Chapter 24

Afterword: Power and Propitiation in the Andes

Tristan Platt
The preceding chapters have addressed, with a wealth of
new evidence, one of the key ritual complexes of power
and propitiation in the Andes. How did the Incas, who
formed and governed the greatest state of Pre-Columbian
America, extend their solar theocracy and ancestral cults
by projecting them as spiritually valid for different populations, bringing new provinces and groups of worshippers
into tributary and affinal relations with Cusco? This book
provides a fresh empirical and methodological framework
for understanding the central place of religion and ritual
in Andean, particularly Inca, processes of state expansion. My comments cannot do justice to all the themes
presented, but I will select a few that seem of comparative
anthropological interest and end with some suggestions
for the future.
The ontological premise for Inca success lies in the
Andean capacity to tap into, exchange with and even
transform into (e.g. through lithification, as in the case of
the Ayar brothers of Manco Capac at Cusco) the animate
materiality of their biosphere (Duviols 1979; Astvaldsson
2000; Bray 2009). A central idea is that of kama- (spirit,
soul)whence kamaq (one who infuses spirit) and kamasqa
(one so infused)which gained currency in modern Andean
studies following seminal articles by Grald Taylor (1974)
and Pierre Duviols (1978). The idea of an animated cosmos
is a necessary preface to Andean ritual. Particularly powerful are the vivifying effects of stars and lightning that can
infuse earthly forms with life and, correctly invoked, may
encourage human and animal increase (miray), as well
as the growth of stones and metals as organic materials
(Pachacuti Yamqui 1993 [1613]; Urton 1981; Zilkowski
1997; Bouysse-Cassagne 1997, 2004; Staller and Stross
2013). Mountains, rocks and crags, stone and adobe bricks,
flowers and trees (mallki), as well as precious amulets of
fertility (sometimes called khuya rumi, or illa, Flores
Ochoa 1977), and the phallic huanca stones that accompany ancestral mummies (Duviols 1979), may contain
this embodied power. The same force emanates from the
stone building blocks of temples, buildings and platforms
(Ogburn), or in the designs of sculpted felines (Astuhuamn),
which infuse with spirit the performance settings for rituals,
thereby empowering the Incas acts of propitiation.

The guiding thread between the chapters lies with the

rituals of state developed through a certain symbolic
structure, or group of structures, sometimes called ushnu,
a word possibly from Ancash in northern Peru (Pino Matos
2004a), whose scope and definition is in debate throughout the book. Although some ushnus are identified and
described in early colonial texts, many structures today
called ushnu have been given the name by archaeologists
(following Julio C. Tello and John Hyslop), who take as
diagnostic the presence of a platform, sometimes with a
staircase, and accompanying ritual activities. Zilkowski
takes a platform with a plaza as an ushnu, not necessarily
accompanied by a soakaway (cf. Hyslop 1985). However,
in some accounts there is also a pillar, gnomon, or standing
ancestral stone (huanca), as at Cusco, where it was bound
with gold and set upright in a basin with a soakaway for
receiving libations; and Duviols (1979: 21) shows clearly
that huanca can be the male counterpart of a female spring
or fountain (puquio). Many new archaeological cases are
presented in this volume that show the association between
ushnus and other classic Inca structures (kallankas, acllahuasis, palaces etc.), whose combination is characteristic
of Inca town planning in the provinces.
The ritual purpose at ushnus involves invoking the dead
and the waters in and beneath the earth, and bringing them
into relation with the sky and observable celestial phenomena (most importantly, the Sun, both above and beneath
the earth) (Moyano). The Incas and the officiating priests
assumed and displayed their responsibility for propitiating
the union between the dead and the living, in whom ancestral souls were thought by some groups to be reincarnated
(e.g. the Cavinas of Ausangate mentioned by Cieza de Len,
cited by Escalante Gutirrez and Valderrama Fernndez;
cf. Platt 2002). In the classic scenario, they performed
their sacred roles at an altar (Bertonio 1984 [1612]) on a
platform, enthroned at the centre of a public spectacle, or
sometimes on a mountaintop, drawing together the people
in the surrounding region.
One problem is that few structures called ushnu
combine all these functions, and some may be fulfilled by
other structures with different names. Many authors therefore throw the net wide to draw in additional phenomena

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relating to high altitude margins and boundary stones

(sayhua) (McEwan), roads as vectors of empire with platforms constructed alongside, standing stones and gnomons,
pilgrimage centres, flat-topped hills at different altitudes,
stones thrown by travellers to raise piles at mountain passes
(apachetas), shrines and temples, canals and rivers, and the
dramatic backdrop of the snow-capped Andes themselves.
Others feel that this approach empties the term of meaning,
and prefer to restrict its usage to those sites identified as
ushnus in the early colonial sources (e.g. Coben).
Several authors assume, or attempt to demonstrate, a
large and relatively stable set of religious ideas and practices that can be traced back millenia; the ethnographic
papers draw this continuity through until the present
(Arnold, Ferreira, Escalante Gutirrez and Valderrama
Fernndez). Ramn Joffr, I think rightly, warns against a
tendency to homogenise the Andean past, the problem
being rather to historicise its transformations. Certainly,
there is an essentialising timelessness in some chapters:
the idea of a single religious tradition descended from
the axis mundi of Chavin, El Lanzn, through the Middle
Horizon empires of Wari and Tiwanaku, to the Coricancha
in Cusco, and even into the period of Christian occupation.
Comparisons with the great coastal pyramids suggest to
some authors an underlying persistence and permanence
in Andean ideas of life and death, time and space, across
the centuries.
While the emphasis on a seamlessly evolving Andean
rituality may be plausible at one level, it was clearly
marked by warfare, violence, politico-religious conflict
and rupture, together with continual adaptation of social,
ritual and technological supports and settings, which
reached its climax under the Inca. There were regular
changes in theological and aesthetic styles, together with
the overthrowing of divinities, huacas or ritual procedures,
to be replaced with new ones (such as Pariacacas triumph
over Huallallo Carhuincho in the Huarochiri Manuscript).
Before the Christian extirpation of idolatry campaigns of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, an Inca exorcism
of local witchcraft, expressed by the sealing up of magical
blue and white stones from the Late Intermediate with
Inca incense burners placed on top, has been detected at
Los Amarillos (Argentina) (Nielsen 2006). In this volume,
Vivanco Pomacanchari examines the alternation between
Chanka and Inca ushnus in Ayacucho, where Chanka
round platforms were followed by square platforms built
by the victorious Inca Pachacuti, before these were topped
again with rough round platforms by the Chanka after the
European invasion. The author infers an early colonial
recovery of a Late Intermediate ritual consciousness, suggesting that this may have coincided with the revivalist
movement known as the taki unquy, which between 1560
and 1572 may have aimed to restore the cult of the huacas
(Roy 2010).
After the Christian invasion, Andean ideas of death and
(re)birth were subjected to radical change in Lima and
Cusco (Ramos 2010), although in the countryside many
cultural elements, together with their ontological premisses,
survived and were recontextualised (Bouysse-Cassagne and

Chacama 2012). Ritual discontinuity in ushnu contexts also

needs further exploration, not only during the political
transition from the Late Intermediate to the Imperial Inca
periods, but also from one Inca to the next, and into the
Christian period (see Kendall 1985, cited in Astuhuamn
on the ushnu at Mitupampa).
Tom Zuidema, in his opening paper, also attempts to
bring change into the picture by insisting that the basic
structure in Cusco was the soakaway, fountain or underground channel, together with a pillar, stone or gnomon,
in the southwest quarter of the upper moiety square of
Haucaypata. He argues that there was no platform in
Cusco, which was added later to ushnus in the provinces
in response to new political and religious needs. Duviols
points out that the huanca-puquio pair reflects the mythical act of conquest by Manco Capac, when he threw his
gold baton to open the fertile earth (cf. the huanca bound
with gold set in the puquio hole in Cusco). Similarly,
when the Inca appeared to his subjects enthroned on top
of a provincial ushnu platform, this was probably a reenactment of the first Manco Incas appearance at dawn
on a mountaintop to overawe the previous inhabitants of
Cusco. This gives both componentsthe huanca-puquio
pair and the platformtheir mythic raison-dtre, and it
seems that all three elements could be used separately or
in combinations.
However, some provincial ushnus are developments from
pre-Inca ceremonial examples (Vivanco Pomacanchari,
Zilkowski). Moreover, Ian Farrington presents evidence
for two platforms in Cusco, one in Haucaypata and the
other in the Limaqpampa square beyond the Coricancha
(Golden Enclosure, the gold-and-silver-laminated stone
Temple of the Sun at the heart of the empire), although
the dates of construction of these platforms are unknown.
Farrington sees the Coricancha itself as a kind of archetypal
ushnu, where the highest solar rites were performed in
secrecy, sometimes by the Inca alone. Other rites would
have functioned to relay the hidden spectacle to onlookers in the squares outside, like modern television screens
outside restricted access events. If Farrington is correct,
Cusco ushnus (duplicated by moiety and the two parallel
Inca lineages) fall into line with the descriptions of some
provincial ushnus, with the Coricancha and the image of
the Sun, Punchao, at the generative centre of the theocratic
project, although the justification for calling the temple
itself an ushnu remains unclear.
Ushnu is not the only Andean idea that opens onto a
field or family of meanings rather than naming a closed
category: huaca (sacred or uncanny ancestral place,
power or object; an ushnu can also be treated as a
huaca) and ayllu (kin and territorial grouping, sometimes
descended from an ancestral huaca) also challenge precise
definition (Salomon 1991). We have to relate flexibly and
imaginatively to their uses as they arise historically and
ethnographically, rather than trying to fit them into preconceived conceptual pigeonholes. With ushnu, not only
are the linguistic occurrences scattered (see Pino Matos
2010 for an inventory of early colonial citations), but the
primary referent is unknown. The field of meaning emerges,

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Plate 24.1 Pyramid and flagpole, Corpus Christi in San Marcos de Miraflores (1971), North Potos, Bolivia (photo: Tristan Platt).

therefore, in the process of interrogating the historical

texts, and relating them archaeologically to the mute but
animated palimpsests in the landscape, whose traces and
levels reflect the intervention of successive Pre- and PostColumbian generations.
Allen suggests one late referent that passes under a
different name: witqu is a type of qero [drinking cup]
with a hole at the base that opens into a pipe carved with
a channel, observed by the French traveller A.F. Frzier,
probably in Ayacucho, in the early eighteenth century. She
compares this with Cristbal de Molinas sixteenth-century
account of the ushnu in Cusco as a basin with a hole that
drained into a subterranean channel [leading to the houses
of the Teacher of the Cosmos (Pacha Yachachiq), the Sun
and the Lightning (i.e. the Coricancha)], which is taken
(with the huanca) as the primary meaning by Zuidema (cf.
Pino Matos 2005).
The act of libation (challa), or feeding the sacred, is
central to Andean rituality, and is a long-durational constant
in a diverse range of forms and contexts. We offer liquids
and burnt offerings to the animate and animating sources
of power, and they in return will feed us (Ramrez 2005;
this volume). If we neglect them, they will grow hungry
and may eat us or consume our livelihood (kawsay). Today,
too, drops from drinking cups are allowed to fall to the
ground while libating to saints, virgins, mountains, roads,
places, or for buildings, cars and lorries, to propitiate good
fortune, rain, harvests, fertility and health. Sacrifices may be
placed or burnt, with libations, as offerings to the earth at

the corners of a house, or at the foundations of skyscrapers,

bringing safety and prosperity to those dwelling within.
In the Aymara-speaking countryside today, pouring libations also involves the ritual invocation of those features
of the landscape that are relevant to each festive date, as
Abercrombie (1998) showed in his analysis of Kulta libation pathways (Aym. challa thaki). The spatial context and
its pathways may change according to the names invoked
during specific libations, giving rise to multiple readings
of the landscape according to the social, geographical
and calendrical context of each ceremony. This suggests a
range of esoteric knowledges of spatial organisation at even
communal and domestic levels of religious observance:
the appropriate knowledge is manifested by those who
know (yachaq) according to the nature of the fiesta. We
may surmise that, before the European invasion, higher and
wider levels of landscape were invoked by Inca and priestly
officiants on ushnu platforms among themselves, while
more local and intimate readings were available to regional
groups and specialists around and below the ushnu.
All libations announce a centre, the place where the
liquid (blood, chicha, water, wine, urine etc.) is sprinkled,
drunk or poured, with or without a soakaway and even if
performed at a boundary. The priority of place as witness
to events is coded linguistically in Quechua through an
extended use of the direct witness evidential (Howard, cited
in Allen). A platform crystallises and elaborates on this basic
requirement. In its imperial role, the ushnu draws local
peoples to the solar truth, as the place from which the

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solar cult radiates, with the Inca dressed in local costume

to demonstrate local validity. Here conversion may take
place, be confirmed or evaded, a role later prolonged
under the Spanish by the squat, tiered construction of the
Andean church tower, rising as the tower with authority
(turri mayku) above the atrium where the priest preached
to the Indians (Gisbert 1961).
Under the impact of the Christian crusade, therefore,
a pyramidal building continued to absorb and project the
authority of a new god. Viceroy Francisco de Toledo himself
found it politic, before reaching Cusco in 1570, to mobilise
Inca spectacle in favour of his own legitimacy by mounting
the ushnu at Vilcashuamn; and so he was received as the
Inca himself [by] all the chief lords (Guaman Poma 1980
[15831615], ff. 445 [447]). In the twentieth century we
even find republican transformations: in 1971, I observed
in the square of San Marcos de Miraflores (Potos, Bolivia) a
four-tiered pyramid (perhaps designed by a schoolteacher),
which was used during the harvest festival of Corpus Cristi
by one of the Macha moieties as the platform for a national
flagpole (see Plate 24.1). The other moiety scrambled to
find their own flagpole, thus duplicating and empowering
in Andean mode the supreme symbol of republican unity
(cf. Arnold on Qaqachaka, Oruro).
The potential of the ushnu as ceremonial platform and
astronomical site has been studied at Hunuco Pampa
by Pino Matos (2004b), where sight lines are claimed to
mark out the eastern horizon between the solstices, like
the sukanka pillars viewed from the Haucaypata square
in Cusco (the difficulties of exactly fixing the equinox
have been pointed out by Ruggles 1997; cf. Zuidema, this
volume, n. 6). This ushnu concentrated a set of functions,
including ceremonial conversion, celestial observation and
spectacular displays of power and public feasting as shown
by Craig Morris and Donald Thompson (1985).
Craig Morris and Jean-Pierre Protzen studied another
less-known ushnu at Tambo Colorado in the coastal valley
of Pisco, where a great square is surrounded by a complex
of constructions, including what the chronicler Martn
de Mura called a palace at one corner, which fits well
with the distinction between public and private spaces,
with front yards for interaction with the local populace
kept apart from the inner rooms for the Incas reclusion.
Separated by what may have been a moiety divide, the
other corner holds a building possibly occupied by the
high priest, just next to the ceremonial spaces adjoining
the ushnu (Protzen). We can sense a separation of public
ritual from the elite esoteric protocols (including those of
regional Inca governors and local elite lineages) that took
place beyond the ken of the local ethnic commoners.
A valuable clue here is the acoustic distance between
the ceremonial officiants on stage, and the spectators
beyond the platform: the first could be seen but not heard
by the congregation, as Henry Stobart points out. Again,
we may infer that many of the activities around the throne
and altar were secret or esoteric rites, even at a distance
from Cusco, rather than public acts of audible performance.
Interaction did not take place until the Inca, dressed in local
ethnic costume, came down from the ushnu to drink and

dance with the local groups, in a gesture of actor-spectator

participation. He also opened the state storehouses to help
poverty-stricken orphans (Betanzos, cited in Protzen). This
brought the local lords and people beneath the ushnu into
grateful communion with the Inca (had some local lords
taken part in the ceremonies on the ushnu?) as expressed
through song, dance and libation pouring.
These acts of condescension brought the Incas presence into local society, as well as local society into his
presence; just as he invited the lords and their huacas (if
shown to be capable of shamanic speech) back to Cusco.
Shared drunkenness and dance breaks down hierarchies
and horizontalises interpellations; even today these are the
preferred ways of receiving authorities, powerful outsiders
and guests. They may encourage the absorption by the local
congregation of the Incas (and later authorities) ontological perspective (Allen). People at the cupola of power must
express to themselves as well as to others their own sacred
purposes; in the Andes, getting drunk with people was a
way of sharing the embodiment of sacred spirit (kama-),
aided by the use and distribution of hallucinogenics and
coca leaf.
It is instructive to contrast the contemporary situation
in fifteenthsixteenth-century China. Here, the emperor
also redeployed performative ritual modules to the
provinces, where they acquired new meanings. But the
Ming emperors, from the mid-15th century walled off in
their palace from their subjects, did not share conviviality
with commoners, leaving them to establish their own community pacts and religious associations until intervening
from afar, after 1567, to secularise them not always
successfully. Moreover, mutual distrust meant that, rather
than a nurturing personage, the mid-sixteenth-century
Ming emperor was seen as the personification of forces
that guard the prerogatives of State power (McDermott
1999). The contrast with the redistributive generosity of
the theocratic Inca (Murra 1978 [1956] is clear, and raises
the issue of what exactly is meant by hierarchy in each of
these two very different ancient states.
So the idea of ushnu is expandable in various directions.
From an archaeological perspective, Meddens states that
out of 20 high altitude platforms (illapa ushnus) prospected
in Ayacucho, only three had signs of a soakaway, although
six had a direct visual relationship with a nearby lake,
introducing a perspectival expansion towards the ushnus
wider archaeological and landscape context, including a
calendrical aspect: access would have been difficult during
the rainy months. The expansion becomes panoramic
in the work of Patrice Lecoq and Thibault Saintenoy at
Choqekiraw. Here, an ushnu function is projected upwards
to the cut-off and levelled mountain above the Inca site,
whence astronomical observations could include the Sun
cradled by the eastern peaks at dawn, while far below the
river Apurmac (where the Inca purified himself after confession) flows in a majestic expansion of lesser libational
trickles. At Choqekiraw (and some other sites) the ritual
context reaches cosmic proportions.
A recurring theme is the geoarchaeology of the stone,
silts, fills and rubble packed into the ushnu platforms, often

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brought from considerable distances (Meddens, Ogburn,

Branch, Frouin, Kemp et al., Ferreira), a practice that can
also be observed today (Ferreira, Escalante Gutirrez and
Valderrama Fernndez, Arnold). This movement of earth
and rocks was probably carried out by the people who
move mountains, a category of tributaries put to work by
the Inca to keep them busy, and who, after the Christian
invasion, continued constructing false mountains (cerros
postizos) by secretly moving vast loads of earth to conceal
mining adits from the Spanish (Platt et al. 2006). Under
the Incas, these earth-movers brought to Haucaypata the
presence of the western ocean and coastal dead in the form
of sea sand, which was seeded with little figurines of gold,
silver and Spondylus (shells from the warm waters of the
Gulf of Guayaquil) probably amulets of multiplication
(miray). In return, the sacred tilth from the square was taken
away to spread its fertility elsewhere. The mythic antecedent
for these actions may have been the removal of sacred mud
from the waterlogged square at the founding of Cusco to
spread on the newly formed agricultural terraces (Duviols
1979). Similarly, we have seen that dressed blocks of stone
were transported from Cusco quarries to Saraguro (Quito) to
implant the new spiritual architecture in the north; ushnu
platforms, too, were filled with silt and earth from sacred,
often distant points of origin. These are examples of the
movement of animate materiality, and it would be good
to know more about the packaging used to carry the earth
(probably woven sacks), on the backs of porters or llamas.
The spirit of other ecological levels is similarly convoked in modern Aymara rites by including objects and
substances brought up or down the Cordilleras (shells and
dried starfish from the coast, coca from the eastern piede-monte, herbs and honey from the valleys, tin, copper
and lead figurines from the highland mining towns, etc).
Francisco Ferreira provides valuable ethnographic data
from Taulli (Ayacucho), which he interprets in terms of
a general concept of ritual symbolic complementarity
(cf. Escalante Gutirrez and Valderrama Fernndez for
Ausangate, Cusco).
Richly dressed prehispanic figurines of gold, silver
and Spondylus shell, like those that seeded the sea sand
in the Cusco square of Haucaypata, have been found
on volcanic snowpeaks as far south as Llullaillaco on
the ArgentineChilean border, perhaps representing the
souls or kama- of the sacrificed children, or capac hucha
(supreme penances), whose small frozen bodies were
found perfectly preserved, magnificently attired and converted into huacas (Ceruti 2003; Dransart 2000; McEwan
and van de Guchte 1992). This constitutes a repetition at
high altitude of the sacrificial practice described in detail by
Hernndez Prncipe (1923 [16212]; cf. Zuidema 1973) for
Tanta Carhua, the beautiful 10-year old daughter of the lord
of Ocros, buried alive wrapped in magnificent weavings
on her fathers initiative as an offering for the Inca, and
so transformed into a huaca who continued to command
devotion even after the extirpation of her bones by the
priest. A relation between tombs and ushnus is posited
by some authors (Meddens, Zilkowski), linking ongoing
practices of propitiation with ethnic or lineage dawning

places (paqarina) or ancestral mummies (Que. mallki; Aym.

tunu) considered as the fertile roots of living scions.
Like the policy of moving populations (mitimaes),
the alternating warp and weft of the loom, or the alloys
subjected to surface depletion in tumbaga metallurgy
(Lechtman 1984), value seems to have been placed on
the fertile practice of mingling and layering people and
substances, retaining the kinship and ayllu links of those
transferred, like the sources of the stone, sand and rubble
shifted. Sometimes the newcomers had to defer to local
authorities or social contexts, like alloys under the hammer;
at other times they were placed in positions of vigilance
or control. Zilkowski suggests that mitimaes would have
had their own smaller ushnus. This interregional dynamic,
along with the creation of new Cuscos from Tomebamba
to Chuquisaca, the multiplication of state ushnu complexes, and the projection of sacred mountain names over
great distances, such as that of the great Inca huaca of
Huanacaure whose name was transferred to mountains
at Hunuco and Tomebamba (Escalante Gutirrez and
Valderrama Fernndez; for the projection of South Andean
mountain names along sightlines, see Cruz 2009; Cruz et
al. 2013)all dissolved and recreated boundaries between
old and new centres of power, enriching local ethnic and
animate materials by admixtures, while endowing them
with magical efficacy by affirming consubstantiality with
the archetypal powers of Cusco at the centre. Although the
examples of soil transfer given here mainly concern Inca
sites, similar cases had occurred centuries earlier at the
Middle Horizon centres of Tiawanaku and Wari (Meddens).
An important hypothesis presented in this volume concerns certain ritual spaces, particularly those where many
different pilgrims congregated, which appear to have been
kept carefully clean of all human traces (Ogburn). These
pilgrimage sites have been, as it were, vacuum-cleaned
from the archaeological record. Carmen Escalante
Gutirrez and Ricardo Valderrama Fernndez document
this practice ethnographically at Ausangate. In the case of
some Chanka-Inca sites, it appears that the Inca kept the
ushnu clean of all potsherds, while the Chanka left their
rubbish behind them (Vivanco Pomacanchari). This means
that, for some contact-period pilgrimage centres, such as
Porco near Potos (Platt et al. 2006; cf. Van Buren and
Presta 2010), or Cerro Cuzco in Lipez (Cruz et al. 2013),
it is only with the help of the documentary record that
the occupation of mountainsides or ceremonial spaces
by thousands of visitors can be confirmed, indicating
the importance of not favouring in advance one research
tactic over another.
The geographical spread of the chapters is confined
mainly to the relatively abundant record of the Peruvian
central and south-central Andes, with one or two references
to the north and the far south. Bolivia is said (mistakenly)
to be bereft of ushnus (but see Rivera 2013). With an
expanded notion of ushnu we should certainly bring in the
high mountain shrines of Porco, Potos and neighbouring
peaks, as well as the chullpas and sayhuas of Atacama and
the adoratorios of Lipez (Sanhueza 2005; Nielsen 2006;
Cruz 2010; Cruz et al. 2013).

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High puna ushnus are presented as a certain kind

of ushnu whose central Andean documentation is one
of the contributions of this volume (Meddens, Vivanco
Pomacanchari, Zilkowski). For Ramn Joffr, this is a
third category (besides Cusco and the provinces): high
puna herders ushnus were smaller, and seem also to have
been called illapa ushnus (lit. lightning ushnus), often built
alongside roads (Albornoz 1996 [15815]). The contrast
reflects Duviols (1972/1973) distinction between farmers
rituals below (huari) and high Andean herders rituals above
(llacuaz). The relationship between these high Andean structures and lightning as fertile bolt (Urton 1981; Zilkowski
1997; Bouysse-Cassagne 1997; Platt and Quisbert 2008;
Platt 2014) is discussed here by Staller, the triple lightning
being a supreme form of light and energy also worshipped
in the Coricancha, along with the Sun and the Teacher of
the Cosmos (Pacha Yachachiq). The bolt again recalls the
hurling of his gold baton by Manco Capac, in his founding
act of fertility in Cuscos Haucaypata.
Here the concept is again expanded: Cirilo Vivanco
Pomacanchari emphasises that cultural features frequently
associated with isolated mountain summit platforms in
Ayacucho include apachetas (piles of stones at a mountain
pass), sayhuas (boundary gnomons) and huancas (tapering
ancestral stones). These may be associated with ethnic
and geographical boundaries (Meddens, McEwan). As an
example, I shall take the extraordinary sayhuas of Atacama
at the southern limits of the tropical puna ecology (Troll
1958 [1943]) not mentioned in this volume, which have
been studied by Cecilia Sanhueza (2005, 2012).
In Quechua, sayhua is defined as mojn (landmark)
or lindero (boundary) of lands and roads; however, it is
linked by the lexicographers with the term ticnu, meaning
the zenith or higher point in the sky, that is, the time
of day when the sun passes overhead (midday) (Santo
Toms 1951 [1560]; Gonzlez Holgun 1952 [1608] cited
in Sanhueza 2005): the zenith passage of the Sun, the
culmination of stars, the Moon meridian pass, and the
observation of constellations and dark areas of the Milky
Way (Moyano). (We may note that ushnu and ticnu share
the same unexplained terminationnu). Sanhueza follows
the trail of sayhua towers along the long Inca road between
Peine and Copiap through the desert of Atacama, close to
the irregular, deceptive flow of the river Anchallullac (big
liar) that descends from the huacas, or capac huchas, of
the volcano of Llullaillaco.
Halfway between Peine and Copiap, Sanhueza calls
attention to four dilapidated column markers at Vaquillas
(huaquillas = couple) that correspond to the transition from
the tropical seasonal cycle with heavy summer rains, and
the beginnings of a temperate seasonal rhythm, with winter
rains that dominate in Chile further south. Indeed, a source
of 157175 associates the river Anchallullac with los
mojones que dividan las provincias de Chile de las del Pir
en tiempo de los Ingas (the border markers which divided
the provinces of Chile from those of Peru at the time of the
Incas). At the entrance to the valley of Copiap, El Chaco
(chaku =disjunction) again marks the change. If these Inca
sayhuas were ushnus then they were also gnomons oriented

towards the sky (cf. Sanhueza 2012: 213), and represented

an extension, covering a vast open space, of functions that
further north were concentrated at or near a platform and/
or a huanca-puquio couple.
What of the wider climatological dynamic behind the
growth of high altitude ushnus in the Late Intermediate
and Late Horizon? A final chapter examines proposed correlations between the collapse of states, with associated
population movements, and the climatic changes evidenced by El Nio-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events as
recorded in the ice core of Quellcaya near Cusco over some
1800 years (Thompson and Davis). Arid climate conditions
on the altiplano were synchronous with the dominance of
coastal cultures, while populations tended to spread toward
the highlands during high altitude pluvial. They contrast
the cruder forms of environmental determinism with
those views that emphasise the interplay of anthropogenic
factors, including strategies enabled by skills, religious
and technical knowledge, and social organisation. Thus
Tiwanakus apparent inability to cope with increasing
aridity on the altiplano (Kolata) is contrasted with coastal
Chimus adaptation to increased flooding through a shift to
raised fields and irrigation.
Some have suggested that increased aridity in the
highlands may have displaced populations upwards to
establish sacred sites, mountaintop shrines and ushnu
platforms in order to propitiate better rainfall (i.e. more
lightning cults and illapa ushnus) (Meddens et al. 2010). The
same climatic factors have been linked to the post AD 1000
increase in altiplanic hillfort construction, and hence to the
association of the Late Intermediate (c. AD 11001438)
with a demonstrable increase in local warfare (Arkush
2008). A recovery of camelid populations after 1450 is
inferred from the growth in the number of llama mites in
the cores, although the contribution of the Aymara- and
Puquina-speaking camelid-herding lacustrine kingdoms
(Late Intermediate) is left unexplored.
As with all statistical affirmations, the anthropological
interest lies just as much with those outside the norm as
with those who exemplify it. After 1880, when the authors
point out a counter-tendential movement of migration to
the coast during a wetter period that extends to the present,
due to Peruvian state encouragement but with the risk of
unsustainability, those who choose to stay in the highlands
are of special interest.
I will end by mentioning briefly a few general issues
arising from these papers.

Faith or manipulation?
Were the Inca skilled political operators who hoodwinked
local societies, using ushnu performances, among other
tricks, to do it? Or were they sincere in their proselytising
zeal? This slightly anachronistic question, still sometimes
raised, depends on a false opposition. It recalls Spanish
ideas of Inca tyranny as denounced by Juan Gines de

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Seplveda in 1550, and demonstrated at Viceroy Francisco

de Toledos request by Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa in his
Historia de los Incas (1572). Sarmiento conflated several
Cusco dynastic histories into one master narrative to
justify his representation of the Inca as oppressive tyrants
beguiled by the devil, thus defending the title to Peru of
the king of Spain. We still await an edition of Sarmiento
that reassigns each fragment of the narrative patchwork to
the precise social group, panaca or ayllu that produced it.
But although many Inca acts may appear tyrannical,
Andean warfare and violence was ritually and calendrically modulated (Zuidema 1967; Zilkowski 1997; Lamana
2008; Golte 2009). Warfare was a ritual through which
cosmic disputes between different huacas could be settled,
and it was the huacas superhuman victory or defeat that
brought political and economic consequences for their
respective devotees. Hence groups carried their huacas
with them to battle. Equally, Inca faith in their own mission
was a necessary precondition for their project; they aimed
to achieve the acceptance of their Sun by each new province, making gifts and accepting chosen local huacas into
their pantheon, while crushing rebellions.
We may again compare the case of China. Laidlaw
(1999) observes that, if we remember how central to the
Confucian notion of emperorship was the belief in the
emperors kinship with Heaven, then the idea of a radical
disjunction, and therefore the possibility of a binary choice
between magical and socio-political factors, seems highly
artificial. The same argument can be made as regards
the Inca, son of the Sun, allowing us to move beyond the
opposition between religious conviction and realpolitik,
since (as the history of many political faiths shows) neither
excludes the other.

Functionalism or counter-hegemony?
Brian Bauer and Charles Stanish (2001), in discussing pilgrimages to the great Inca temple on the Island of the Sun
(Lake Titicaca), contrast a Durkheimian-Marxist view of
ritual as functioning to reproduce the social order, with
Victor Turners argument for the counter-hegemonic force
of local shrines. From the first perspective, state-sponsored
centres are elite constructions designed to perpetuate class
distinctions, political authority, ideological legitimacy and
divine sanction of the existing social order. In the second,
local shrines may challenge the authority of the state by
setting up competing religious icons.
Here we should remember the diversity of political
arrangements devised historically by the Incas for the
different places and provinces of the empire (Malpass and
Alconini 2010). Unlike the Christians, the Inca respected
and incorporated many local huacas, when they (or their
shamans) were sufficiently articulate. Certain places of
pilgrimage such as Pachacamac and the Island of the
Sun, among several other pre-Inca shrineswere treated
with immense respect. The Island of the Sun was the largest

solar shrine after the Coricancha, and was one of the great
pilgrimage centres of the empire. It was connected to the
solar shrine at Copacabana, seat of the Sucsu Panaca of
Cusco and Challku Yupanki, Inca Apu of the Collasuyo, and
thence to the solar huaca of Potos (Del Ro 2009). However,
alliances were established with local chieftainships, even if
the Inca held the balance. On some occasions the huacas
were crushed, as at Los Amarillos; but at other times they
were given an honourable place in the campaign for solar
dominance, as in the case of the Qaraqara who were called
by Inca Huayna Capac after the morning star that announces
the arrival of the Sun (Platt et al. 2006; Platt 2014).

Political dispute and

hermeneutic warfare
A different perspective on the Inca state can be reached by
comparing its rituals with those of other ancient and early
modern states, such as China, Bali, Tenochtitln, or the first
British Empire, especially as regards the role of theatre,
spectacle and protocol. In the Andes and elsewhere, it is
tempting to invoke the idea of a theatre state, a phrase
coined by Clifford Geertz (1980) in his study of state rituals
in Bali. But although theatrical elements are present in the
Andes, not everything performed on the platform of an
ushnu was for the wider consumption of the audience for,
as we have seen, they could not hear it. Much of the ritual
was therefore of elite interest only, in the provinces as in
the Coricancha. Thus Laidlaw (1999) observes that Chinese
palace debates on the details of esoteric ritual were of great
political importance, rejecting the idea of a Chinese theatre
state. Significant political change could be brought about
through slight differences of protocol in which Confucian
and Buddhist theologians worked out their differences.
The use of such differences in the Andes suggests that
ushnu ritual was not always a public expression of the solar
state. I am reminded of a discussion I witnessed in 1974
between two ritual specialists in Tignamar (Pre-Cordillera
of Arica) concerning the number of llamas to be sacrificed
at each side of the church door. One favoured three each
side, the other wanted two on one side and four on the
other. The apparently trivial difference between 23 and
2+4 gave rise to a controversy that could, in earlier times,
have phrased important political disagreements. Today this
kind of hermeneutic warfare (to use the sinologists phrase)
can still mark ethnic or local differences.

Hierarchy and heterarchy

I return finally to the animistic dimension of Andean ontology, as argued here by Catherine Allen invoking ideas
from Amazonian anthropology, and to the peculiar style
of Andean hierarchy as manifest in ushnu ritual when

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compared with Chinese state rituals. Eduardo Viveiros

de Castros argument (1998) for the spiritual unity of
Amazonian social groups and species beneath the diversity
of their external forms can be compared with the unity of
the kama- force underlying its different manifestations in
the Andes. The word kama- is sometimes replaced by the
Spanish word animu, also meaning soul or spirit, which is
present in all living things (including, in the Andes, stars
and the minerals they engender). Transformations involve
acquiring the specific forms of hunger of lithified persons,
animals or birds (e.g. a sacred stone crag, huanca, eagle
or jaguar), suggesting a similarity or overlap between
Andean and Amazonian ontologies. This view enriches our
understanding of the performance settings of state rituals,
making officiants the beneficiaries of the animate materiality around them.
The ushnu material presented in this volume confirms the
appropriateness of exploring the relevance of Amazonian

ideas in the Andes, and vice versa. With the emergence of

studies of extended heterarchical and hierarchical chiefdoms in the Amazon (e.g. Heckenberger 2004; McEwan et
al. 2001), for example, it becomes necessary to re-examine
the precise nature of Andean hierarchy, often assumed
rather than problematised. These papers suggest for the Inca
a form of hierarchy mediated by horizontalising practices
(reciprocity) and in tension with decentralised heterarchy,
together with welfare distributions to the orphaned poor
(redistribution) that invited or cajoled regional groups into
accepting the Incas (solar) point of view. Ming emperors,
by contrast, did not get drunk with commoners. Hence the
need to bring the expressions of sacred and political power
in the Andes and Amazon into comparative dialogue, and
simultaneously to enrich our understanding of Andean
practices of heterarchy and hierarchy by comparing and
contrasting them with those of other ancient and early
modern states.

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