7.9150°S, 79.3055°W.
The El Brujo Complex is a Moche-era ceremonial precinct on the north coast of Peru, in the La Libertad Region near the mouth of the Chicama River. The complex includes Huaca Cao Viejo, Huaca Cortada, and the preceramic mound of Huaca Prieta, with construction phases stretching from roughly 3500 BCE through the Moche Phase IV occupation around 450 CE. Built almost entirely of mud brick and adobe, the principal structures rise as terraced platforms decorated with polychrome friezes depicting prisoners, dancing warriors, and the marine creature known as the Decapitator. In 2005 archaeologists led by Regulo Franco Jordan recovered the mummified remains of the Senora de Cao, a tattooed Moche noblewoman buried with ceremonial nose ornaments, gold diadems, and war clubs. Her tomb upended the assumption that high political authority among the Moche was strictly male.
The friezes that line the platform faces still hold pigment after fifteen centuries of desert wind.