Huaca Prieta — Chicama Preceramic Mound
Huaca Prieta · Black Mound (Spanish)
Preceramic to Initial Period (5500–1800 BCE), Kotosh tradition overlap·Preceramic Chicama (Huaca Prieta–El Paraíso)·🇵🇪 La Libertad Region, Ascope Province, Chicama Valley, near El Brujo, Pacific shore 5 km from sea, Peru
About
About Huaca Prieta — Chicama Preceramic Mound
Blackish ash mound north of Chicama mouth forming 14 m Junius Bird 1946 stratigraphic cut that defined Andean Preceramic sequence — preceramic houses with stone-lined pits, twined cotton textiles with condor and snake motifs (oldest textiles in Americas, 5500 BCE), basketry and gourd containers before pottery. Upper levels contain Initial Period semi-pyramidal terraced mound with Cupisnique adobe retaining walls burying earlier mound, linking to El Brujo sphere. Dillehay’s 2017 project re-dated lower textiles and confirmed continuous mound growth as intentional monument accumulating domestic ash 3000 years.
Why it mattersType site for Andean cotton Preceramic; earliest American textiles and monumental midden-mound.
Open questions
Mysteries & theories
Mysteries
- 01Whether mound intentional monument or accumulated midden
Theories
- 01Deliberate monumentalization of ancestral midden — sacred mound of origin
Theories are interpretations, not findings. The seal above tells you how much scholarly weight the place carries.
History
How it came to be
- Built
- c. 3100–1800 BCE stratified mound, later Cupisnique re-use
- Period
- Preceramic to Initial Period (5500–1800 BCE), Kotosh tradition overlap
- Culture
- Preceramic Chicama (Huaca Prieta–El Paraíso)
- Builders
- Preceramic Chicama
- Purpose
- Preceramic coastal mound — 12 m high artificial mound with early textile pre-ceramic village and later Initial Period terraced pyramid under Cupisnique adobe cap
- Excavation
- Excavated
1946
Junius Bird excavates 14 m stratigraphic cut
2017
Tom Dillehay reopens mound and re-dates textiles to 6000 BCE
On the ground
Structures & features
7.9264° S · 79.3042° W · 10 m · 2 mapped features
Bird stratigraphic cut exposure
stratigraphyVertical 14 m cut showing layered living floors and ash mound growth
7.9259° S · 79.3042° WPreceramic house floor with textiles pit
houseCobble-lined pit house floor with cotton textile interment
7.9269° S · 79.3042° W
Gallery