The Outside of the Illuminated Temple: Chamber Constructions in the Early Monumental Architecture in the Andes, Kotosh (Huanuco) and Mosquito (Tembladera)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Illuminated Communities: The Role of the Hearth at the Beginning of Andean Civilization" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Through the recent excavations at Kotosh, Tsurumi and Sara successfully reconstructed the whole architectural complex of the late Archaic Period. It is composed of complicatedly connected platforms and supposedly each of the platforms was made for the purpose of supporting "temple" constructions placed on them. In the Mosquito Plain located in an inland coastal basin known as Tembladera area, Tsurumi and Morales have identified many architectural complexes of the late Archaic Period. In the case of a monumental architecture named Platform Z1, the researchers discovered a chamber with a hearth on the central and topmost location of the platform. Kotosh and Mosquito are similar in the sense that they form irregularly formed masses composed of platforms, winding corridors, and narrow staircases. These architectural features were laid out like a labyrinth through which one can reach the chamber. On the other hand, in many cases of sites on the coastal plains, the platforms adopted well-ordered rectangular forms associated with straight and wide principal staircases. In addition, the chambers with hearths are not always arranged in the core of architectural complexes. We will analyze the structure of space among these monumental complexes focusing on the locations of chamber constructions in them.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Illuminated Communities: The Role of the Hearth at the Beginning of Andean Civilization   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24518