The Nazca Lines

Antiquity 86 (334): 1126-1140, 2012

The shapes drawn out by the famous Nazca lines in the Peruvian desert are at their most evident from the air-giving rise to some famously fantastic theories about their origin. The new understanding offered here is the result of a piece of straightforward brilliance on the part of our authors: get down on the ground, where the original users were, and see where your feet lead you. Using stratigraphic and taphonomic reasoning to decide which lines were contemporary, they discover an itinerary so complex they can justify calling it a labyrinth, and see it as serving ceremonial progressions.

On the Nazca plateau in Peru, enormous figures and line patterns were made in the desert floor about two thousand years ago. The how and why of these lines is still largely a mystery. After my first visit to Nazca, in 2009, I started to explore the lines and figures using the existing literature and the new possibilities offered by Google Earth. Since then, I have discovered over 250 lines around Nazca and Palpa, 194 of which are included in my book The Nazca Lines Revisited (2021). This article takes a look at how the lines were made.

Geoinformatics FCE CTU, 2016

The known hypotheses about the reasons why the geoglyphs in the Nasca and Palpa region of Peru were created are many: roads/paths, rituals/ceremonials, use of hallucinogens, astronomical meaning, influence of extraterrestrials, underground water… and so on. We present a new hypothesis, formulated by J. Sonnek (first published in 2011) in the context of all previous hypotheses.1 Sonnek explains the geoglyphs as tidied work areas for the production of rope and nets, although he goes much further than Stierlin. This eccentric hypothesis now has not only experimental but also archaeological and ethnographical support, which is presented here. Geoglyphs of a special shape were discovered in the pampas; they may represent technical objects – different types of ‘rope twisters’. Following this idea, Sonnek made technical devices (using today’s materials) and tested them in practice; they work perfectly, see his YouTube videos.2 In November 2012, wooden pieces, which may be the remnants of r...

2005

http://www.dimensionantropologica.inah.gob.mx/?p=3732 This paper does not address the issue of social organization in Nazca, since that would imply analyzing a number of archaeological materials of major importance. The material culture the Cahuachi of Nazca is not limited to the valley of Nazca, but includes several valleys. However, it is possible to anticipate that the “Nazca” managed to establish a dynamic state, with Cahuachi as the headquarters, during the first four centuries AD.4 The notion of the Nazca State founded in archaeological items that have been identified in the region, including the handling of a planned public architecture, a hierarchy of facilities with residential architecture, the socially differentiated burial treatment, the movement of luxury goods and a system institutionalized symbolic communication through an iconic code

Lambers, Karsten. 2017. Chapter 4.1 in: Cecilia Pardo, Peter Fux (eds): Nasca. Exhibition catalogue. Lima: Museo de Arte de Lima and Zurich: Museum Rietberg. ISBN 978-9972-718-57-1., 2017

This essay, written in Spanish and English, is a summary of what we currently know about the geoglyphs of Nasca and Palpa in south Peru based on recent archaeological research. It attempts to answer the questions how the geoglyphs were made, when and by whom, and what function and meaning they had. The essay is published in the catalogue of the Nasca exhibition jointly organised by Museo de Arte, Lima, Museum Rietberg, Zurich, and Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, in 2017/18.

Space and Spatial Analysis in Archaeology, 2006

In 1936, Leonidas Bernedo Málaga reported the discovery of a large collection of petroglyphs near the village of Illomas. We present the results of a recent study of the site, describing both the rock art and the organization of its surrounding ceremonial complex in light of our broader understanding of the prehistory of what is now the Department of Arequipa. Used for almost three thousand years, Illomas changed in function as population significantly increased in the region by the end of the Middle Horizon. Illomas, as well as other petroglyph sites in this rock art-rich region, was an important locus of worship and aggregation that has been underexplored by the broader archaeological community.