Irrigation and Urbanization in Pre-Hispanic Peru: The Moche Valley

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Irrigation and Urbanization in Pre-Hispanic Peru: The Moche Valley James S. Kus" THE USE OF irrigation as an agricultural technique has had a long history in diverse regions of the world. In fact, in many areas of early civilization, irrigation has been noted as a common resource-exploitation technique. This has led to much speculation by scholars as to the role of irrigation within social systems, particularly as related to its importance in the development of "high" civilizations. Price, for example, gives an overview on the role of irrigation in the development of New World cultures.1 The present study of irrigation in pre-Hispanic Peru, by focusing on a single system with limited areal extent, enables us to analyze some of the spatial and cultural elements that led to the development of complex irrigation systems and some of the specific effects of their use. Throughout coastal Peru, exotic rivers flowing westward out of the Andes furnish water for over forty oases. These oases are particularly large in northern Peru and have long been im- * Dr. Kus is an Associate Professor of Geography at California State University, Fresno 93740. Field research in 1967 was supported by the Latin American Studies Center, Michigan State University. In 1969-1970, research was supported by the Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and the National Geographic Society (Grant No. 801). Rainer Berger, Institute of Geophysics, UCLA, radiocarbon -dated material associated with the Chicama-Moche Canal. The assistance of the Harvard-Peabody Museum's Chan Chan-Moche Valley Project, headed by Michael E. Moseley, is gratefully acknowledged. 1 Barbara J. Price, "Prehispanic Irrigation Agriculture in Nuclear America," Latin American Research Review, Vol. 6, No. 3 (197l·), pp. 3-60. 45 46ASSOCIATION OF PACIFIC COAST GEOGRAPHERS portant areas for human settlement. Several geographic factors have combined to make the northern oases the most important agricultural region in Peru, both in the past and at the present time. First, the north coast rivers are dependable sources of irrigation water, with year-to-year fluctuations in flow generally less than those of rivers in the other zones of coastal Peru.2 Second, large amounts of arable land are available in the northern oases. In the central and, particularly, the southern coastal regions, some water goes unused because of a lack of arable land. In the north, the surplus of arable land usually means that all available water can be utilized for irrigation. Finally, the heavy winter fogs of the central coast are not a problem in the northern coastal region; therefore, in the irrigated valleys crops usually can be raised throughout the year. Human Use of the North Coast Oases The oases of the Peruvian north coast have been occupied by man for thousands of years. Numerous pre-eeramic lithic sites have been found along the margins of the valleys, and one can only suppose that before agriculture began the river oases were utilized by hunters and gatherers. Within the last three millennia, advanced cultures developed in the northern coastal region. Agriculture, initially floodwater farming in marshlands along the rivers but later with canal irrigation systems , gradually evolved in the valleys.' The eventual outcome in coastal Peru was the development of several important preIncaic civilizations. It is with one such advanced culture, the Chimu, that this paper is concerned. For five centuries the Chimu were the most important people of northern coastal Peru. Beginning some time in the 2 David A. Robinson, Peru in Four Dimensions (Lima: American Studies Press, 1964), pp. 168-171. 3 A good example of this development is contained in Gordon R. Willey's study, Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the Viru Valley, Peru (Washington, D. C: Bureau of American Ethnography, Bulletin No. 155, 1953). YEARBOOK · VOLUME 36 · 197447 late tenth or early eleventh century A. D., and continuing until the late fifteenth century, the Chimu built upon the traditions and techniques of earlier cultures and developed a stable political unit known as the Kingdom of Chimor.4 This kingdom was centered at a site called Chan Chan in the Moche Valley, near the modern city of Trujillo. At its greatest extent the Kingdom of Chimor stretched from Tumbes in the...

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