A Galactic Empire: Celestial Bodies and Imperial Ideology on the Wari Frontier

Summary

The consolidation of Wari imperial power in the Osmore Valley was predicated on the perceived legitimacy of a common ritual ideology that situated elites and their subjects within an ordered cosmos. Recent archaeoastronomical surveys of the administrative and ceremonial citadel on Cerro Baúl and elite contexts on neighboring Cerro Mejía have identified alignments of ceremonial architecture with recurrent astronomical phenomena at both sites, suggesting that observation of the heavens reinforced the ritual power structure of imperial Wari society. The celestial alignments of Cerro Baúl's Temple of Picchu Picchu and Temple of Arundane represent a hegemonic syncretism, subsuming the worship of local apu into the imperial orthodoxy of the Wari cosmos. Additionally, a newly identified solar calendrical complex on the summit of Cerro Mejía may have further served to expand the ideological authority of Wari elites. By structuring a social and ritual calendar around the observation of astronomical phenomena, the elite class legitimized their cosmological paradigm through elaborate public ceremony.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21446