MOCHE SUBSTYLES: KEYS TO UNDERSTANDING MOCHE POLITICAL ORGANIZATION

Abstract

In 1948 Larco Hoyle published his five-phase chronology of Moche ceramics-a chronology that seemed to fit all of the archaeological evidence available at that time.Although Larco's chronology did not deal with changes in plain domestic ceramics, it provided a valuable means of recognizing sequential stages in the development of Moche fine ware ceramics.It became widely accepted and almost universally used until the 1990's, when it was realized that the Larco chronology was only valid for the Southern Moche Region, and a second linear chronology was proposed for the Northern Moche Region that consists of Early, Middle, and Late phases (Castillo & Donnan 1994;Castillo 2001). 1 In this article, I propose that the distinct variations in Moche fine ware ceramics are not necessarily due to stylistic evolution through time, but are sometimes the result of different polities deliberately producing their own distinct variants, or substyles, of ceramics as a means of expressing their identity.To elucidate the concept of substyles, this article focuses on the fine ware ceramics produced by four different Moche polities.

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