Pashash

Pashash was the northern branch of the Recuay tradition of the Peruvian highlands, taking its name from the archaeological site near Cabana in the Sierra de Ancash. The Recuay culture had flourished from about 200 BCE to 600 CE in the Callejon de Huaylas, in close, often warlike contact with the Moche of the coast; its people built the earliest fortified towns of the Andes and fired white kaolin pottery painted in black, red and white.

Pashash developed from this tradition between roughly 500 and 1000 CE. Excavations at the site uncovered fine Recuay-style vessels and jewellery of gilded arsenic bronze, dated to between 300 and 600 CE.

In the fourteenth century the valleys of northern Ancash where these remains lie were held by small chiefdoms speaking the poorly recorded Culli language, before Inca armies reached the region.