Behind the Walls: LIP Architecture and Settlement Organization across the Peruvian Titicaca Basin

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Beyond the Round House: Spatial Logic and Settlement Organization across the Late Andean Highlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

At hilltop sites in the Titicaca basin, the good architectural preservation of house foundations, patios, walkways, tombs, and dividing walls offers a glimpse of the organization and day-to-day functioning of LIP communities. These architectural choices potentially had implications for the inhabitants in many realms: inequality and property, segregation and cohesion, privacy and knowledge of others’ doings, patterns of movement including gendered "taskscapes," and relevant social identities. But the spatial organization of residential architecture actually differs substantially in different zones of the Peruvian Titicaca basin. Here, I discuss the first steps of a project designed to consider and compare this variation using the drone-aided mapping of surface architecture at several LIP sites across the Peruvian Titicaca Basin. The interpretation of structures and spaces is aided by insights from a previous excavation project at the large LIP hillfort town of Ayawiri. Preliminary results show patterned differences that appear to reflect the size and composition of kin groups. These differences might relate to the preferences and practices of large ethnic groups in the region, and/or to different subsistence emphases on the spectrum from pastoralism to cultivation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Beyond the Round House: Spatial Logic and Settlement Organization across the Late Andean Highlands   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25611