Continuity and Change in Relationships between Architecture, Landscape, and Cosmology in the Jequetepeque Valley

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Emplacement and Relational Approaches to the Ancient Americas" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper offers new research and theories on relationships between architecture, landscape, and cosmology in the ancient Andes. Previous research has shown how the so-called Acropolis at Jatanca in the Jequetepeque Valley was built to form an almanac viewed along a nearby mountain, Cerro Cañoncillo, with sunrises at the solstices and equinoxes aligning with recognizable and human-made markers on the mountain. In this paper, we show how similar cosmological thinking was adapted to the nearby site Huaca Colorada, built centuries later. There, the ritual center also seems to align the landscape with solar positions. Furthermore, as the Acropolis was built to mimic the shape of Cerro Cañoncillo, Huaca Colorada’s most sacred areas occur at its highest point, apparently paralleling the stone huaca atop Cerro Cañoncillo. Despite such similarities, there are also differences. Huaca Colorada does not align the sun's path with the mountain for the entire year, and the alignment marker for the southern solstice lies at the mountain’s base rather than its ridge, suggesting a changed significance for the mountain. Sites across the Jequetepeque Valley should be examined both for similarities that reveal continuities and differences that may reveal changes in ritual and social structure.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Emplacement and Relational Approaches to the Ancient Americas

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51475