Chimor conquers the Lambayeque region

After the burning of the temples of Batán Grande between 1050 and 1100, the Sicán, or Lambayeque, culture moved its centre to Túcume, also called El Purgatorio, at the junction of the La Leche and Lambayeque valleys. During some 250 years of Late Sicán occupation the site grew to 220 hectares around La Raya hill, and by the time of the Chimú conquest it had 26 major mounds and enclosures. Late Sicán craftsmen continued the region’s metalwork and pottery, but the image of the Sicán Deity, which had dominated the art of the earlier phase, disappeared.

The expansion of Chimor is known from traditions recorded by the Spaniards and from archaeology. In the dynastic tradition of Chan Chan, Ñancenpinco, grandson of the founder Taycanamo, conquered the head of the Moche valley and the neighbouring valleys from Saña in the north to Santa in the south; in John Rowe’s chronology he ruled around 1370. In Lambayeque, the legend of Naymlap (Naylamp) recorded by Miguel Cabello de Balboa in 1586 tells that after Fempellec, the last king of Naymlap’s line, angered the gods, rains, drought and famine struck the land, and then a powerful lord from the south, the Chimo Capac, seized it and installed a governor named Pongmassa.

Archaeologists usually date the end of the Late Sicán and the Chimú takeover to about 1375; other accounts give 1350, 1370 or about 1380. The conquered lands kept much of their own culture: the Chimú took over the skills of the Lambayeque goldsmiths, and a workshop making beads of Spondylus shell, active from about 1390, has been excavated at Túcume. The Lambayeque valleys remained under Chimor until the Inca conquest of the kingdom in the 1460s–1470s.