HUARPA CULTURE: HISTORY, CHARACTERISTICS AND DECLINE - CULTURE VOCABULARY - 2025

The Huarpa culture was a pre-Inca civilization that inhabited some regions of what makes up the State of Peru, specifically areas within what is now called the Department of Ayacucho, a place where the greatest number of vestiges of this culture have been found.

The name of this civilization comes from the Huarpa river, near which this society developed. It is estimated that the Huarpa civilization inhabited between 200 and 550 AD, when it began its decline and eventual disappearance.

Huarpa garment

Research around this culture is linked to a later culture: the Huari civilization. The relationship lies in the common territories that both inhabited, and in the common qualities of their creations and vestiges.

One of the most important vestiges bequeathed by the Huarpa culture for its research and historical analysis have been pieces of decorated and painted ceramics, which have made it possible to recognize the settlements as where they are found as Huarpa villages, and from there to delve into other characteristic elements.

One of the greatest researchers of the Huarpa culture has been the anthropologist and archaeologist Luis Lumbreras, who has been in charge of glimpsing many more details of the unknown Huarpa culture, as well as its relationship with the later Huari civilization.

Characteristics of the Huarpa culture

Little is known of the Huarpa culture. Their legacy, added to their living conditions, has not been as visible or important in front of other Peruvian civilizations as the Nazca was, for example.

Due to the geographical characteristics of their environment, they had to face great natural difficulties, allowing them to develop systems that would guarantee their livelihood.

Because they settled in the Andean highlands, the Huarpa culture had to manage to develop irrigation systems that would overcome the resistance of the soil and the irregularities of the surface. These systems worked through platforms that accumulated the water and redistributed it.

These engineering systems have been considered similar to those that other cultures have implemented in other geographically rugged regions of the Peruvian nation.

Despite the difficulties, the Huarpa civilization managed to guarantee its existence for at least three centuries, based on its agricultural and irrigation systems.

The Huarpa civilization is not considered by researchers as a military society; their relationships with other cultures were imitated by commercial and cultural exchange, and few records show whether they had a violent behavior against contemporary civilizations with them.

Ñawinpukyo, huarpa archaeological capital

Awinpukyo, ruins

The Ñawinpukyo hill is the archaeological site that has produced the most vestiges of the Huarpa culture, as well as of later civilizations.

Located in the Huarpa river basin, Ñawinpukyo remains today as a capital of aquatic remains that, although damaged and displaced by natural phenomena over the years, continues to provide sufficient evidence to continue research.

For the Huarpa civilization, and for others that inhabited the Ayacucho Valley long before the appearance of the Incas, a place like Ñawinpukyo served as one of the first examples of veneration of mountain deities, through ceremonies, rituals and manufactured ornaments.

Hence the importance, not only archaeological today, but cosmological and spiritual at that time.

Despite the damage to the vestiges of pre-Inca cultures in places like Ñawinpukyo, and their displacement through currents and rainfall, their collection has been able to show the influence of the Huarpa culture in later societies.

Huarpa pottery

The main vestiges and manifestations of what was the Huarpa culture have been found mainly in pigmented and ornamented ceramic pieces, which have allowed us to give clues about the daily life of the settlements, their religious traditions, and their relationships and contacts with other cultures.

It is said that the presence of certain specific pigments in some Huarpa ceramic pieces are the result of interaction and exchange with other cultures belonging to the Ica region.

It is estimated that they had such influential relationships that they would end up absorbing the Huarpa culture a lot, being a factor in their disappearance.

The development of the Huarpa culture is evidenced in the same way in the evolution of engraving techniques on their ceramics.

The rise and presence of polychromy in his pieces made it possible to deduce their level of development up to that moment, in which commercial relations and exchanges were more fruitful, allowing access to new pigments.

Decline of the Huarpa culture

The end of the Huarpa culture is mainly attributed to intense climatic changes that drastically modified the habits of life and livelihood that the Huarpa civilization had maintained for years.

Although natural processes are slow, the increase in their intensity was such that society could not counteract them, leading to the settlement of settlements.

Researchers have found other reasons, apart from meteorological ones, to clarify the disappearance of the Huarpa culture:

• The increasingly intense contact with societies of greater influence on the Ica-Nasca coast, or with the Tiahuanaco culture
• The unstoppable population growth, which together with the displacements and changes of location, segmented the integrity.

Added to this, the over-exploitation of the land, which was difficult in itself, led to the abandonment of agricultural activities typical of Huarpa society.

The sum of all these factors not only put an end to the Huarpa culture, but also served as a trigger to start the Huari culture, which would inhabit the same regions for at least three more centuries.

The disappearance of the Huarpa culture adds to the list of civilizations that inhabited different regions of Peru, and that began to lay the cultural, military, commercial, religious and even engineering bases for what would be the birth of the Inca civilization, a one of the most representative in the history of Peru.

Like the Huarpa culture, almost all indigenous societies had to face great natural difficulties in the mountains and valleys of Peru.

References

1. Carré, JE (nd). EXPLORATIONS IN ÑAWINPUKIO, AYACUCHO. Archeology and Society, 47-67.
2. Leoni, JB (2000). Reinvestigating Ñawinpukyo: New Contributions to the Study of Huarpa Culture and the Early Intermediate Period in the Ayacucho Valley. Archeology Bulletin, 631-640.
3. Leoni, JB (2005). THE VENERATION OF MOUNTAINS IN THE PREINCAIC ANDES: THE CASE OF ÑAWINPUKYO (AYACUCHO, PERU) IN THE EARLY INTERMEDIATE PERIOD. Chungará, 151-164.
4. Ossio, JM (1995). The Indians of Peru. Quito: MAPFRE Editions.
5. Valdez, LM, & Vivanco, C. (1994). Archeology of the Qaracha Basin, Ayacucho, Peru. Society for American Archeology, 144-157.