Chancay

The Chancay were the people of a string of river valleys on the central Peruvian coast, from the Fortaleza to the Lurin, their heartland in the Chancay and Chillon valleys. Their civilization arose after the Wari Empire collapsed around 1000 and grew into a centralized state ruled by curacas, whose adobe towns clustered around pyramid mounds.

Farmers watered the desert with reservoirs and canals, fishermen sailed reed canoes, and traders carried Chancay goods into the highlands. They were the first Peruvian culture to organize mass production: specialist workshops turned out mould-made black-on-cream pottery, including standing burial figurines, and painted textiles woven for the dead.

The southern Chancay valleys fell to the Chimu in the early fifteenth century, and by about 1450 Inca armies had occupied the whole region, bringing the independent Chancay state to an end.