WORLD SCIENCE

"Long before it's in the papers"
August 03, 2010

Nov. 14, 2005
Courtesy The Field Museum
and World Science staff

In a sprawling mountaintop outpost of an ancient empire in what is now Peru, archaeologists say, evidence suggests a group of noblewomen operated a grand brewery.

Researchers say the beer, called chicha, was central to the Wari culture to which the settlement belonged. And the women brewers seem to have played a key role in the society.

Archaeological digs of what remains of a palace and brewery at Cerro Baúl. (Photo by P. R. Williams, Courtesy of The Field Museum)

The many shawl pins found in the brewery but absent elsewhere at the excavation indicates that elite women, who would have worn such pins, brewed the chicha, archaeologists say. (Photo by P. R. Williams, Courtesy of The Field Museum.)

The outpost was ritually abandoned 1,000 years ago, the researchers add—and it appears the ceremonies included drinking a final batch of the brew, and tossing the drinking vessels into a fire.

The last building to be torched as residents left the Cerro Baúl colony, the researchers say, was the sophisticated brewery, which could have churned out hundreds of gallons of beer weekly.

“Chicha, which is often made from maize, was at the heart of this culture, and this is one of the oldest and largest pre-Inca breweries ever discovered in the Americas,” said Patrick Ryan Williams of the Field Museum in Chicago. 

“Our analyses indicate that this specialty brew was a high-class affair. Corn and Peruvian pepper-tree berries were used to make the beer, which was drunk from elaborate beakers up to half a gallon in volume.”

The outpost was partially burned down upon its evacuation, Ryan and colleagues say. They describe the findings in a paper to appear in the online Nov. 14 issue of the research journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The evacuation began with the brewing of a final batch of chicha, the researchers said. A week later, residents drank it in an elaborate feast and ceremony. As a sacrifice to the gods, religious and political leaders tossed 28 precious ceramic vessels into the conflagration, presumably after quaffing the brew, the archaeologists added.

Chicha was brewed by a team of select, high-status women because it was so important to the Wari, according to the researchers. They concluded this from the many elegant metal shawl pins found in the three-room brewery, which were absent elsewhere in the extensive ruins. 

The brewmistresses were probably chosen for their beauty or nobility, the archaeologists said. 

The Inca culture, which followed in the Wari’s footsteps, continued this practice centuries later, according to the researchers. Their chicha was also brewed by an elite class of women who were cloistered in “houses of chosen women.”

“In Inca society, wealth and power depended on the knowledge and skill of elite women,” said the Field Museum’s Donna Nash. 

Inca gatherings of all kinds depended on the exchange of precious gifts and the hospitality of the emperor, especially on offering copious amounts of chicha, she explained. The chosen women and other Incan royalty produced fine shirts with heraldic symbols of state office and social rank, the most prestigious of all gifts. They also brewed.

“Women were crucial to the ancient empires of the south-central Andes,” Nash said. The fact that these high-class women made the beer “probably made it even more special," she added.

The hilltop site also may have been special. Most other imperial Wari sites are on flat land, but “This is the only one that’s high on a mountain,” said Michael Moseley, of the Field Museum and the University of Florida, Gainesville.

Why it was abandoned remains a mystery, according to the archaeologists. 

A remote, formidable site

Cerro Baúl is a mesa more than 8,000 feet above sea level dominated by an intimidating peak. In 600 A.D., the Wari chose this natural bastion as a base for an imperial settlement, the researchers said. It was never occupied before or since, they added, because it is so hard to haul water and supplies up the treacherously steep slopes. 

The Wari settled here precisely because it is such a formidable, impractical location, the archaeologists said: the tough living conditions there made it easy to defend and sure to impress neighbors.

Those neighbors were the rival Tiwanaku, who reigned to the south in what is now Bolivia. These two empires usually kept their distance, researchers said.

But at Cerro Baúl, the Wari apparently decided to establish a foothold deep inside Tiwanaku territory to serve as a contact point for political relations, the researchers said. That makes it the oldest known diplomatic outpost between states in the Andes. It survived four centuries.

The politics of international relations in South America began at Cerro Baúl 1,500 years ago, Williams said. “There is a lot we can learn from this site about how expansive states interact with each other and about the nature of human diplomacy,” said Williams.

Class-conscious culture

Cerro Baúl, with a population of less than 1,000, was the Wari’s southernmost colony, archaeologists said. It also extended over two neighboring hills and relied on an impressive system of canals to bring in water. 

The colony comprised three classes of people, archaeologists said: commoners, artisans and nobles. By studying what was found where among the site’s extensive ruins, researchers claimed they have been able to reconstruct what their life must have been like. 

For example, only nobles and leaders drank chicha from pottery vessels decorated with an image of the culture’s paramount deity, the “Front-Facing God.” 

Although these vessels were smashed on “moving day,” some of them have been reconstructed from the broken pieces. In addition to the brewery, an opulent palace was burned to the ground—but only after an opulent banquet of deer, llama or alpaca, and seven types of ocean fish, the researchers said.

Condor, pygmy owls and flycatchers were probably sacrificed at the banquet, the archaeologists claimed. Smashed serving and dining ware litter this site, too, they added; and temples around the base of Cerro Baúl suggest that the Wari viewed the mountaintop as sacred.

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