Abstract
The subject of this thesis is the staging of ritual sacrifice among the Moche at the ceremonial complex of Huaca de la Luna, Huacas de Moche, during (Plaza 3a) and prior (Plaza 3c) to the climatic crisis of 650 AD. The aim of this thesis is to frame these sacrificial activities and the ceremonial complex itself to a historical and contemporary Andean understanding of the intimate, ontological becoming of humans and haucas through the mutual and ritualized provision of food and sacrifice. Further, by availing Deleuzo-Guattarian notions of the organism and the Body without Organs (BwO) and its related concepts, the chronologically distinct but related contexts of ritual, human sacrifice evident at Plaza 3c and Plaza 3a will be examined in terms of their organization or disorganization. It will be shown how the environmental crisis around 650 AD resulted in or even necessitated a ritual engagement at Plaza 3a with the huaca as a living being that was decidedly deterritorialized and experimental – constituting a DeleuzoGuattarian BwO - compared with earlier evidence of sacrificial and ritual activities at Huaca de la Luna associated with the Sacrifice Ceremony and Plaza 3c. The aim is to provide novel ways of understanding and analyzing the huacas of Moche by turning architecture into anatomy, plazas into organs, huacas into bodies.