Cahuachi, in Peru, was a major ceremonial center of the Nazca culture, based from about 1–500 CE in the coastal area of Peru's central Andes. It overlooked some of the Nazca lines. The Italian archaeologist Giuseppe Orefici has been excavating at the site for the past few decades. The site contains over 40 mounds topped with adobe structures. The huge architectural complex covers 0.6 sq. miles (1.5 km²) at 365 meters above sea level. The American archeologist Helaine Silverman has also conducted long term, multi-stage research and written about the full context of Nazca society at Cahuachi, published in a lengthy study in 1993. Scholars once thought the site was the capital of the Nazca state but have determined that the permanent population was quite small. They believe that it was a pilgrimage center, whose population increased greatly preceding and during major ceremonial events. New research has suggested that 40 of the mounds were natural hills modified to appear as artificial constructions. Support for the pilgrimage theory comes from archaeological evidence of sparse population at Cahuachi, the spatial patterning of the site, and ethnographic evidence from the Virgin of Yauca pilgrimage in the nearby Ica Valley. Looting is the greatest problem facing the site today. Most of the burial sites surrounding Cahuachi were not known until recently and are tempting targets for looters.
The Cahuachi site is located near the south coast of Peru, and found in the Nazca Valley. Within the Nazca Valley is the Río Grande de Nazca drainage system and is where the Nazca culture developed. The area is ecologically classified as “pre-mountain desert formation.” There is a very important ecological transition going on within the Río Grande de Nazca drainage system, transitioning from pre-mountain desert zone of the coast, to chuapiyunga (meaning "between hot and cold") up towards the highlands, and east of the town Nazca the transition to true yunga begins. Yunga refers to the Quechua Yungas meaning "warm valley". The site itself can be found on the southern side of the Nazca River, one of ten major tributaries that form the Río Grande de Nazca drainage system. The greater Nazca Valley drainage area is very dry in the summer and extremely hot. Precipitation varies between none and 125 mm; daytime summer temperatures average 21.3 °C. To the north and south Cahuachi faces two pampas, or flat plain-like terrain: Pampa de San José and Pampa de Atarco, and on these plains is where the famous ground-drawings of the Nazca desert are found. The Río Grande region's soils are available for irrigation agriculture with limitations. Cahuachi is located off of the valley bottom of the treeless hills and terraces beneath Pampa de Atarco, and has been known to be subject to strong winds that are capable of becoming sandstorms. It is on these treeless hills that formed the core majority of artificial constructions at Cahuachi. There is, also present, sporadic rains and cyclical floods which result in water erosion of the terrain, which made some parts of the valley uninhabitable, which influenced the settlement pattern of Cahuachi. Cahuachi lies over brown barren river terraces that are characterized by hills, above the bottom of the valley. Hills were modified in various ways to create civic or ceremonial centers.
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