Stella Nair

On Reconstructing Tiwanaku Architecture

The site of Tiwanaku is thought of as the center of a civilization of the same name that exerted its influence over the southern Andean region from around 300 B. C. when it emerged to about A. D. 1100 when it collapsed. The architecture of Tiwanaku today is reduced to several eroded mounds, outlines of courtyard structures, weathered uprights, fragmented walls, foundation stubbles, and jumbles of building stones but not a single standing, original building. It is argued that before this architecture can be understood and its anthropological and cultural significance properly appreciated, it first has to be reconstructed. The reconstruction of Tiwanaku architecture, in turn, requires an understanding of what the design principles were that gave Tiwanaku architecture its identity. Many building blocks and fragments are analyzed for the purpose of identifying the design features typical of Tiwanaku architecture, and in search of clues to their bond to other stones and to their initial appurtenance to some larger configuration. Several partial reconstructions are presented.

Who Taught the Inca Stonemasons Their Skills? A Comparison of Tiahuanaco and Inca Cut-Stone Masonry

At Tiahuanaco, on the southern rim of Lake Titicaca, Bolivia, visitors encounter enormous stone slabs and carved building blocks dressed with astonishing skill. The stones are the visible remains of a culture that flourished there about a thousand years ago. Some six hundred kilometers to the northwest, in Cuzco (Peru), one finds the different yet equally remarkable masonry of the Incas, who dominated the Andean world from the middle of the fifteenth century to the Spanish conquest in 1532. Did the Inca stonemasons learn their skills from their predecessors at Tiahuanaco? A comparative study of Inca and Tiahuanaco construction techniques reveals fundamental differences between the architecture of the two cultures. In this article, we compare masonry bonds, design details, stone-cutting techniques, and the methods of fitting, laying, and handling of stones used by both cultures. The results of this comparison suggest that the ingenuity of Inca masonry originated with the Incas, and not with their predecessors.

Localizing Sacredness, Difference, and Yachacuscamcani in a Colonial Andean Painting

In 1693 the indigenous artist Francisco Chivantito completed the Virgin of Montserrat, devoted to the titular saint of the church in Chinchero, Peru. Illustrating an Iberian holy image and landscape, along with Inca elites and architecture, this painting weaves Andean symbolic and spatial understanding with European painting conventions to create a multivalent image that encompassed both Roman Catholic teachings and indigenous understandings of sacredness and history. Chivantitos layered narrative addressed the realities of life in the indigenous parish and also affords one of the few known examples of a local landscape illustration in a colonial Andean painting.

The Gateways of Tiwanaku

Architecture, to state the obvious, is a social act—social both in method and purpose. It is the outcome of teamwork; and it is there to be made use of by groups of people, groups as small as the family or as large as an entire nation. Architecture is a costly act. It engages specialized talent, appropriate technology, handsome funds. Because it is so, the history of architecture partakes, in a basic way, of the study of the social, economic, and technological systems of human history. (Kostof 1995: 7)

Witnessing the In-visibility of Inca Architecture in Colonial Peru

chinchero, Peru, january 9, 1999 I had awoken that morning full of excitement and anticipation. As I ate breakfast with Simeona and her children in the warm adobe kitchen, I could not wait to begin that day’s work. The day before I had spotted in the distance what appeared to be a beautiful Inca wall. As I had found very little surviving Inca architecture in this portion of the town, I was thrilled. The wall could be a critical piece of the puzzle, help me to reconstruct what the Inca royal estate had looked like, and I began to envision the various possibilities. As Jacinto and I hiked over the hill from Simeona’s house to the new wall, I felt my chest tighten, not only due to the altitude (11,000 feet) but also because of my own towering expectations. However, upon arriving at the wall, I was filled with disappointment. Although the wall had the formal elements of an Inca wall (which I had noticed from afar), up close the wall revealed some surprising evidence. Staring back at me on the stone blocks were the small, evenly distributed tool marks unmistakably left by a particular metal chisel, a tool that was brought to the Andes after the Spanish invasion in 1532 CE. This made the wall useless to my study of imperial Inca architecture. Since the wall was clearly erected after 1532, it could not have been part of the original Inca royal estate, which had been built for the ruler Thupa ‘Inka sometime between 1480 and 1500 CE (Figure 1). Thus, at first I dismissed the wall as an anomaly of the colonial period and returned to study the architecture at Chinchero that was built during the imperial Inca period. Yet, in the next few months, more and more anomalous walls appeared, and the questions regarding their significance continued to grow in my mind as I measured and mapped the indigenous town. After a few months, the rainy season came full force to the south-central Andes, turning the steep, stone-lined streets in town into cascading fountains and mountain paths into muddy traps, rendering fieldwork impossible. I escaped to the archives and libraries of Cuzco and began to focus on the issue of the anomalous walls from the Spanish occupation. I searched the literature on Inca architecture built in the colonial period, only to discover that there was very little written on the topic. As I read further, I also realized that there was no actual place for Inca—or for that matter indigenous—architecture in the current definitions of Latin American architecture in the colonial period, at least not in any meaningful way. Instead, I found that any opportunities to allow for its existence seemed to disappear, occluded by rhetorical conventions (such as architectural categories and naming practices) and falling between disciplinary boundaries and scholarly assumptions (such as the relationship between style and ethnicity, as well as historical and cultural ruptures and periodizations). My discovery of these slips and occlusions not only revealed how a part of the architectural record had been overlooked, it also uncovered a larger problem of how colonial-era indigenous architecture has been seen or, more accurately, not seen by scholars.