implications of human sacrifices including those killed in religious ceremonies, prisoners of war, the burial of retainers with leaders, dedicatory burials in which infants were placed under building foundations as offerings, and the custom of curing and later burying trophy heads taken in wars. Burials such as these complicate the record but vastly extend present understanding of the "dynamic relationship between the living, the dead, and the supernatural in the Andean world" (Verano, 1995, p. 189).
There is other evidence available about both Moche and Nasca cultures. Architectural remains, rubbish dumps, and the large-scale ground drawings associated with the Nasca culture are just some of the examples. But, as Rowe explains, there are significant differences between what can be learned from sources such as these and from burial sites. The excavation of a house site or a rubbish dump can provide a great deal of information about "a group, a community, or a family" but burials have the unusual capacity to allow archaeologists to distinguish individuals (Rowe, 1995, p. 27). Differences in burial practice and different selections of burial goods may also provide information about differences associated with age, sex, occupation, or status. Indeed the remains allow, according to their extent and comparability with others, for the construction of a "social persona of the dead" as expressed in mortuary ritual (Trinkaus, 1984, 675). Almost as unique as the distinguishing of the individual is the fact that burials provide evidence of deliberate placement of objects. In sudden landslides or volcanic eruptions it is safe to say that an object in a house was placed there deliberately. But in most instances it is only in the case of burials that it is possible for archaeologists to determine that they are looking at an object deliberately placed where it was found many centuries later. Finally, the evidence of burials provides inf...