History of Ruinas de Chanchan

functioning of Chan Chan in the context of its rural sustaining communities and to trace the antecedents of urban-rural relationships back in time to their beginnings within the Moche Valley” (Moseley 1968: 317). The data gathered at this first excavation centered around “architectural features, crafts, rituals, diet, resource exploitation” and much more. . The methodology of these first excavations was the “horizontal study” which was focused on putting artifacts and findings into sequences. This led to some harmful conclusions and improper assumptions that would have to be later investigated and proven wrong. They were concerned about understanding and gathering the big picture which would later be picked apart and researched further by other field archaeologists(Narvaez 1989: 131).

These first studies and excavations gathered large amounts of diverse material. However, later studies were done to fill in the blanks and to gain a broader understanding of the culture that had occupied this city. K.C. Day created a scheme for the development of the city and how the buildings and palaces were constructed. His conclusions were based on “the degree of variation of the tripartite internal division, on the disposition of annexes and ‘extensions’, on the type of audiencias, and on other features” (Narvaez 1989: 131).

Conrad studied the burial platforms in great detail. He also used a temporal methodology which was focused on the sequencing of architectural variations. He made sequences for the material he was finding, however, after testing material objects using C14 Radiocarbon dating, the absolute dates did not fit with his relative sequential dates. John Topic established five phases of the ceramics found at Chan Chan. His ceramic sequencing, he hoped, would become the primary and master stratigraphic column. He paralleled the changes and sequential growth of