Although Ruiz de Navamuel wrote the above statement, the information that it contains should be given special attention, since Polo de Ondegardo was one of the signatories of the document. Ruiz de Navamuel documents for the first time that Polo de Ondegardo secretly buried the majority of the royal mummies. Secrecy was needed to dispose of the bodies so that they would not be exhumed and worshiped by the natives of the region. However, it is almost certain that Polo de Ondegardo sent the four mummies that were “embalmed and as fresh as when they died” to Lima. Supporting the observations recorded by Acosta, Ruiz de Navamuel indicates that among the best-preserved royal mummies were those of Huayna Capac, Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui, and Mama Ocllo. Furthermore, like Calancha, Ruiz de Navamuel records the fact that a jar containing the burned remains of an Inca, most likely those of Viracocha Inca, was recovered. However, unlike other information sources on the royal mummies, the 1572 document states that Polo de Ondegardo also found the mummy of Amaru Topa Inca, a well-known person in Inca history. Amaru Topa Inca was the eldest son of Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui, who was passed over as crown prince in favor of his younger brother, Topa Inca Yupanqui.67 Although he did not succeed his father as ruler, Amaru Topa Inca did retain considerable power. For example, it is believed that Amaru Topa Inca was in charge of Cuzco when his brother, Topa Inca Yupanqui, was away on military campaigns.68 Although he may never have been the principal ruler of the Inca Empire, Amaru Topa Inca’s high social position in imperial Cuzco is unquestionable, and there is every reason to believe he would have been mummified at the time of his death.69
MAP 12.1. Locations where the royal Inca mummies were discovered by Polo de Ondegardo in 1559
Summary and Discussion
Ancestor worship was a religious tradition going back thousands of years in the Andes. It reached its most elaborate form, however, in the city of Cuzco at the height of the Inca Empire. When the Spaniards entered the city, they were amazed to see the mummies of previous kings and queens playing an active role in the politics of the day. The mummies were accompanied by oracles who spoke for them as well as by various attendants who served them. Because the king’s wealth was passed down from one generation to another, the descendants of each ruler were able to maintain elaborate mummy cults for generations.
The ruling Inca visited the mummies of previous kings to seek advice, develop alliances, and form consensus among the royal lineages of the city. The ruling Inca could also “animate” a wide range of objects with his persona. Representations of a ruling Inca could be created with bits of his hair or fingernails, or sculpted from other materials into his likeness. These figures could be sent on missions to represent the ruler and to speak on his behalf.
The Spaniards saw the mummies and their cults as both religious and political threats to Christian rule of the Andes. Seeking to destroy the foundations of the indigenous religions in their newly won territories, the Spaniards began a series of campaigns against idolatry. In Cuzco this task fell to the newly appointed chief magistrate, Polo de Ondegardo. He was ordered in 1559 to find and destroy the mummified Inca kings and to expose the idolatrous rituals that surrounded the mummy cults (Map 12.1). Although Polo de Ondegardo’s report on his activities has been lost, it is clear from the writing of his contemporaries that the investigation achieved stunning success. Within a relatively short time, all the mummies of the deceased Inca kings were discovered and confiscated. Polo de Ondegardo found several, if not all, of the kings of Lower Cuzco in a house in the village of Wimpillay, a few kilometers south of Cuzco. In contrast, the kings of Upper Cuzco were recovered in different locations. Inca Roca was located in the village of Larapa and Yahuar Huacac, near the town of Paullu. The ashes of Viracocha Inca were found after they were moved from Caquia Jaquijahuana (Juchuy Cuzco), and Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui’s remains were identified in a suburb of Cuzco. Topa Inca Yupanqui’s ashes were recovered in Calispuquio near Sacsayhuaman, and Huayna Capac’s mummy was seized while it was being moved between hiding places in Cuzco.
PHOTO 12.4. Parts of the old Hospital of San Andrés still exist in downtown Lima. Most recently, it has been called Colegio Nacional de Mujeres “Oscar Miró Quesada de la Guerra.”
Historic sources also indicate that Polo de Ondegardo sent several of the royal Inca mummies to Lima, where they were placed on public display within the confines of the San Andrés Hospital (Hampe 1982). Although the accounts vary, it is most likely that these included the mummies of Huayna Capac, Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui, and Mama Ocllo as well as that of Amaru Topa Inca and the ashes of Viracocha Inca. Acosta, writing in 1590, provides the best account of the royal mummies in Lima. From his description, it seems that the mummies had begun to decay after being shipped from the dry, cool climate of Cuzco to the warm and moist conditions of Lima. The last recorded eyewitness report of the royal mummies in Lima is that of Calancha, who states that in 1638 several Inca mummies, along with the jar containing the ashes of Viracocha Inca, were still in the hospital.
The old hospital of San Andrés still exists just over the Rimac River from downtown Lima (Photo 12.4).70 It continued to serve as a hospital until 1875, when the health authorities of the Republic of Peru opened the newly constructed Dos de Mayo Hospital in Lima (Hampe 2000). The former royal hospital housed two Catholic convents over the course of the next century. In more recent times, after having been declared a national historical monument in 1972, the San Andrés building has been used for instructional purposes, hosting the Colegio Nacional de Mujeres “Oscar Miró Quesada de la Guerra” (Hampe 2000). Although much of the hospital grounds, which once covered an entire city block, have been lost to urban growth, approximately 80 percent of the original hospital building and its adjacent enclosures have survived.
PHOTO 12.5. Several royal Inca mummies may be buried on the grounds of the old Hospital of San Andrés.
Researchers became interested in finding the Inca mummies in Lima during the late nineteenth century. In 1876 José Toribio Polo (1877: 378) opened a large crypt in the hospital looking for the mummies but found no evidence of them (Hampe 1982). Some sixty years later, in 1937, José de la Riva-Agüero conducted limited excavations within the hospital grounds but again found nothing related to the royal mummies (Hampe 1982). Since that time, it has largely been assumed that the location of the mummies will never be known. Nevertheless, a renewed effort to find them was started in 2001 by Teodoro Hampe Martínez and myself.71 Using nondestructive Ground Penetrating Radar technology, we surveyed the surviving hospital grounds, testing for anomalies below the current ground surface (Photo 12.5). The results of that investigation are still being analyzed.
CHAPTER 13
Overview of the Inca Heartland
FOR ANTHROPOLOGICAL ARCHAEOLOGISTS, the topic of state development is one of the major theoretical issues of our time. Surprisingly, the Inca have been largely excluded from these discussions, because relatively little archaeological research has been conducted in the Cuzco region. Although over sixty years have passed since Rowe’s initial work on the Inca and pre-Inca remains in the Cuzco Valley, archaeological studies of the Inca are still just beginning. What theories have been presented concerning the development of the Inca state are largely derived from readings of the Spanish chronicles, and we know little of the cultures that occupied the Cuzco region before the Inca. In short, despite the critical role that the Inca played in South American history, their heartland remains largely unexplored and the cultural processes that led to their development remain to be investigated.
One of the greatest limitations to understanding the long-term development of societies in the Cuzco region has been the lack of regional surveys in the area. Without a regional perspective of the Inca heartland, the development of models of culture change through time has not been possible. Archaeological work in the Cuzco region has traditionally focused on single sites, especially those that contain monumental architecture. Thus, although important contributions have been made to the study of several of the
largest and best-preserved Inca sites in the region, we know little about the system of settlements that surrounded them. Furthermore, although researchers investigating the pre-Inca occupations of the Cuzco region have dramatically increased our knowledge of the early villages of the area, including Marcavalle and Chanapata, as well as a few of the large sites occupied during the period of Wari influence (Pikillacta and Huaro), there has not been a tradition of archaeological survey that would provide data to place these single sites within the regional contexts of their times.
The present investigation begins to address the need for more thorough regional archaeological research in the Inca heartland through a synthesis of survey data from the Cuzco Valley. An important benefit of conducting a systematic archaeological survey is that it allows researchers to document the locations of all significant archaeological sites in the region, regardless of their age, during the course of the fieldwork. This complete coverage of all sites of all ages permits archaeologists to simultaneously address a number of different research questions within a single problem-oriented research program.
The overall goal of this book is to document the settlement patterns for each major time period in the history of the Cuzco Valley and to examine how those patterns changed over time. Although the major database for the project was a systematic archaeological survey conducted between 1994 and 1999, the project also included two field seasons of excavations to gain additional information on two of the least-understood time periods of the valley: the Archaic Period (9500–2200 BC) and the Qotakalli Period (AD 200–600). Furthermore, I have tried to include the most recent ethnohistoric data when appropriate and to enhance the study with current findings of other researchers working in the region.
Until this research began, it was believed that the Cuzco Valley was first occupied around 1000 BC by small groups of farmers. However, our survey work has identified the remains of much earlier hunter-gatherers who may have arrived as early as 7000 BC during what is here called the Early Archaic Phase (9500–7000 BC). The discovery of preceramic remains necessitates rewriting the cultural history of the valley, and further investigations are needed to better understand these early band societies. Unfortunately, the small population levels, highly mobile lifestyles, and light impact these groups had on the environment makes their campsites extremely difficult to locate. Currently, the earliest people in the valley are represented by only a few projectile points. These points, the remains of hunting activities on the valley slopes, are all made from extremely high quality, nonlocal materials, suggesting that the earliest peoples were traveling widely and curating the finest lithic materials they encountered.
Elsewhere in the Andean highlands it has been documented that hunter-gatherer groups began to settle down and develop larger occupations during the Middle Archaic Phase (7000–5000 BC). This may well have been the case in the Cuzco Valley, since our survey has identified the remains of at least two Middle Archaic occupations. The Late Archaic Phase (5000–2200 BC) marks a time of important shifts in food-procurement strategies. The period begins with most peoples of the sierra still organized in bands and supporting themselves through hunting and the collection of wild plants. Yet by the end of the phase, many of the Late Archaic groups had grown relatively large and semi-sedentary and had begun to experiment with horticulture. Excavations at the site of Kasapata have helped to highlight how and when these gradual processes occurred in the Cuzco Valley. Our excavations identified a dense strata of cultural materials dating to around 4400 BC that contained evidence of a circular hut with a possible hearth, as well as various small pits, projectile points, bone tools, and other domestic debris. The later preceramic occupations at the site presented evidence of remarkably altered subsistence activities. By around 3000 BC, groups at the site were much larger, lived in more permanent dwellings, and were presumably well on the path to animal husbandry and incipient agriculture.
The Formative Period (2200 BC–AD 200) in the Cuzco Valley is marked by the development of ceramics and the concomitant establishment of the permanent villages and agriculture. For analytical purposes, the period is currently subdivided into three phases. The Early Formative Phase (2200 BC–1500 BC) represents the final transition from a mobile lifestyle to a fully sedentary one based largely on domesticated food resources. Our systematic survey found several sites that contained dense lithic debris as well as scattered fragments of sand-tempered ceramics. Additional research is needed at these and other possible Early Formative Phase sites to better understand this critical era of developmental change.
The Middle Formative Phase (1500–500 BC) is best illustrated at the site of Marcavalle, located between Cuzco and San Sebastián. Marcavalle was a small egalitarian village that was occupied for hundreds of years. Numerous other nearly identical villages were located in the valley and adjacent regions. Although supplementing their diets through the hunting of deer and small game, the occupants of these small villages were increasingly dependent on domestic camelids (llamas and alpacas) as well as their own grown foods (corn, beans, quinoa, and potatoes).
Through time, a select few sites grew to occupy disproportionately important roles within the regional settlement patterns. In the Cuzco Basin, it appears that the site of Wimpillay emerged as the center of a small chiefdom-level society during the Late Formative Phase (500 BC–AD 200). The site is the largest Late Formative Phase occupation known in the valley and contains the finest Formative ceramics. Adjacent to Wimpillay is the distinctly round hill of Muyu Orco, the top of which contains a ceremonial sunken court dating to the Late Formative. The emergent leaders of Wimpillay may have controlled the other settlements within a few hours’ walk, and toward the end of the period, perhaps the entire valley came to be united under a single elite clan located in this village.
There is evidence of strong population growth and a shift in settlement locations from knoll and ridge tops to the large alluvial terraces of the valley during the little-studied Qotakalli Period (AD 200–600). This change in settlement pattern is suggestive of a shift from a mixed economy to one based on more intensive agriculture, perhaps focusing on the production of maize. At this time, a series of large villages developed on the south side of the Cuzco Basin, and the Oropesa Basin area filled with numerous scattered hamlets. The greatest concentration of population, however, was at the western end of the Cuzco Basin, where, it is currently believed, the chiefly society of the basin, begun in the Formative Period, continued to grow. The site of Wimpillay no longer dominated the local political landscape as it did in the Late Formative Phase; instead, a concentration of equally successful villages developed. Most of these villages would continue to be occupied over the next millennium and would play important roles in the Inca Period. It is also documented that Cuzco was well connected with other regions of the Andes during this period. For example, obsidian was imported into the region from a number of different sources (Burger et al. 2000). But there seem to have been especially close interactions with the Altiplano region to the southeast, where certain polities (such as those centered at Pucara and Tiwanaku) were reaching levels of social complexity far beyond those developed in the Cuzco region.
The character of the Altiplano-Cuzco interactions changed when the Cuzco region came under the influence of the Wari. Expanding from its heartland in the area of Ayacucho sometime around AD 600, the Wari Empire was to maintain a dominant position in the Cuzco region for several centuries. The Wari presence in the Cuzco region was strongest in a short stretch of the Vilcanota River Valley between the Lucre and Huaro Basins. In the Lucre Basin, the Wari built what was perhaps the largest installation yet constructed in the Andes, the site of Pikillacta. From their position in the Lucre Basin, the Wari had both direct and indirect access to large areas of maize production. They also gained access to the traditional trade routes that brought coca from lowlands beyond Paucartambo into the southern highlands. Furthermore, they were able to establish a boundary and develop a major administrative c
enter close to but still outside the region controlled by Tiwanaku.
The immense site of Pikillacta appears to have been planned in large sections, several of which were still not completed three to four hundred years later when the complex was abandoned. The facility was built with rotational labor provided by the various ethnic groups of the Cuzco region. Although the use of rotational labor to build public works projects was an ancient tradition in the Andes, it was used on an unprecedented local scale to build Pikillacta. The site functioned as the political center for Wari influence in the south-central Andes and most certainly helped to define a frontier with the similarly expanding Tiwanaku Empire of the Lake Titicaca region. The fact that the site of Pikillacta was never completed or occupied on the scale that its planners had originally intended indicates that the Wari did not establish the kind of control over the region that they had hoped for when the construction project was begun.
The level and impact of Wari influence over local groups varied widely across the Cuzco region. For example, the Wari established direct control over those groups living in the Lucre and Huaro Basins and initiated major changes in the social and political organizations of these areas. Other regions and peoples were brought into the orbit of Wari influence through more subtle means. Survey data indicate that Wari administration did not significantly disrupt the local settlement pattern in the Cuzco Basin. Both before and throughout the Middle Horizon, a network of villages was concentrated along the southern side of the Cuzco Basin, where large transverse streams drained into the Huatanay River, and where low alluvial terraces provided excellent locations for villages close to valley bottom lands. Likewise, the Wari appear to have had little effect on the settlement patterns of the lower Vilcanota River Valley, and they did not establish a secondary center in either region. The peoples located in the Cuzco Basin and those found in the lower Vilcanota River Valley were most likely brought into compliance through the co-option of local leaders and a combination of political intimidation and military threats. The Wari impact on the more remote populations that lived to the south of the Cuzco Valley was substantially less. They would have been aware of the political and social changes that were occurring in the Lucre Basin, but their daily lives continued relatively unchanged.
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