纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 048莫希战士锅（5）（在线收听）

The celebration of war and warriors is a central aspect of Moche art, and this certainly reflects the importance of the warrior to their society - just as to the Romans or the Anglo-Saxons in Europe. For the Moche, though, war and religion were joined together in a way that would perhaps be less familiar to Europeans. Fighting, for the Moche, held a very strong ritual aspect to it. For protection the warrior carries a small round shield, not much bigger than a dinner plate, and a heavy wooden club that could crack a skull with ease. His decorated clothes suggest he is a young man of high status, but he is clearly a foot soldier. There were no horses at this time in South America - that came later with the Europeans - and llamas, as you'll imagine, don't make great cavalry. So even the elite among the Moche travelled and fought on foot.

Other pots show scenes of warriors fighting each other in single combat, armed, like this figure, with clubs and small shields. These may well be scenes of real fighting, but they also appear to be part of a common Moche myth that we can piece together from groups of pots. Taken as a whole, they tell a gruesome story. To lose a contest like this meant much more than just losing face. The defeated warrior would be sacrificed, decapitated by an animal-headed figure and his blood then drunk by others. This bloody narrative, told by the Moche pots, is by no means just an artistic invention. As Steven Bourget, a leading archaeologist, has found at his archaeological excavations, it happened:

"We excavated this sacrificial site, which included about 75 male warriors sacrificed during various rituals, and we also found the tombs of two sacrificers. And in one of the tombs was also included a wooden club, covered with human blood - so we had indeed the 'smoking gun' - and also the victims themselves, side by side within the temple.