Surveillance at Ancient Hillforts of the Titicaca Basin, Southern Peru: Insights into Social Dynamics and Defensive Strategies

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Surveillance: Seeing and Power in the Material World" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In this paper we model visibility and movement in and around ancient hillforts or pukaras across the highlands of southern Peru. During the Late Intermediate Period (1000–1450 CE), communities moved to hilltops where houses were often tightly packed together within the confines of large defensive walls. The coalescence of large populations at these sites, sometimes reaching over 1,000 people, would have been a novel experience where new social roles and relations would have had to be quickly forged among unfamiliar faces and tightly confined spaces. While studies have investigated pukaras' views of the outside landscape including other pukaras, monitoring one's neighbor within these large sites may also have been important. Architecture is often still intact at these sites, revealing original pathways, plazas, houses, tombs, and storage structures. We rely on recent site mapping at several pukaras to better understand the use, design, and movement through these built spaces with an emphasis on private versus public spaces. While previous research provides little evidence of centralization or political control at pukaras, our analysis reveals the construction and design of spaces which could result in highly visible and intimate living arrangements, contributing to a shared identity, cohesive communities, and stronger defensive coalitions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeologies of Surveillance: Seeing and Power in the Material World   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38755.0