In this study cranial injuries in human skeletal remains from the site of Cerro Oreja in the Moche Valley of north coastal Peru provide a proxy measure of violence during the Gallinazo Phase preceding the rise of the Southern Moche State and are used to assess the role that violent conflict may have played in state formation. Both healed and perimortem cranial vault fractures are present in the sample of 116 individuals from Cerro Oreja. These injuries provide evidence of both intra- and intergroup violence during the Early Intermediate Period (EIP) occupation of the site, ca. 400 BCE – AD 200. The injury rate is significantly higher than that observed in a residential sample (AD 200 – 800) from the site of Moche or in an aggregated EIP sample from the larger Andean region. While escalating violence during the Gallinazo Phase might be expected if warfare contributed to the genesis of this primary state, this was not statistically verified here. The data do suggest that a climate of violence prevailed at Cerro Oreja in the years preceding the rise of the Southern Moche State and that violent conflict likely contributed to the emergence of this hegemonic polity.

在这项研究中，秘鲁北部沿海莫切谷地奥雷哈山遗址的人类骨骼遗骸中的颅骨损伤提供了南莫切州崛起之前的加利纳佐阶段暴力的替代衡量标准，并用于评估暴力的作用。冲突可能在国家形成过程中发挥了作用。来自奥雷哈山的 116 名个体的样本中均存在已愈合的和临死时的颅顶骨折。这些伤害提供了该地点占领期间早期中期（EIP）期间群体内部和群体间暴力的证据。公元前 400 年 – 公元 200 年。伤害率明显高于莫切遗址的住宅样本（公元 200 – 800 年）或更大的安第斯地区的汇总 EIP 样本中观察到的伤害率。虽然如果战争促成了这个主要国家的起源，那么加利纳佐阶段的暴力升级可能是预料之中的，但这在此处并未得到统计证实。数据确实表明，在南莫切州崛起之前的几年里，奥雷哈山盛行暴力气氛，暴力冲突可能促成了这一霸权政体的出现。