A MOCHE

FEATHERED SHIELD FROM THE PAINTED TEMPLES OF

PAAMARCA, PERU
Lisa Trever, Jorge Gamboa Velsquez, Ricardo Toribio Rodrguez, Flannery Surette

We report upon the unique nding of a Moche feathered shield at Paamarca, Nepea Valley, Peru. The artifact was
excavated in 2010 from an offering context adjacent to two mural paintings rst documented in 1950. Although
shields are among the most frequent motifs in Moche iconography, very few examples are found archaeologically or
in museum collections. We describe the form and materials of the Paamarca shield and discuss its placement
within the huacas architectural sequence. This shield would have offered little real protection in battle; rather, it
served as one of the paramount symbols in Moche art and ritual practice.
Se presenta el hallazgo nico de un escudo Moche con plumera procedente de Paamarca, Valle de Nepea, Per. Este
artefacto fue excavado en 2010, siendo registrado en posicin invertida como ofrenda adyacente a un grupo de pinturas
murales documentadas originalmente en 1950. Aunque los escudos se encuentran entre los motivos ms frecuentes de la
iconografa Moche, muy pocos ejemplares han sido encontrados en sitios arqueolgicos o museos. El escudo de
Paamarcacompuesto de cestera espiral con un diseo ornamental formado por textiles y plumases relevante
para los estudios de la ideologa Moche al brindar una serie de datos hasta ahora poco conocidos sobre la tecnologa
de elaboracin y signicado de este tipo de objetos. El escudo de Paamarca habra ofrecido escasa proteccin en
combate, funcionando ms bien como un smbolo sobresaliente del arte y la prctica ritual Moche.

Lisa Trever, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University, 485 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02138,
lstrever@fas.harvard.edu
Jorge Gamboa Velsquez, Universidad Nacional Santiago Antnez de Mayolo, Ciudad Universitaria, Shancayn, Huaraz,
Peru, jgamboavelasquez@yahoo.com
Ricardo Toribio Rodrguez, Proyecto Especial Complejo Arqueolgico Chan Chan, Jr. Torre Tagle No. 178, Urb. San
Andrs, Trujillo, La Libertad, Peru, torrow_16@hotmail.com
Flannery Surette, Department of Anthropology, Social Science Centre, The University of Western Ontario, London,
Ontario, N6A 5C2, Canada, fsurette@uwo.ca
awpa Pacha, Journal of Andean Archaeology, Volume 33, Number 1, pp. 103118. Copyright # 2013 Institute of Andean Studies. All rights reserved.

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awpa Pacha: Journal of Andean Archaeology

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n what follows we present a remarkable object excavated within the monumental core of the ancient
Moche site of Paamarca in 2010 (Figure 1).1 The
artifact is a small shield (25 cm in diameter) that consists of a round basketry base covered on its face with
textiles and decorated with yellow feathers (Figures 2
and 3). Along with war clubs and other arms and
military accouterments, decorated shields are often
depicted in Moche iconography; however, just a few
examples of actual Moche shields have been excavated
by archaeologists and to date we are unaware of
comparative objects in museum collections. The
Paamarca shield thus appears unique in its form,
materials, and scale.
What makes this nd even more signicant is the
context within which the shield was discovered.
Unlike the other known Moche shields, the
Paamarca example does not come from a funerary
context. Rather, it had been deposited in close proximity to two Moche mural paintings (Murals B and
D) that adorned a niche-like space within the sites

Figure 2. The Moche feathered shield excavated at Paamarca

(diameter: 25 cm).

Figure 3.

The reverse of the Paamarca shield.

Platform II temple complex. The shield seems to

have been left as an offering that preceded a renovation of the painted temple during the late Moche
period (c.600850 C.E.).2 With that renovation the
wall paintings were sealed and buried by the new construction. The two mural paintings associated with the
shield were rst documented by Richard Schaedel in
1950 (1951). Duccio Bonavia subsequently lamented

Figure 1. Map of the north coast of Peru showing the locations

of the archaeological sites discussed in the text.

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Trever et al.: A Moche feathered shield from the painted temples of Paamarca, Peru

painted wallsthe 2010 eld project opened seven

units of investigation within the monumental area of
Paamarca. Three excavation units were opened in
the Great Plaza to study the remains of Mural C;
another three units were placed in the looted-out
core of Platform II to explore what was left of Murals
A, B, D, and E; and one unit was opened in an area
to the west in order to study Mural F (Bonavia
1959, 1974, 1985; Schaedel 1951; Tello 2005).
Our project succeeded in locating and documenting remains of all of the previously known paintings
of Paamarca.3 What is more, we also discovered an
important new corpus of mural paintings at the site.
The new paintings include a robust program of
gural paintings found on the walls and broad
pillars of a previously unmapped structure that we
named the Enclosure of the Painted Pillars
(Recinto de los Pilares Pintados). The iconography of
most of these paintings seems to be directly related
to themes found on late Moche ceramics, but
others appear completely novel. The full results of
the eld project are forthcoming.4
Paamarca is remarkable among Moche sites in
that nearly every wall within its monumental center
seems to have been covered in at mural painting
depicting religious or mythological scenes and
events. The mural paintings of other Moche centers
tend instead towards geometric designs and repetitious les of supernatural or human gures.
Indeed, narrative mural painting is rare elsewhere in
the Moche world, with the exception of the socalled Revolt of the Objects mural and other paintings recently found within the late Moche New
Temple at Huaca de la Luna (Uceda et al. 2011).
Yet, at Paamarca, narrative paintings are the norm.
We found no evidence of the technique of painted
relief that is so prominent at places like Huaca de la
Luna and Huaca Cao Viejo to the north (Mujica
Barreda 2007; Uceda and Morales 2010). Instead, it
seems that the wall painters of Paamarca may have
been inspired by the smooth surfaces of ceramics or
the at spans of gural tapestry. Indeed, the iconography of the Paamarca murals is more similar to that
used in those portable media than it is to mural paintings found at Moche centers elsewhere.

that these muralslike most others at the sitewere, to

his knowledge, entirely destroyed (1985, 2002). Our
research demonstrates that signicant remains of the
paintings, as well as their archaeological contexts,
remain intact. In fact, we recovered the shield from
the very corner examined by Schaedel and visited later
by Bonavia, below a remaining layer of adobe architectural ll, less than a meter below the 1950s surface level.

Paamarca, Moche Mural Painting,

and the 2010 Field Project
The 2010 Paamarca eld project was designed to
investigate and comprehensively document the Moche
mural paintings that had been haphazardly exposed at
the site during the twentieth century. Despite
Paamarcas prominence as the southernmost Moche
monumental center, located in the lower valley of the
Nepea River in the Peruvian department of Ancash,
there had never before been a systematic program of
archaeological excavations at the site. Early accounts
and views of the site were published by E. George
Squier (1877) and Ernst W. Middendorf (1894) in
the late nineteenth century. Paamarca (PV3138)
was prominently included in the Nepea Valley archaeological survey carried out between 1967 and 1979 by
Donald A. Proulx (1968, 1973, 1982, 1985), who
identied it as the largest Moche center in a valley
that was territorially divided at mid-valley between the
coastal Moche and the highland Recuay. The sites
mural paintings were rst recorded and illustrated by
Toribio Meja Xesspe for Julio C. Tello in 1934
(Tello 2005) and decades later by Schaedel (1951)
and Bonavia (1959). With the notable exception of
Bonavias careful study of Mural E, which depicts a
portion of the Moche Presentation Theme or
Sacrice Ceremony (Donnan 1975), however, the
adobe architecture that supported the sites paintings
has only been vaguely understood. A primary goal of
our research was thus to set Paamarcas published
paintings effectively back into their proper architectural
and spatial contexts.
With this objective to document what remained of
the muralseven if that was just the footprints of

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awpa Pacha: Journal of Andean Archaeology

The Discovery of the Paamarca

Feathered Shield

Volume 33, Number 1

that exhibits both snail and feline features. This creature is often depicted in Moche neline ceramic
painting in combat with a hero-god who has come
to be known as Wrinkle Face, among many other
names in the scholarship.6 Mural D was a painting
of an anthropomorphic gure with bird headdress
and serrated tail that carries a bag on his hip and a
large shell in one hand. The painting had already suffered much damage in 1950 (see Schaedel 1951:
Figure 12), which is apparent in the confusion in
Azabaches sketch where the gures face should
appear, beneath the bird headdress. Despite this
incomplete record, Krzysztof Makowski was able to
identify this gure with the Iguana attendant who
often accompanies the hero-god in ceramic iconography (Bonavia and Makowski 1999: 5051).
Despite Bonavias pessimism that nothing
remained of these paintings, we planned to look for
some trace of the painted walls in order to better
understand their architectural context. The original
excavation unit measured 7 8 m, but our investigation quickly narrowed in on the northern corner
of the unit where we succeeded in identifying the
architecture in question (Figure 6). There we
located the two walls (Muro 5 and Muro 6) that
together make up the painted corner studied by
Schaedel and later photographed by Abraham
Guilln (Bonavia and Makowski 1999: Figure 26).
These walls belong to the late phases of the
complex architectural sequence of Platform II.
Muro 5 (where we found the remains of Mural D)
predates Muro 6 (Mural B), although both were decorated at the same time. The later wall was built to
close off the ramp that led up and into the southeast
of the platform ( piso 2). With the closing of the ramp
a new oor was prepared to the southeast of Muro 6
( piso 1). After the ramp was closed, the northwest
face of Muro 6 and the southwest face of Muro 5
were both painted with the images of the Strombus
Monster and the Iguana, respectively. Together with
a now-destroyed wall that faced Muro 5, these
painted walls formed a new niche-like space within
the temple complex.
Through the course of our excavation, we found
that less than half of the surface area of the paintings,

The Unit 5 excavation that produced the Moche

feathered shield was programed to locate and record
the remains of Paamarcas Murals B and D and
their associated architecture (Figure 4).5 In 1950,
Richard Schaedel rst observed these paintings,
which had presumably been exposed by looters at
the site. Both paintings were sketched by the late
painter Pedro Azabache (Kosok 1965: Figures 10a
and 10b), who was born in the traditional village of
Moche and became one of the principal representatives of the Peruvian Indigenista school of the twentieth century. Each of these paintings studied by
Schaedel consisted of a single mythological gure
that is well known in Moche ceramic iconography
(Figure 5). Mural B depicted the Strombus Monster

Figure 4. Map of the monumental area of Paamarca with

identication of major structures and the location of Unit 5,
where the shield was discovered. Map created by the Proyecto
Arqueolgico PaamarcaArea Monumental (PAPAM) in 2010.

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Trever et al.: A Moche feathered shield from the painted temples of Paamarca, Peru

Figure 5. Line drawings of Murals B (right) and D (left). Redrawn by Lisa Trever after illustrations made by Pedro Azabache in 1950
(Kosok 1965: Figures 10a and 10b).

serrated tail are particularly vibrant and provide a

reference point for the original saturation of the
Moche painting. By removing the remaining adobe
construction ll over the oor, we were also able to
documentfor the rst timethe red bands that
framed the gures both above and below.
Below the last layer of adobe bricks there was a thin
layer of soil (12 cm) that covered the ancient oor.
Upon removing this soil we found two remarkable
things (Figure 10): the oor of the ramp had been
cut parallel to the Strombus Monster mural; and a
woven basketry object had been placed near the edge
of the surface that remained. By cutting the ramp,
the Moche architects created a sloping benchor possibly an altarwithin the painted niche. The object discovered on that inclined surface was a at, coiled basket
with two vegetal ropes attached to its center (Figure 3).
The only other artifacts recovered over the oor were
non-diagnostic ceramic sherds. When the basket was
removed, we could see that it had been laid face
down and that the face was decorated with brown
and red textiles and small yellow feathers that were
sewn onto the center in a radial pattern (Figure 2).

as they were known in 1950, had survived (Figures 7

and 8). Although some limited color photography of
Mural B exists (see Bonavia 1974: Plate opp. p. 60),
previously there was no color record of the vivid polychromy of the Iguana painting (Mural D) and neither
painting had been drawn using a measured scale. The
rediscovery of these paintings thus allowed us the
opportunity to provide the rst to-scale and coloraccurate illustrations of the murals to date, offering
a new source for study of the ancient paintings.
Once we had cleared the painted walls of windblown sand and the fallen rubble of broken adobes
and mortar, we observed that the 1950 excavation
had not reached the original oor ( piso 2). We proceeded to remove three courses of neatly laid adobe
bricks that lled the niche during a later renovation
(Figure 9). We also found that some adobe bricks
still remained ush against the lower left corner of
the Iguana painting (Mural D). These bricks were
removed by the projects conservators to expose the
terminus of the Iguanas tail for the rst time since
its burial by the ancient Moche builders. The wellpreserved red, blue, and dark blue-grey tones of the

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awpa Pacha: Journal of Andean Archaeology

Figure 6.

Volume 33, Number 1

Plan of Unit 5. The shield was discovered in close proximity to Murals B and D. Field drawing by Jorge Gamboa.

Tunio 2003). These propitiatory offerings were

carried out within dedicatory and termination
rituals that preceded renovations of public buildings
(Gamboa 2012). The ritual signicance of the offering of the Paamarca feathered shield here strengthens the possibility that this bench was in fact an
altar associated with the mythology of the Iguana
and Strombus Monster.

We identied the object as a shield based upon its

form and similarities to round shields depicted in
Moche iconography. The shield could have been
held or tied to the wrist using the two ropes attached
to its reverse. Its vulnerable materials and small size,
however, suggest that the Paamarca shield would
not have been effectively used for defense in battle.
The act of leaving the shield face down in such a
restricted and pictorially rich space, immediately
prior to its closure, suggests that it was left in an
intentional gesture of offering. Other important
ritual objects were placed as offerings in architectural ll within Moche temples elsewhere, such as
the large wooden sculpture excavated in construction ll within Huaca Cao Viejo in the El Brujo
archaeological complex of the Chicama Valley
(Mujica Barreda 2007: 146151). Offerings and
sacrices accompanied major renovation campaigns
of Moche temples that may have been precipitated
by historical or calendrical events (Uceda and

The Form and Materials of the

Feathered Shield
The structure of the shield is divided into two distinct
elements: a frame of coiled basketry that is overlaid on
its face with two layers of woven materials decorated
with dyed stripes and feathers. In general, coiled basketry is composed of a passive coil held in place by
active stitches; James M. Adovasio (2010: 53) calls
the passive coil the foundation and the active the

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Trever et al.: A Moche feathered shield from the painted temples of Paamarca, Peru

Figure 7. The remains of Mural D (the Iguana) in 2010.

Watercolor illustration by Jorge Gamboa and Pedro Neciosup.

Figure 8. The remains of Mural B (the Strombus Monster) in

2010. Watercolor illustration by Jorge Gamboa and Pedro
Neciosup.

stitches and these are the terms used here. The coil
itself is a continuous spiral but the term will be used
to refer to a single, clockwise pass of the passive
element around the circumference. In the case of
the shield, each of the active stitches crosses two of
the foundation coils at a time, so that the active
stitches overlap as they spiral outward from the
center. The Paamarca shield features close coiling
whereby each coil is locked to the preceding one by
a simple stitch rather than being separated by a false
knot. The basketry base is made of a exible reed
material (either junco [Juncus sp.] or totora [Typha
angustifolia]). Flexible materials used as a foundation
are called bundles (Adovasio 2010: 60). Unlike
the examples illustrated by Adovasio (2010: 67), the
exible cordage is not pierced by the stitches but
rather they wrap around each as a whole.
Coiled basketry is begun at the center. Here, thick,
unspun, vegetal bers were coiled around at least ve
times and secured through the center with seven
wrapping stitches of the same vegetal ber. The

result is a circle with seven lines radiating outward.

Additional ber was spiraled around the initial circle
and secured using noninterlocking stitches (see
Adovasio 2010: 75). A line of active stitches aligns
with each of the seven wrapping stitches that
secured the initial central circle. In total, eight coils
were added and secured, forming a rounded heptagon. The nal three coils were then further anchored
by at least 11 long wrapping stitches that encircled the
nal three rows of the basketry. The result is a coarsely
made basketry circle with a diameter of 25 cm and
thickness of 1.5 cm. A coarse, S-spun/Z-plied
cordage ( possibly junco) was secured through the
center of the spiral and formed the shields handle.
Over the basketry, a layer of dark brown, plain
weave, cotton cloth was tacked down with S-spun,
Z-plied, cream-colored, cotton thread; this cloth
was woven from S-spun ber and had 12 warps and
18 wefts per cm. It was adorned with a series of

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featherwork (Rowe 1984; see also Reid 2005). A

widely spaced running stitch in a white cotton yarn
punctuates the surface of the brown cloth. The
hollow shaft or calamus of the feather was bent
around the exposed stitch and laid on the surface.
In ancient Peruvian featherwork, plumes are typically
tied together and then sewn down in parallel rows
onto the ground cloth (dHarcourt 1962: 132133;
Giuntini 2012; Roll 1965). In contrast, Aztec featherworkers or amanteca of ancient Mexico covered prestige items like shields with feather mosaics that were
formed by gluing individual feathers to surfaces
using orchid gums (Berdan 2013; Berdan and
Sahagn 2009). At least two rings of feathers were
applied to the Paamarca shield but the outer ring
was covered by an additional wool textile with
narrow red and pink stripes. This warp-faced cloth
was ner than the brown cotton with a thread
count of 24 warps and six wefts per cm. Both the
red and pink warp yarns were S-spun/Z-plied, as
were the light brown wool wefts. The center of this
striped cloth had been removed and the raw edges
were folded under and tacked down, exposing the
underlying brown cotton layer and central ring of
feathers. No padding or stufng was found between
the textiles and the basketry foundation of the
shield, nor did we observe any signs of use or
damage that would have resulted from the shield
having been struck in antiquity.

Figure 9. Courses of adobe bricks in situ over the oor of the

ramp ( piso 2).

yellow feathers arranged circularly, of which six small

clusters of two to three feathers each remain in the
center. These feathers might have come from the
body of the blue-and-yellow macaw (Ara ararauna)
that was frequently utilized in later Chim

Shields in Moche Iconography and

Archaeology
Our existing knowledge of Moche shields comes primarily from the myriad representations of shields and
weapon bundles in neline ceramic painting (e.g.
Donnan and McClelland 1999; Kutscher 1983). In
an early description of Moche weaponry and arms
based on this ceramic evidence, Rafael Larco Hoyle
(2001: vol. 1, 216) observed that shields could be
round or oval, rectangular or square, and were often
decorated with geometric and occasionally gural
motifs (Figure 11). Larco reasonably presumed that
Moche shields must have been made of durable

Figure 10. Excavation of the feathered shield within the painted

niche at Paamarca.

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Trever et al.: A Moche feathered shield from the painted temples of Paamarca, Peru

1999: Figure 4.29). Many round shields are drawn

with a dark band that runs around the circumference
of the outer face, like the dark red wool that covers the
outer area of the Paamarca example.
The many geometric designs found on images of
Moche shields are formally similar to later Inca
tocapu: square, abstract emblems of ethnic identity
and military rank that were woven into tunics and
carved or painted on other objects in the late prehispanic and early colonial period (Cummins 2011).
Recently, George Lau (2004) has argued that
the round shields with cross designs carried by the
Recuay combatants in the battle scene on the
Moche IV Lhrsen vessel may indicate their
foreign ethnicity. Despite the great diversity of
shapes and designs of the shields carried by Moche
warriors on neline ceramics, however, it is not yet
possible to distinguish meaningful ranks or categories
among them.
Comparison to the few extant examples of Moche
shields is useful in understanding the form and function of the Paamarca specimen. At Huaca de la
Luna, archaeologists excavated a round Moche
shield associated with Tumba 18 (Testigo no. 3)
that was made of more resilient materials, as Larco
envisioned. That artifact, which measured 42.5 cm
in diameter, consisted of two layers of cane that
were stitched together and then covered on both
sides with leather. Unlike the smaller Paamarca
shield, leather-covered fabric padding was added to
the Huaca de la Luna shield. In her analysis of this
object, Fernndez Lpez (2007: 295296) observed
that there were indications that it had been used
before it was interred as an offering. The size and
materials of the Huaca de la Luna shield t more
closely what one would expect of a functional
shield, but it remains a surprisingly small item for
real defensive purposes.
Ceremonial shields are found among the weaponry
and grave goods that Christopher Donnan discovered
in an elite tomb at the Moche center of Dos Cabezas
in the Jequetepeque Valley (2007: 9092, 103111).
Within the funerary chamber of Tomb 2, Donnan
and his team excavated gilded copper platelets that
once covered the surfaces of three circular shields

Figure 11. Shield designs compiled from Moche ceramic

iconography by Rafael Larco Hoyle in the mid-twentieth century
(2001: Vol. 1, Figure 245). Image courtesy of the Museo Larco,
Lima, Peru.

materials like wood or metal.7 Arturo Jimnez Borja

(1938: 106) suggested that the base material of
Moche shields could have been cane or wood
covered with leather or metal. Indeed, some depictions of Moche shields seem to indicate slats of
wood, cane, or metal that were nailed or tied at
each end and sometimes at the center (e.g. Donnan
and McClelland 1999: Figures 6.636.64 and
6.726.73; Kutscher 1983: Abb. 271). But
nowhere in ancient depictions of Moche shields is a
basketry structure made explicit. As Jimnez Borja
and others have noted (e.g. Quilter 2008: 221), the
depicted shields are all surprisingly small for the
purpose of fending off the blows of war clubs. The
small size of the representations of shields in Moche
ceramic iconography corresponds to the actual
object that we found at Paamarca.
Moche ceramic painters illustrated a broad range of
possible shield decorations. In some cases the faces of
the shields are depicted with metal plaques covering
their surfaces (e.g. Donnan and McClelland 1999:
Figure 4.101). Others are adorned with geometric
or zoomorphic designs that could have been
painted, engraved, orwe now suggestworked in
feathers on the shields surfaces. Although featherwork is not clearly indicated in the images of
shields on ceramics, small open circles that appear
on the shields depicted on some vessels might reference tufts of feathers like those stitched onto the
Paamarca shield (e.g. Donnan and McClelland

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awpa Pacha: Journal of Andean Archaeology

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(PV28156), a Moche IV site in the Santa Valley,

during his dissertation eldwork in 1965
(Figure 12). That basketry disk measured c.20 cm
across and was built of unspun reeds that were
coiled around a central element (now lost) and held
in place by 10 active stitches that also attached
spoke-like reed ribs to the coiled foundation (see
Donnan 1973: 115, Plate 11c). The stitching technique is somewhat different from what we see in
the Paamarca example, but the completely at, basketry disc that it produced is similar enough to raise the
possibility that the Guadalupito fragment might once
have been a Moche shield as well.8 Together, these
two artifacts could represent a type of Moche
shieldperhaps typical of the southern valleysthat
made use of a common, domestic technology and
modest structural materials.
In reviewing depictions of shields in middle and
late Moche (Phase IIIV) ceramic iconography, and
examining the very small corpus of extant examples,
we reach several conclusions on the form, facture,

(32.3, 32.6, and 30 cm in diameter). Unfortunately,

the organic structures of the Dos Cabezas shields
did not survive and only the metal plates that had
covered the faces of the shields remain. But in
Donnans description of two of the shields, he
observes: Although nearly all of the organic material
used in their construction had decomposed, it was
clear that they were made of a cane framework that
was covered with a textile. The gilded copper platelets
were then sewn on the textile, covering the front side
of the shield (2007: 92). Their cane frameworks may
have been similar to the structure of the Huaca de la
Luna shield. But, unlike that example, the ne metal
coverings of the Dos Cabezas shields make clear that
they never served as common shields. Rather, they
must have been high-prestige items belonging to
ensembles of elaborate military dress, reminiscent
perhaps of the precious suits of intricate, ceremonial
armor produced for the Spanish Habsburg kings
and princes (Frieder 2008). Compared to the
Paamarca shield, these other Moche shields exhibit
distinct functional properties: the example from Huaca
de la Luna might have been more effective in military
activities, while the Dos Cabezas shields were clearly
high-prestige items.
It may be useful also to consider the Paamarca
shields afnities to other coiled basketry forms
created during the Early Intermediate Period on the
north coast of Peru. Although coiled basketry is
rather rare in Peruvian archaeology (Perreault 2006:
53), Jean-Franois Millaires excavation project at
the Vir Valley site of Huaca Santa Clara recovered
a round, shallow basket (40 cm in diameter) from
the ll above the oor of room A-102 (Sector 6)
that was created using the same technique of coiled
bundles of reeds secured by several, well-spaced,
active stitches (Millaire 2010, n.d.; Perreault 2006:
Figure 18). The technique used to create the
Paamarca shield may have been derived directly
from this domestic technology. There is some evidence that the application of this basketry technique
to the production of lightweight Moche shields
might not be unique. Christopher Donnan called
our attention to a round basketry fragment that he
documented on the surface of Guadalupito

Figure 12. A spiral basketry fragment found on the surface of

Guadalupito (PV28156) in the Santa Valley by Christopher
B. Donnan in 1965 (1973: Plate 11c). Image courtesy of
Christopher B. Donnan.

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Trever et al.: A Moche feathered shield from the painted temples of Paamarca, Peru

and function of the Paamarca shield. The overall

appearance of a round shield with a dark band
along its edge and a lighter center decorated with a
radial pattern ts expectations born out of iconographic study. But the particular use of feathers to
decorate the shield is thus far entirely unique.
Although feathers are frequently depicted in Moche
headdresses, hand-held fans, and other ceremonial
objects and garments, actual featherwork very rarely
survives from Moche contexts (see King 2012). The
Paamarca shield provides a rare glimpse of this
poorly known Moche artistic medium that must
once have been a rich form of artistic expression.
Even among other Moche shields, which all evidence
indicates were small, the Paamarca shield is diminutive. Compared to the cane and leather shield of
Huaca de la Luna, or the gilded copper shields of
Dos Cabezas, the coiled basketry shield from
Paamarca appears especially fragile. Of course, when
the object was rst made and its bers were fresher
and greener it might have been more resilient; indeed
basketry armor is known to be an effective option
used elsewhere in the world (e.g. Mason 1988
[1904]: 222223). But if the shields small size, soft
materials, and lack of apparent damage are considered
together, it seems likely that this object was never
meant for real use in combat, but was primarily
ceremonial.

regalia, and the brandishing of national colors and

insignia were ritualized (see Quilter 2002; cf.
Bourget 2001). What the Paamarca shield implies
for us is that the concept of a shield could transcend
its defensive function to become an abstracted
symbol, potent within Moche ritual or devotional
practice here witnessed archaeologically.
Moche shields and war clubs were primary
elements of the weapon bundle motif ubiquitous in
Moche arts, especially from the middle Moche
(c.400 C.E.) period onward. The panoply often
incorporates spear throwers, darts, andat timesthe
garments of a fallen warrior (e.g. Kutscher 1983:
Abb. 9093). By the late Moche period, the
weapon bundle became one of the most salient
symbols in Moche art. The club and shield motif
emerged as a kind of logo for the Moche culture
(Benson 2008: 10) and the trophy-like bundle of
the defeated warriors weapons and clothes solidied
as an iconic, summarizing symbol for the militaristically oriented Moche ideology (Quilter 2008:
215). At Paamarca, a large weapon bundle was
painted adjacent to the Sacrice Ceremony mural
studied by Bonavia (1959: Plates 34) and a series
of clubs and round shields was painted on a wall at
the Moche site of El Castillo in the Santa Valley
just to the north (Wilson 1988: 207, Figure 107).
Indeed, the motif occurs as a paramount symbol of
Moche ideology and identity throughout the Moche
realm for centuries.9
Anthropomorphized weapons and weapon bundles
are painted on ceramic vessels in the act of seizing
stripped-down opponents defeated in battle (e.g.
Donnan and McClelland 1999: Figure 6.73;
Kutscher 1983: Abb. 271). These animated
weapons also appear in mural painting at Huaca de
la Luna (Quilter 1990; Uceda et al. 2011), Huaca
Facho (Donnan 1972), and as discovered most
recently at Paamarca. The new painting at
Paamarca is located on a square pillar and depicts
a round, red and blue shield and club with a
human head, yellow arms, and blue-grey feet and
hands (Figure 13). To its right, one can discern the
form of a standing human that appears to be bound
by a rope held by the animated weapons. These

On the Symbolism of Shields

We have presented the discovery, architectural
context, and physical description of a rare surviving
example of a ceremonial Moche shield made of basketry and decorated with textiles and featherwork.
Presumably, this object was used in religious and/or
military pageantry before it was left as an offering
within a niche that in the twentieth century became
one of the most famous painted corners of
Paamarca. But we do not take this artifact in itself
as evidence to support the view that Moche battle
was only ceremonial or ritual, becauseeven in the
mostly devastating military campaignsthe formalities of battleeld action, ofcial dress and

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awpa Pacha: Journal of Andean Archaeology

Volume 33, Number 1

Acknowledgments
The Paamarca eld project was made possible as part
of Trevers dissertation research, which has been supported by The Wenner-Gren Foundation, the
Fulbright-Hays
DDRA
program,
Harvard
University, and Dumbarton Oaks Research Library
and Collection. We are grateful for the assistance, collaboration, and good advice offered by Christopher
B. Donnan, Heidi King, Jean-Franois Millaire,
Ulla Holmquist, Frances Berdan, Cathy Costin,
Juliet Wiersema, Andrew Hamilton, Jeffrey Quilter,
Ricardo Morales, Santiago Uceda, and Csar
Cordova in our study of this unique artifact. Our
thanks go to the journals reviewers, especially
Donald Proulx who graciously declined anonymity
and offered important critiques. All errors, of
course, remain our own. We are especially indebted
to the intellectual generosity of the late Duccio
Bonavia, whose pioneering work at Paamarca in
1958 made our own possible. We dedicate this
article to his esteemed memory.

Figure 13. Detail of an animated club and shield (center) and

human prisoner (far right) painted on a pillar discovered at
Paamarca in 2010.

depictions may reference a Moche myth of the

Revolt of the Objects (Lyon 1981; Quilter 1990,
1997), but they may also present a visual rhetorical
device by which the physical might and martial
prowess of the Moche warrior is conveyed through
the action of his enlivened weaponry (see Benson
2008: 1011; Jackson 2011: 234237). The symbolic valence of clubs and shields in Moche visual
rhetoric was great and it is within this ideological
context that we must also position the shield discovered at Paamarca. That is, the shield offered in the
niche painted with images of the Strombus Monster
and the Iguana was not just a defensive object; what
was offered was a transcendent symbol of Moche
elite identity and martial culture.10
The Paamarca feathered shield is a remarkable
objectnot just in its material singularity, but also
for the richness of its archaeological context and profound cultural signicance. It was interred in an
ancient ceremonial precinct that has come to
occupy an important place in the modern history of
Peruvian archaeology. The discovery of the Moche
feathered shield makes clear thatdespite great loss
from centuries of extensive looting, neglect, and
environmental catastropheall has not been lost at
Paamarca. What survives of the sites architecture,
mural painting, and associated artifacts is of tremendous scientic and artistic value in the study of the
ancient Andes and global antiquity.

Notes
1. The Proyecto Arqueolgico PaamarcaArea
Monumental (PAPAM) 2010 was designed and executed by Lisa Trever, Jorge Gamboa Velsquez, and
Ricardo Toribio Rodrguez with the permission of
the Ministerio de Cultura (formerly Instituto
Nacional de Cultura), Peru (Res. Dir. Nac. no.
032, 08/01/2010). Ricardo Morales Gamarra, codirector of the Huaca de la Luna archaeological
project, coordinated the conservation of mural painting and objects excavated by the project. Jorge
Gamboa directed the excavation of the feathered
shield. Flannery Surette analyzed the shields form
and materials in the projects eld house in Nepea.
2. We date the shield and its burial to the late Moche
period of c.600850 C.E. based on the iconographic
afnities of the associated mural paintings with Moche
IV and V ceramic painting, as well as evidence from
elsewhere for the spread of Moche IV imagery into
the southern valleys during the seventh century
(Chapdelaine 2011; see also Koons 2012).
3. Professional conservators from the Huaca de la Luna
project performed the actual excavations of the
painted walls. They stabilized the broken surfaces

114

Trever et al.: A Moche feathered shield from the painted temples of Paamarca, Peru

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

of the paintings as they were revealed, employing a

toolkit of tiny spatulas and syringes to add adobe
mortar to weak points. No restoration of the paintings was performed and the conservators did not
apply irreversible chemical agents to harden the surfaces. Fallen painting fragments that could not be
placed back into their original positions were
recorded, recovered, and carefully packed for future
study and possible reintegration. At the close of the
eld season all of the painted walls were protected
and reburied to ensure their preservation.
The full results of the eld project await publication.
Study of the mural paintings appears in Lisa Trevers
2013 dissertation: Moche Mural Painting at
Paamarca: A Study of Image Making and
Experience in Ancient Peru, in the Department of
History of Art and Architecture at Harvard
University.
The map of the monumental area of Paamarca
illustrated in Figure 4 was created by the PAPAM
in 2010 in partnership with archaeologists Michele
Koons, David Chicoine, Hugo Ikehara, Matt
Helmer, Jimmy Lpez Gomero, and Lussiana
Medina Ap.
On the iconography of this Moche gure, see, for
example: Bonavia and Makowski 1999; Bourget
1994; Castillo 1989; Donnan and McClelland
1999: 118119; Golte 1993, 1994, 2009;
McClelland et al. 2007: 6275.
Larcos chapter Rgimen militar, which includes
his ideas on Moche shields, was not included in
the original two-volume publication of Los mochicas
(1938, 1939). It remained in manuscript form until
the Museo Larco publication of the full work in
2001 (Vol. 1, 199229). Curator Ulla Holmquist
notes that Larcos illustration of shield designs seen
here was probably drawn in the 1950s ( personal
communication to Trever, October 3, 2012).
Donnan (1973: 115) writes that two other at,
round baskets could be compared to his
Guadalupito nd: one photographed in a Moche
tomb at Pacatnam by Heinrich UbbelohdeDoering (1966: 65); and another excavated by
Max Uhle during his 1899 excavations at Huacas
de Moche, which now resides in the Phoebe
A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the
University of California, Berkeley (42597B).
As Benson notes (2008: 10), the weapons bundle
appears with such marked frequency on ceramics
produced at San Jos de Moro, to the north in the
Jequetepeque Valley, that it seems to have become
a logo for the site as well. The motif occurs on

more than half of the stirrup spout bottles of the

site (McClelland et al. 2007: 114).
10. In our excavation of the surface of Unit 5, we recovered several fragments of thick ceramic club heads
( porras) that are likely to have ornamented the
roofs of the painted temples of Platform II, as have
been found at Huaca de la Luna and Huaca Cao
Viejo, and are represented in neline drawings of
Moche architecture on ceramics.

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