009b; Millaire et al. 2013; Sidoroff 2005; Surette 2014). Given these new interpretations, Millaire (2009a) argues that corporate-produced elite ceramic styles such as Virú (Gallinazo) Negative or Moche, traditionally assumed to signify major cultural divisions, should instead be viewed as more superficial markers of political ideology. These studies highlight the importance of having solid ceramic typologies and

chronologies because considerable interpretations have been made based on ceramic data. These new ceramic interpretations highlight a major problem with the original Virú Valley chronological sequence, used by Willey (1953) to classify the sites in his settlement pattern study and subsequently widely adopted throughout the north coast. Willey’s chronological sequence was based primarily on James Ford's (1949) ceramic seriation of sherds collected from surface surveys throughout the valley. In contrast to more traditional ceramic sequences that were based solely on stylistic traits of elite ceramics, typically associated with burials (e.g. Larco 1948), Ford's seriation looked at both the style and technology of sherds and also looked at all ceramics, including plain, undecorated wares that were ignored in traditional sequences. Ford compared and cross- checked his seriation of surface-collected ceramics against the ceramics recovered in excavations conducted by other members of the Virú Valley Project (Ford 1949: 42-43). Ford’s ceramic sequence was a well-constructed and sound piece of scholarly research that ultimately contributed much to Andean scholarship, but it contained many errors in interpretation that are only now beginning to be discovered. The “Gallinazo Illusion,” discussed above, is one such error.

Early on, Bennyhoff (1952) expressed numerous concerns with Ford’s (1949) sequence, arguing that the sequence relied on small sample sizes and arbitrary distinctions between ceramic types and that the surface assemblage of any site only represented the terminal occupation of that site, whereas Ford contended that it represented an average date

representing the site’s entire history (Ford 1949: 35). Apart from a very brief rebuttal by Ford (1952), these concerns were not addressed further. Bennyhoff (1952) reordered Ford’s sequence and questioned the cultural periods used by Ford. Most notably,

Bennyhoff cautioned that Ford’s typology should be critically evaluated before it became established as the accepted sequence for Virú and, in turn, the entire north coast. These warnings were not heeded, however, as Willey (1953) cemented Ford's seriation and it became the de facto ceramic typology and sequence for Virú and the north coast. Ford (1949) did not publish his data for the Virú Valley and until now only summary information was available. I have obtained copies of Ford’s notes and tables (.F673, Papers of James Ford, Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History) and have been able to use them to test Ford’s seriation, to address Bennyhoff’s (1952) concerns, and to search for other errors that influenced Willey’s (1953) settlement patterns for the Virú Valley. Ultimately I find that corporate and domestic ware ceramics were made for different reasons and evolved along separate timescales, that Ford often conflated these two distinct varieties of ceramic, and that additional errors exist beyond those associated with the “Gallinazo Illusion” discussed above. Furthermore, because of their rarity at Puerto Morin and Virú sites, corporate wares cannot be used for seriation in the Virú Valley. I re-seriate the Virú Valley domestic ware sequence and use this new dating scheme to update Willey’s settlement patterns.