Large ceremonial area and major Early Horizon culture on the south coast of Peru, showing direct influence from Chavín - especially in the pottery (called Ocucaje in the Ica Valley). The pottery is a highly individual polychrome ware with designs executed in resinous paint applied after the pot was fired, including paint-filled incisions of Chavinoid deities. This early period pottery was not well-fired. Desert conditions have preserved all kinds of organic materials, including fine textiles, in rich burials. The best known graves belong to the closing stages of the culture and are of two types: deep shafts leading into underground chambers with several mummy bundles (Paracas Cavernas), and pits or abandoned houses filled with sand and containing more than 400 mummy bundles (the type site, Paracas Necropolis). These people also engaged in artificial deformation of the skull by binding the skull in infancy. Much of the material from the necropolis belongs to the earliest stage of the Nasca culture, which developed out of Paracas in about the 2nd century BC. The Paracas culture's earlier phase, called Paracas Cavernas, is dated 900 BC-1 AD; the Paracas cultures of the middle Early Intermediate Period (c 1-400 AD) are referred to as the Paracas Pinilla and the Paracas Necrópolis phases. There are no large temple structures at the type site.