The Nazca culture flourished in the Nazca region between 300 BC and 800 AD. They created the famous Nazca lines and built an impressive system of underground aqueducts that still function today. Near the aqueducts open to tourists, there is an overlook point which includes an Inca building added after the Inca conquest of the area. On the pampa, on which the Nazca lines were made, the ceremonial city of Cahuachi (1-500 AD) sits overlooking the lines. Modern knowledge about the culture of the Nazca is built upon studying the city of Cahuachi.

The Nazca culture is widely known for its fine polychrome ceramics with representations of fruit, animals, human personages, and hybrid beings. The earliest forms and designs of this style reveal a clear continuity with, and similarity to, the Paracas style, whose features go back to the Formative Period.

The Nazca Monumental style (200-400 AD) presents naturalistic designs, fruit and animals outlined in black and painted in diverse colors. During Middle Nazca, the decoration on ceramics intensifies and designs appear more abstract and stylized in comparison to the previous period.

In Late Nazca the quality of ceramics declines substantially. Some motifs from previous periods disappear, while those conserved are transformed into a new style known as Nazca Prolific, characterized by abstract, stylized motifs repeated various times all over the surface of the vessel.

The Nazca region is a desert that the Nazca turned into a viable agricultural area using their aqueduct technology. Nazca pottery has been divided into eight phases. Around 200 BC, at the end of the Early Horizon drought, Nazca I began. Pottery from this era contains the mythical content of Paracas art, but added realistic subject matter such as fruits, plants, people, and other animals. Realism increased in importance in the following three phases (II, III, IV) referred to as the Monumental phases. The pottery from these phases includes renditions of their main subject matter against a bold red or white background. In the next phase, Nazca V, the backgrounds are filled in and the subject matter now included bodyless renditions of both demons and humans. Nazca VI, and VII include the earlier motifs but also add militaristic ones, and portraits of elite members of the society. Nazca VI and VII also begin to show the influence of the Moche. Finally, Nazca VIII saw the introduction of completely disjointed figures and a rich iconography which has yet to be deciphered. The phases were created before the advent of carbon dating and today have some problems. While the general order did not change there is a great deal of overlap of the phases, and while the Nazca IX phase ends c. 600 AD, some of the pottery in that category was created at least as late as 755 AD.

Since the Nazca were a coastal people, who depended on the sea for their livelihood, archaeologists are fortunate that they portrayed aspects of their everyday lives in and on their pottery. The motifs generally seen on Nazca pots are those of animals and plants used and seen by the ancient people. These include sea birds, hummingbirds, whales, sharks, fish, snakes, seeds, flowers, and cacti. Also, more gruesomely, the Nazca portrayed severed heads (see below), presumed to be trophy heads, on their pottery. This is supported in the archaeological record with the the discovery of caches of actual severed and ritually prepared heads. Over one hundred examples are known to exist.

This weaving was made by the Nazca people of what is now coastal southern Peru. The Nazca culture attained its height between 200 bc and ad 600. The pre-Columbian cultures of the Andes made exquisite textiles, which often depicted mythical stories and were sometimes used as markers of status by their owners.

A woven Nazca sash or belt

The Nazca people believed strongly in a life after death, this belief drew them to mummified their corpses and wrap them with finest textiles, which after 2000 years still today show, quality and colours, as if they were woven yesterday. In the Nazca times, like in many other pre-Inca civilizations the textiles seemed to have play an important role, in the case of Nazca, their textiles were made with fine art and also great skill, using cotton and fibre of Andean camels. The Nazca culture considered their textiles to be an important element within the society, and on especial burials, the corpse had to be wrapping with these beautiful pieces of art with the aim of accompany the dead in the after life. The Nazca textiles were created with a high technological and intellectual point of view and were very sophisticated. At the archaeological site of Cahcuachi, Italian archaeologist Giuseppe Orefeci has uncovered many textiles in very good conditions, which are currently display at the Antonini Museum in Nazca.

Nazca Trophy Heads

The hole in the forehead was to permit a cord to pass through so the head could be tied to the belt of the possessor

  A mummified Nazca trophy head

One of the more unusual practices of the Nazca was the practice of taking body parts as trophies.  Specifically, when warriors or chieftain would kill and adversary, the victim would be decapitated, and their head worn on their belt as a trophy.  They would punch or drill a hole in the forehead to pass a rope through (with the other end, no doubt, coming out through spinal opening at the base of the skull.