Walls Speak: Architectural "Neighborhoods" in Late Intermediate Period Peru

Summary

In the Yanamarka Valley in central Peru, the Late Intermediate Period saw dramatic changes. Whole villages moved from the valley floors to dense, defensible hilltop settlements, and were still living there when the Incas colonized this region a century later. The remote locations of many of these sites – both those forcibly abandoned under Inca rule, and those which continued on into the early Colonial Period – mean that numerous domestic round houses, storage spaces, patio walls and pathways still stand relatively undisturbed. At first glance their pirka architecture may seem uniform, but a closer look shows variation ranging from subtle differences in stone shapes, sizes, or mortar thickness, to more striking decorative embellishments. Morphometric and spatial analyses of these attributes reveal both the wide range of stylistic choices made by their makers, and the subtle ways in which those choices varied from one area of a site to another as well as through time. These patterns offer a glimpse into the community of those who built and used these houses, reflecting neighborhoods of shared practice, possible kinship ties, or perhaps even the areas where residents of Middle Horizon villages had settled and, together, built their new homes.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Theorizing and Excavating Neighborhoods

Keywords

Spatial Coverage