Donna J. Nash

Sighting the apu: a GIS analysis of Wari imperialism and the worship of mountain peaks

Abstract In the Andes, prominent mountains are revered as earthly spirits that protect, but may also punish, their human constituents. These apu were often linked to distant ancestors and are considered the most important local deities. During the phase of the earliest highland Andean expansive states (ad 600–1000), the Wari and Tiwanaku utilized mountain worship as a means of establishing hegemony over local peoples who considered these mountains as places of ancestral origins. By usurping the apu, or including them in the pantheon of imperial deities, the expansive state effectively held these sacred places hostage and incorporated local belief systems into an imperial ideology. Recent research has yielded new clues to the worship of mountain peaks, including the usurpation of a unique geological mesa formation at Cerro Baúl as the basis for the Wari colonization of its southern frontier. Furthermore, research on the mountain summit has revealed architectural complexes oriented to, and presumably dedicated for, rites of veneration to the higher snowcapped volcanic peaks visible from this mountain summit.

Imperial Interaction in the Andes

The Middle Horizon (AD 500–1000) was a dynamic period in the Andean Cordillera of South America. Two expansive states dominated regions only eclipsed by the later Inca empire. The Huari ruled in the north and Tiwanaku in the south. Huari and Tiwanaku both utilized a set of religious icons centered on a front facing deity so similar in execution that for many years these cultures were thought to have been a single political entity. Scholars suspect that both states have a theocratic origin, but developed differently throughout the growth and expansion of their respective domains. The transformation of Huari, characterized as secular and militant, was recognized early on through a change and standardization of ceramic styles (Menzel 1964). Thus it was hypothesized that Huari was an expansive empire that governed most all of highland and coastal Peru from its upland capital in the sierra of Ayacucho through the placement of administrative centers (Feldman 1989; Isbell and McEwan 1991; Lumbreras 1974; Schreiber 1992). Tiwanaku, until recently, portrayed as ecclesiastical and mercantile, is now also considered to have transformed into a secular institution, which held hegemony over Bolivia, southern Peru, and northern Chile from a higher altiplano capital near the shores of Lake Titicaca (Browman 1985; Goldstein 1993b; Kolata 1989; Janusek 1994; Lumbreras and Amat 1968; Mujica 1985; Ponce 1969; Stanish 1995; Wallace 1980).

FIESTAS Y LA ECONOMÍA POLÍTICA WARI EN MOQUEGUA, PERÚ

Resumen es: Las fiestas se han considerado componentes importantes en las actividades politicas de los Estados arcaicos. En los sitios Wari de Cerro Baul y Cerro Mej...

The First New Chronicle and Good Government: On the History of the World and the Incas Up to 1615

A review of The First New Chronicle and Good Government: On the History of the World and the Incas up to 1615. By Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala. Translated and edited by Roland Hamilton. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009. xxiv + 363 pp., foreword, introduction, notes on translation, figures, glossary, bibliography, index.

Burning down the brewery: Establishing and evacuating an ancient imperial colony at Cerro Baúl, Peru

65.00 cloth.) By Donna J. Nash, University of North Carolina at Greensboro