Comparison Between Two Inca Sites, Located North and South of the Tropic of Capricorn (2018)
Gustavo Corrado (Author)
Benítez, Sixto Ramón Giménez (Author)
José L. Pino Matos (Author)
Nicolas Balbi (Author)
Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry
Volume: 18
Issue: 4
Pages: 123-129
The importance of perceptions of geographical latitude and its calendrical properties have been emphasized in studies of cultural astronomy (Broda 2004), as well as the link that is generated between the landscapes that serve as horizons and the observations themselves, especially solar. The pre-Hispanic world views, quite possibly, were heavily loaded with dualistic perspectives, especially the astronomical phenomena among the American tropics (Isbell 1982: 354). The search for temporary referents, especially seasonal associating them with contrasting moments such as sowing activities in front of harvest, with positions of the sun, both in the zenith and in the nadir. In this context in Inca archeology, spatial configurations have been identified, which could be qualified as ritual landscapes, constituted by carefully designed settlements and their corresponding geography of the environment, immediate geography as well as geographical aspects at great distances. Settlements and geographies closely linked by scheduled ritual activities, such as pilgrimage tours, territorial exercises and memory constructions. These particular configurations were denominated as Cuzco, which the Inca society replicated in several territories and many of them to great distances at continental level (Hylop 1990, Farrington 1999), while Cuzco represented a concept goes beyond trying to repeat Symbolic spaces in the Inca foundations in the wamanis (spaces where certain ancestors exercised territoriality), in an attempt to hierarchize the spaces as part of a process of constitution and unification of the Tawantinsuyu. In this sense, in the "New Cuzcos" we find manifestations of the Inka ideology, but these are not copies or repetitions of their imperial capital, but they sought to adapt to particular situations in the conquered territories (Pino Matos 2004). The strategy of appropriation of the conquered sacred sites was based on the re-signification of the local huacas (deities and ancestors located in notable aspects of geography) in function of a significant solar phenomenon, (Example: In Chinchaycocha, the ushnu de Pumpu is in the direction of an important local mountain -Nevado de Ulcumayu-, that coincides with the sunrise the day of the passage of this star by the zenith (Pino Matos and Moreano Montalvan 2014), in the Shincal, the ushnu is oriented towards the sunrise at the middle temporal equinox and towards huacas in the eastern and western hills. In the present work, two sites will be analyzed, one in Argentina and the other in Peru, trying to understand the management of time and the construction of ritual landscapes at different latitudes during the Inca period.
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