Did the Nazca Lines actually work as some kind of calendar system or am I reading too much into this

Not my usual area but I've been down a rabbit hole on this lately and honestly the astronomical alignment angle is more compelling than I expected. There's a researcher - can't remember his name off the top of my head - who mapped out how certain lines point directly toward where specific stars rose on the horizon during particular seasons. That's not coincidence territory anymore, that's design.

What I keep coming back to though is why you'd need something that massive to track seasons. Most cultures managed with far simpler methods. So either the scale served some other purpose alongside the calendar function, or the calendar theory is only part of the picture.

Does anyone know if the lines that point toward solstice/equinox positions have actually been properly peer reviewed, or is most of that coming from independent researchers? I find it genuinely difficult to sort the solid archaeology from the speculative stuff with Nazca.

Not my area either but I've looked into this a bit. The solstice alignment stuff is genuinely interesting, though I'm always wary of how easy it is to find patterns in large scale things when you're looking for them. What was the researcher's name? Sounds like it might be Anthony Aveni, he's done a lot on Nazca and archaeoastronomy and his work is actually pretty solid rather than the usual fringe stuff you get with ancient sites.