Who Drew the Nazca Lines, and Why? Collective Capacity, Ritual Landscapes, and Why the Geoglyphs Did Not Require an Aerial Audience

This study reexamines the Nazca Lines (Nasca geoglyphs) by arguing that the search for a single universal purpose is methodologically misleading. Rather than treating the geoglyphs exclusively as astronomical markers, water-related symbols, pilgrimage routes, ritual monuments, or territorial markers, it proposes that they formed a layered ritual landscape through which dispersed communities repeatedly organized collective action over several centuries.
Drawing upon recent archaeological evidence, including the distinction between large line-type geoglyphs and smaller relief-type geoglyphs, the paper argues that different classes of geoglyphs most likely fulfilled different social functions. Large figures and geometric spaces may have structured community-level ceremonies, coordinated movement, and periodic gatherings, whereas smaller figures located along trails may have communicated narratives, identities, warnings, or ritual information to people moving through the landscape.
The paper also addresses one of the most enduring questions surrounding the Nazca Lines: why were enormous geoglyphs created if they could not be viewed completely from the ground? It argues that complete aerial observation was not a necessary condition for their social significance. Instead, their importance emerged through the processes of construction, movement, partial visibility, shared cultural knowledge, storytelling, and repeated ceremonial participation. The geoglyphs therefore functioned not primarily as objects of panoramic visual appreciation but as places that were made, traversed, remembered, and continually reactivated through collective practice.
As a comparative analytical framework, the study cautiously adapts the concept of layered institutional accumulation, originally developed in a different historical context, to examine how practical knowledge, symbolic traditions, and capacities for collective organization could be preserved and reproduced across generations without requiring a permanently centralized state. The concept is employed as a heuristic framework rather than as an established category within Andean archaeology.
The paper does not seek to replace existing interpretations with another single explanation. Instead, it presents a synthetic and falsifiable comparative framework showing how astronomical, ritual, hydraulic, communicative, and social functions could have coexisted within a long-lived ritual landscape. By integrating recent archaeological evidence with comparative historical analysis, it offers a new perspective on why the Nazca geoglyph tradition endured for centuries and how collective capacities could become embedded within the landscape itself.

【Previous and Related Studies】
1.0 Family-Office Differentiation among the Gōshi Class in Early Modern Northern Sanriku under the Morioka Domain: The Oda Family's Matsugawara Main House and Ichō-no-ki Branch House in Sources Related to the Noda-dōri Magistrate Office
This study examines how administrative, documentary, and coordinating functions were distributed between different branches of a local gōshi family. It demonstrates how practical administrative competences could be preserved within households and local society, providing the microhistorical foundation for this research program.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20182480⁠

2.0 Layered Institutional Accumulation and the Conditions of Productive Fragmentation: Japan, China, and Modernization Pathways in Comparative-Historical Perspective
This study develops the concept of layered institutional accumulation and examines how political fragmentation, regional institutions, and historical continuity shaped different modernization pathways in Japan and China. It provides the comparative-historical and theoretical foundation for this research program.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20564716⁠

3.0 Administrative Capacity Mobilization and Japan's Modern State Formation: Incomplete Political Integration, Layered Institutional Accumulation, and the Direction of Local Competences in Comparative-Historical Perspective
This study integrates microhistorical evidence and comparative-historical theory to explain how administrative capacities produced under earlier political orders were preserved, reclassified, and mobilized during modern state formation. It establishes the conceptual framework of this research program.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21276293⁠