Contrasting Use of Space among Neighbors: Puna versus Quechua/Suni Residential Settlements of the Rapayán/Tantamayo Region during the LIP

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.

Late Intermediate settlements in the Rapayán/Tantamayo region are distributed in two main ecological zones: quechua/suni between 2500 to 3900 m.a.s.l. and puna above 4000 m.a.s.l. The majority of residential sites occupy the quechua/suni ecological zone. These settlements display a fairly homogeneous architectural distribution with one or two multi-story buildings in the upper section, several individually organized house structures in the center, and a number of small chullpas in the lower-end. The puna settlements, on the other hand, consist mainly of fortified sites with no or just few house structures. A handful of them however were densely populated. The 22 hectares puna residential site of Winak for instance, displays similar architectural types as those observed in the quechua/suni residential settlements, but their spatial arrangement on the site differs markedly. For example, the houses are organized in groups around common patios, the chullpas are in the center of the settlement and delimited by a massive wall, and the multi-story buildings are in the lower part of the site. In this presentation, I discuss the social, political and ideological implications of these distinct spatial architectural layouts among quecha/suni and puna residential settlements.

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): 23776