The Sunken Court Tradition in the South Central Andes

The sunken court or patio represents one of the most enduring and ritually significant architectural forms in Andean prehistory. First created in the 3rd millennium BC, the sunken court was repeatedly reworked over 3500 years by different cultures in the highlands and coast. Perhaps as significant, a number of cultures rejected the court architecture for other monumental forms of political and ritual expression. This chapter examines the sunken court tradition in the central Andes, tracing its development, elaboration, and rejection over space and time. Authors likewise will contextualize this architectural form using theories of political and ritual performance.

PLAZAS AND PROCESSIONAL PATHS IN TIWANAKU TEMPLES: DIVERGENCE, CONVERGENCE, AND ENCOUNTER AT OMO M10, MOQUEGUA, PERU

Reconstructing access patterns, in particular processional and liturgical movement in ceremonial architecture, can illuminate social processes within expansive states. Extensive excavations from 2010–2012 in the uniquely preserved Tiwanaku temple at the Omo M10 site in Moquegua, Peru (ca. AD 500–1100), shed new light on connectedness and access patterns of the temple. Extensive areal excavations confirm past interpretations of a central axial series of doorways and staircases presided over by stelae and U-shaped, altar-like structures leading from public plazas to the sunken court and a central shrine. However, new findings revealed separate lateral pathways through the structure, which suggest liturgical processions to walled patio groups that were isolated from the central axis. We posit that these small patios and their roofed chambers may have functioned as chapels for distinct groups or pluralistic cultic activities that were separate from those of the central axis. Implications for Tiwanaku social structure are studied in light of other examples of triple entryways in Tiwanaku monumental architecture, and Kolata's suggestion of “Taypi” as a structural amalgam of a center and complementary halves, with implications of mediation and bilateral complementarity between ethnicities, genders, moieties, or other pluralistic entities within Tiwanaku state and society.

NEWLY DISCOVERED FRIEZES AT THE PERUVIAN SITE OF TAUKACHI-KONKÁN: A POSSIBLE GLIMPSE INTO INITIAL PERIOD COSMOLOGY

Excavations conducted in 2015 and 2016 discovered a unique set of friezes at the Initial period (2100–1000 cal BC) site of Taukachi-Konkán in the coastal Peruvian valley of Casma. At this time, the Casma Valley was dominated by the Sechín Alto polity, a cultural development of unprecedented complexity characterized by large planned cities, monumental constructions, and strong interconnections among component settlements. Friezes are known from all major Sechín Alto polity sites where they typically adorn structure facades; however, the Taukachi-Konkán friezes are unusual because they cover all four interior walls of a sunken court with restricted access. Based on analysis of the context and content of these friezes, we suggest that the collective imagery depicts aspects of Sechín Alto polity cosmology, including possible iconography relating to their creation myth. Furthermore, motifs from the Taukachi-Konkán sunken court can be found at contemporary sites both within and outside the Casma Valley. This suggests that the worldview we reconstructed may have been widespread during the Initial period.

Religious Ritual and Wari State Expansion

The role of ritual and religion in the expansion of archaic states is often overlooked in favor of militaristic or economic explanations. In chapter 6, Williams and Nash explore religious ritual practice in the reproduction of social order at the Wari (600–1000 CE) colony in Moquegua, Peru, focusing on ritually important activities in three architecturally distinctive ceremonial structures around Cerro Baúl: Wari D-shaped temples; huaca shrines; and Titicaca Basin–inspired platform-sunken court complexes. Activities in all these structures take place contemporaneously on and around the Wari citadel situated on the 600-meter-tall mesa on the southern Wari frontier. According to the authors, the diverse rites in these complexes promoted the promulgation of distinct elite identities within the cosmopolitan sphere of what constituted Wari provincialism. However, it is the inclusiveness of ritual practice in the Wari centers that is most distinctive of Wari doctrine. It is through this incorporation of elite diversity in particular places on the landscape that Wari was able to weave together the foundations for pluralism that constituted Wari religious hegemony.

Tiwanaku Temples and State Expansion: A Tiwanaku Sunken-Court Temple in Moquegua, Peru

Until recently, an entrenched view of Tiwanaku expansion in the south-central Andes as a primarily cultic phenomenon precluded discussion of state-built ceremonial facilities outside of Tiwanaku’s immediate hinterland of the Bolivian altiplano. However, recent research in the Tiwanaku periphery has found specialized ceremonial architecture that reflects the solidification of central control and the development of a provincial system. Excavation at the Omo M10 site, in Moquegua, Peru, has exposed the only Tiwanaku sunken-court temple structure and cut-stone architecture known outside of the Titicaca Basin. A reconstruction of the Omo temple complex demonstrates direct parallels with Tiwanaku ceremonial centers of the altiplano in architectural form and ceremonial activities. This suggests that patterns of state-centered ceremony and peripheral administration underwent a dramatic transformation with the explosive expansion of the Tiwanaku state during the period known as Tiwanaku V (A. D. 725–1000).

The Formative Site of Las Haldas, Peru: Architecture, Chronology, and Economy

In 1958 and 1969 the Tokyo University expeditions excavated the Formative site of Las Haldas on the Peruvian coast as part of their multiyear investigation into the developmental processes of Andean civilization. The site, known for a temple complex consisting of 6 terraces and a circular sunken court, provides comparative data for the key highland Formative site of Kotosh. The results of the 1969 excavation refuted the earlier view that the temple complex was preceramic. The large quantity of organic refuse, the architectural build-up, and the radiocarbon dates suggest long, continuous occupation based on maritime economy. Las Haldas was a key component of a pan-Andean exchange system, which cross-cut major ecological zones, and must be considered in conjunction with agricultural populations in the nearby Casma Valley and farther inland.