Casma

The Casma were the people of a chain of coastal valleys in northern Peru, from the Culebras valley to the Chao valley, a stretch about three hundred kilometres long. Their pottery appears from around 700 CE, and they reoccupied and remodelled older Moche centres such as Panamarca and El Castillo, while walls at Santa and Nepena guarded their frontiers.

Between 1000 and 1290 their confederation peaked. It was ruled from El Purgatorio in the Casma valley, with towns at Cerro la Cruz and Ten Ten.

Expansion then brought them against the Chimu Empire: the Punta Lobos massacre has been interpreted as a sacrifice connected with that conquest, and after a final war in the late fourteenth century the Casma state disappeared. At Manchan, Chimu and Casma styles appear together, showing Casma communities lived on under Chimu rule.