Ancient Cuzco Read online

  ANCIENT CUZCO

  Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Series in Latin American and Latino Art and Culture

  ANCIENT

  CUZCO

  Heartland of the Inca

  BRIAN S. BAUER

  University of Texas Press

  Austin

  Copyright © 2004 by the University of Texas Press

  All rights reserved

  Printed in the United States of America

  First edition, 2004

  Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, University of Texas Press, Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bauer, Brian S.

  Ancient Cuzco : heartland of the Inca / Brian S. Bauer. — 1st ed.

  p. cm. — (Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long series in Latin American and Latino art and culture)

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 0-292-70243-4 (hardcover : alk. paper)

  ISBN 0-292-70279-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  1. Indians of South America—Peru—Cuzco (Province)—History. 2. Indians of South America—Peru—Cuzco (Province)—Antiquities. 3. Incas—Peru—Cuzco (Province)—History. 4. Incas—Peru—Cuzco (Province)—Politics and government. 5. Inca architecture—Peru—Cuzco (Province) 6. Cuzco (Peru: Province)—History. 7. Cuzco (Peru: Province)—Antiquities. I. Title. II. Series.

  F3429.B38 2004

  985'.3700498—dc22

  2003018415

  ISBN 978-0-292-75721-9 (e-book)

  ISBN 978-0-292-79202-9 (individual e-book)

  . . . Yo me acuerdo a ver visto por mis ojos a indios viejos, estando a vista del Cuzco, mirar contra la ciudad y alzar un alarido grande, el cuál se les convertía en lágrimas salidas de tristeza contemplando el tiempo presente y acordándose del pasado, . . .

  . . . I remember seeing with my own eyes old Indians who, upon seeing Cuzco, stared at the city and gave a great cry, which then turned to tears of sadness, as they contemplated the present and recalled the past, . . .

  PEDRO DE CIEZA DE LEÓN 1553

  This work is dedicated to

  John Hemming,

  whose books have inspired a generation of researchers.

  CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Chapter 1. Introduction to the Inca

  The Cuzco Valley at the Time of the Inca Empire: A Brief Overview

  The Cuzco Valley and Its Natural Resources

  Overview of Cuzco Archaeological Research

  The Cuzco Valley Archaeological Project

  The Cuzco Chronology

  Chapter 2. The Inca Heartland

  The Social Hierarchy of the Cuzco Region

  Summary and Discussion

  Chapter 3. Human Impact and Environmental History of the Cuzco Region

  (Alex Chepstow-Lusty, Brian S. Bauer, and Michael Frogley)

  Ice Cores

  Lake-Sediment Cores

  The Cuzco Environment and Human Impact: 10,000–2000 BC

  The Cuzco Environment and Human Impact: 2000 BC–AD 100

  The Cuzco Environment and Human Impact: AD 100–1100

  The Cuzco Environment and Human Impact: AD 1100–1490

  The Cuzco Environment and Human Impact during the Little Ice Age: AD 1490–1880

  Summary and Discussion

  Chapter 4. The Archaic Period and the First People of the Cuzco Valley (9500–2200 BC)

  (Brian S. Bauer, Bradford Jones, and Cindy Klink)

  The Cuzco Archaic Period

  Summary and Discussion

  Chapter 5. The Formative Period and the Emergence of Ranked Societies (2200 BC–AD 200)

  The Early Formative Phase (2200–1500 BC) and the Beginnings of Ceramic Production

  The Middle Formative Phase and the Establishment of Autochthonous Village Leadership (ca. 1500–500 BC)

  The Late Formative Phase and the Development of a Valley-wide Chiefdom (500 BC–AD 200)

  The Late Formative Phase in the Cuzco Valley

  Summary and Discussion

  Chapter 6. The Qotakalli Period: Time of Regional Development (AD 200–600)

  Previous Research on the Qotakalli Period

  Altiplano Influence in the Cuzco Region during the Qotakalli Period

  The Cuzco Valley during the Qotakalli Period

  The Distribution of Qotakalli Ceramics beyond the Cuzco Valley

  Summary and Discussion

  Chapter 7. The Wari Period (AD 600–1000) in the Cuzco Region

  Indicators of Wari Influence

  The Development and Expansion of the Wari Empire

  The Site of Pikillacta

  The Wari in the Cuzco Region

  Dating the Period of Wari Influence in the Cuzco Region

  Summary and Discussion

  Chapter 8. The Development of the Inca State (AD 1000–1400)

  (Brian S. Bauer and R. Alan Covey)

  Previous Research on the Development of the Inca Heartland

  Archaeological Surveys in the Inca Heartland

  Ceramic Styles of the Killke Period

  Other Killke-Related Styles in the Cuzco Region

  State Formation in the Cuzco Basin

  The Region South of the Cuzco Valley

  The Region West and Northwest of the Cuzco Valley

  The Region North of the Cuzco Valley

  The Region East and Southeast of the Cuzco Valley

  Inca State Formation and Imperial Administrative Strategies

  Summary and Discussion

  Chapter 9. The Cuzco Valley during Imperial Inca Rule

  Identifying Inca Sites

  Distribution of Inca Sites in the Cuzco Valley

  Storage Facilities in Cuzco and the Valley

  The Site of Sacsayhuaman

  Summary and Discussion

  Chapter 10. Inca Cuzco

  Important Documents

  The Arrival of the First Europeans in Cuzco

  The Fall of Inca Cuzco (1533–1536) The Plazas of Central Cuzco

  The Casana Compound

  The Coracora Compound

  East Side of the Plaza

  The Amarucancha Compound

  The Sondorhuaci Tower

  The Acllahuaci Compound

  The Hatuncancha Compound

  The Pucamarca Compound

  Cusicancha

  Other Important Buildings in Cuzco

  Summary and Discussion

  Chapter 11. The Coricancha

  Atahualpa’s Ransom and the Gold of the Coricancha (1533–1534)

  Other Early Descriptions of the Coricancha

  The Coricancha and Inca Astronomy

  The Coricancha as the Center of the Empire

  The Coricancha and the Shrines of the Cuzco Ceque System

  Summary and Discussion

  Chapter 12. The Mummies of the Royal Inca

  Polo de Ondegardo and the Inca Mummies

  Ancestor Worship in the Andes

  The Royal Panacas of Cuzco

  Care for the Mummies

  Representations of the Inca Kings and Their Huauques and Bultos

  Discovery and Destruction of the Royal Inca Mummies

  Polo de Ondegardo, Viceroy Hurtado de Mendoza, and the Fate of the Inca Mummies

  Summary and Discussion

  Chapter 13. Overview of the Inca Heartland

  APPENDIX. Radiocarbon Dates from the Cuzco Region

  NOTES

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  INDEX

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  IN THIS BOOK I present an overview of the cultural developments that took place in the Cuzco Valley from the time when the first hunter-gatherers entered the region to the fall of the Inca Empire.

&
nbsp; I owe a great many thanks to numerous people who have supported and aided me in different stages of this research. Both Alan Covey and Bradford Jones played critical roles in helping me direct various seasons of field research in the Cuzco Valley. Mary Glowacki and Sara Lunt have frequently provided me with advice on ceramic styles of the region. Cindy Klink conducted the Archaic projectile-point analysis. Terence D’Altroy, Jean-Jacques Decoster, Joyce Marcus, Michael Moseley, Katharina Schreiber, and Charles Stanish have also been strong supporters of the general research program.

  Throughout the years I have also benefited greatly from discussions with colleagues in Cuzco, including Percy Ardiles, Fernando Astete, Luis Barreda, Raymundo Béjar, Claudio Cumpa, Octavio Fernández Carrasco, Arminda Gibaja, José Gonzales, Italo Oberti, Wilbert San Román, Alfredo Valencia, Wilfredo Yépez, Julinho Zapata, and other members of the National Institute of Culture and the Universidad Nacional San Antonio Abad del Cuzco. Additional thanks go to Wilton Barrionuevo, Cosme Caceres, Christina Elson, Javier Flores, Silvia Flores, Ricardo Huayllani, Rene Pillco, Eva Santa Cruz, Patricia Milena Vega Centeno, and many others with whom I have had the pleasure of working. Drafts of this book have been read by Alan Covey, Clark Erickson, Sabine Hyland, Bradford Jones, Jeffrey Parsons, Helaine Silverman, and Nancy Warrington. Major funding has been provided by various organizations, including the National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Heinz III Charitable Trust, and the University of Illinois at Chicago (Institute for the Humanities, Office of Social Science Research, and the Department of Anthropology).

  Because this book is a summation of many years of research in the Cuzco region, certain sections have appeared elsewhere. Chapter 2 (The Inca Heartland) was first printed in The Development of the Inca State (University of Texas Press, 1992), and various sections that pertain to the pottery styles of the Cuzco region have appeared in The Early Ceramics of the Inca Heartland (Fieldiana Anthropology: The Field Museum of Natural History, 1999), and The Early Intermediate and Middle Horizon Ceramic Styles of the Cuzco Valley (Fieldiana Anthropology: The Field Museum of Natural History, 2003). Chapter 8 (The Development of the Inca State) appeared in American Anthropologist (10: 3 [2002]: 846–864). They are reproduced here with permission.

  ANCIENT CUZCO

  CHAPTER 1

  Introduction to the Inca

  THE INCA EMPIRE was the largest state to develop in the Americas. Last in a series of complex Andean societies, it emerged in the south-central mountains of Peru, expanded across the western highlands and coast of South America, and ultimately encompassed a territory that stretched from modern-day Colombia to Chile. By the time of European contact in 1532, the Inca ruled a population of at least eight million from their capital city in the Cuzco Valley.

  The Cuzco Valley was the sacred center of the empire and the royal seat of the dynastic order that ruled the realm. Despite the importance of the Cuzco Valley in the prehistory of the Americas, it has been one of the last great centers of civilization in the Americas to be systematically studied. As the heartland of the Inca, the Cuzco Valley has frequently been discussed in the literature, and anthropologists, historians, and archaeologists have long speculated on the locations and importance of its numerous archaeological sites. Yet there has been a surprising lack of archaeological field research in the Cuzco Valley itself.1

  Until recently, there had been no attempt to systematically survey the Cuzco Valley or to document all of its archaeological sites. As a result, critical issues concerning the cultural history of the valley and the development of the Inca Empire have remained unexplored. Furthermore, we know little about the social complexity of groups that occupied the region before the Inca Empire developed and how the achievements of these earlier people helped to form the foundations upon which the Inca built their great state.

  Witnessing the recent rapid urban growth of the city and realizing the need for a systematic regional survey of the Inca heartland, I began the Cuzco Valley Archaeological Project in 1994. The project was designed as a multistage regional study of the Inca heartland, dedicated to documenting and interpreting the distribution of its archaeological sites. The systematic documentation of site types, locations, sizes, and ages in the region has yielded new information on the ancient cultures of this important area. The overall objective of the project was to reconstruct the settlement history of the Cuzco Valley by combining the results of a systematic survey of the valley with data gathered from excavations at a number of sites and information recovered from various historic documents.

  In this book I present the major results of that project and offer an overview of the cultural developments that occurred in the Cuzco Valley from the time of its first occupants, soon after the retreat of the Pleistocene glaciers, to the arrival of the Spaniards and the subsequent collapse of the Inca Empire. The goal of the book is to extend our knowledge of the area well beyond the generalized descriptions currently available for the prehistory of the region and to address a series of research questions concerning both the general processes of cultural development and the specific historic patterns of the region. In the first half of the book, I attempt to answer several basic questions: How has the climate of the region changed over time (Chapter 3)? When was the valley first occupied (Chapter 4)? How did settlement strategies change with the establishment of the first villages (Chapter 5)? What effects did the conquest of the region by the Wari Empire (ca. AD 600) have on the indigenous populations (Chapters 6 and 7)? and When did the Inca state first develop in the Cuzco Valley (Chapter 8)?

  MAP 1.1. The Inca Empire on the eve of European contact [1531] (Courtesy of Terence N. D’Altroy)

  Detailed descriptions of the Cuzco region at the height of Inca rule are also presented. Issues addressed include: How is the heartland of the Inca defined (Chapter 2)? What was the valley and the imperial city of Cuzco like during Inca times (Chapters 9 and 10)? and finally, What do we know about the most famous sanctuary of the Inca (the Coricancha) and about the Inca practice of mummifying and worshiping their dead kings (Chapters 11 and 12)?

  In sum, this book provides a regional context within which we can study the development of social complexity in the Cuzco Valley for the first time. By combining systematic survey data with information collected from excavations as well as historic documents, we are able to reconstruct the settlement history of the valley from preceramic times to the fall of the Inca Empire (Map 1.1).

  The analysis of the data takes place within the confines of a cultural evolutionary model that anticipates that with strong population growth, there will be a greater dependence on domesticated foods, larger settlements, and increased specialization over time. In this way, the populations of a region are seen as transitioning from being hunter-gatherers living in seasonal camps to agriculturists and herders living in hamlets and small villages. In time, these villages grow larger, and hierarchical differences may develop between individuals. The appearance of two-tiered societies (also called ranked societies), composed of a small number of elite families and a large number of commoners, in the archaeological record is generally interpreted as marking the formation of chiefdoms in a region. Especially successful chiefdoms may in time incorporate other nearby societies into their sphere of influence and emerge as states. Through the use of this cultural evolutionary model, the results of this investigation can be compared with those of other regional studies that have recently been completed in Peru, such as those conducted by Timothy K. Earle et al. (1980) and Jeffrey R. Parsons et al. (2000a, 2000b) in the Upper Mantaro region, by Charles Stanish (2003) in the Lake Titicaca region, by Helaine Silverman (2002) in the Nazca region, as well as by Brian Billman (1996) and David J. Wilson (1988) on the north coast. The results of the work also provide comparative information for the study of chiefdoms and states elsewhere in the ancient Americas (e.g., Marcus and Flannery 1996; Marcus 1998; Blanton et al. 1999).

  The Cuzco Valley at the Ti
me of the Inca Empire: A Brief Overview

  The large and agriculturally rich Cuzco Valley emerged preeminent in the fifteenth century AD as the heartland of the Inca. Near the north end of the valley lies the sacred city of Cuzco. The region immediately surrounding the Cuzco Valley was occupied by a number of different ethnic groups that were absorbed into the Inca state during an early period of state formation. By about AD 1400, the Inca had united the region under their rule, and the city of Cuzco had emerged as their capital (Bauer 1992a; Bauer and Covey 2002). The Inca then expanded from this well-integrated heartland and quickly formed one of the greatest polities to develop in the Americas. Within three generations, the Inca Empire grew to control a vast area of South America. Yet, as a result of regional and ethnic conflict, conquest by the Spaniards, and the spread of deadly European diseases, the last and largest of the indigenous states of the Americas collapsed even more quickly than it began. By 1572, thousands of Spaniards occupied the important cities of the former empire, and the last direct heir to the Inca crown, Tupac Amaru, had been executed. In 1650 an earthquake flattened the city of Cuzco, and in its aftermath the city was rebuilt following norms of European architecture. By that time, the Inca Empire had long since fallen, and Lima had come to dominate the social, political, and economic spheres of the land. The Cuzco region, home to thriving local societies for thousands of years and the former capital of the Inca Empire, began to fade from the world’s view.

  INCA CUZCO

  At its height, the city of Cuzco was home to more than 20,000 people (Valverde, cited in Porras Barrenechea 1959: 312–313 [1539]), with many thousands more located in numerous large villages scattered across the valley. Besides being the royal seat for the ruling dynasty and the political heart of the Inca polity, Cuzco represented the geographical and spiritual center of the empire. At the center of the city stood the Coricancha2 (Golden Enclosure) or what the Spaniards later referred to as the Templo del Sol (Temple of the Sun). This elaborate complex, built with the finest Inca stone masonry and metalwork, was the focal point for the major imperial religious rites that were staged in the city. After the conquest, the church and monastery of Santo Domingo was built on this site. Nevertheless, many of the former structures and the superb Inca stonework of the temple complex can still be seen.