Music and Death at the Late Moche Site of Huaca Colorada, Jequetepeque Valley, Peru by Lindi Masur, PhD Candidate, University of Toronto and Dumbarton Oaks Junior Fellow

This meeting will be held at the Charles Sumner School, 17th & M Streets, N.W., Washington, D.C. Entrance located on 17th Street.

NOTE: Photo ID is required to enter the building.

The meeting will start with refreshments at 6:45 pm and the lecture will begin at 7:15 pm.

This talk will examine the close association of musical performance and mortuary rites at the Moche ceremonial site of Huaca Colorada (AD 650-950) in the southern Jequetepeque Valley. Evidence for such rituals derive primarily from the residential and production area of Sector A located to the north of the principal monumental zone. Although this area was previously understood to be an exclusively domestic space, excavations undertaken since 2016 on its western plateau have revealed a complex palimpsest of ceremonial architecture that staged mortuary rites and human sacrifice. This talk will provide an overview of these recent findings, which include ritually terminated platforms, an adobe chamber-tomb, and several impressive musical instruments.  Our speaker will discuss how these particular musical instruments played a central role in funerary rituals associated with rites of social and cosmic rebirth, ancestor veneration, and genealogical continuity at Huaca Colorada.

Lindi Masur is a PhD Candidate at the University of Toronto, and a Junior Fellow in Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. She is an anthropological archaeologist who specializes in New World plant use. Working in Peru since 2009, her previous research in the Virú Valley focused on the role of peanuts in elite rituals at the Early Intermediate Period sites of Huaca Gallinazo and Huaca Santa Clara. She is currently completing her PhD dissertation on the paleoethnobotany of the lower Great Lakes region of Canada.