This paper is about the spatial mechanisms the Inka constructed in order to control time. Prudence Rice (2007) has recently discussed that mechanisms to control time were potent power tools in state-level Mesoamerican societies, such as the Maya. In the fifteenth century, the Inka built an empire in South America yet there is still no consensus as to how exactly they recorded history or reckoned time. The khipu fulfilled some of these functions (Urton 2003; Quilter and Urton 2002) and Tom Zuidema (1977) has presented complex arguments that the Inka used a lunar calendar. Spanish writers, such as Cristobal de Molina, describe a ritual calendar calibrated to the Spanish months. My methodology is to resort to ethnography and archaeological material to reconstruct a spatial mechanism the Inka used in a political context. The question to be raised is in which ways did the Inka record time and turn this act into an ideological performance?
INKA CONTROL OF TIME
Autor: Jessica Joyce Christie
East Carolina University
It is well documented that the Inka recorded time by observing sunset positions between pillars strung along the western horizon line from the usnu stone in the central plaza of Cusco. Several chroniclers report architectural pillars dotting the horizon of Cusco. The usnu was an important stone construction somewhere in the center of the plaza. One function of the usnu was to present the ruler on official occasions. The ruler and other court dignitaries standing close by in the central plaza could have tracked solstice and equinox positions. This kind of knowledge was of primary importance to the agricultural calendar. At the same time, observations of the sun were an integral part of state ritual. The Inka royal couple validated their authority by claiming to be direct descendants from the Sun and Moon. The Inka origin narrative relates that the Sun called forth the dynastic ancestors Manqo Qhapaq and Mama Oqllu from two openings in the rock outcrop of the Sanctuary on the Island of the Sun. They were told to migrate to the northwest, reemerge with brothers, sisters, and many others at the site of Pumaurqu and then find land to settle which ended up being the Cusco Valley. Spanish writers report that the Inka sovereign frequently consulted with his father, the Sun, and along the same line, tracing the positions of the sun from the usnu would have constituted another form of discourse with the Sun. Similar spatial alignments between a significant rock and sets of pillars on the horizon line have been documented at the main Sanctuary on the Island of the Sun in Lake Titicaca and on Wayna Qhapaq’s royal estate at Urubamba.
Recently a set of thirteen towers have been identified at the Early Horizon site of Chankillo, which could have functioned as horizon markers for a solar observatory. The general observation points appear to have been in plazas and building complexes. I argue that the Inka appropriated a spatial mechanism that was known in the Andes at least since the end of the Early Horizon (c.300 – 200 B.C.E.). They transformed and manipulated the physical construct into a ritual performance which conceptually legitimized the ultimate authority of the Inka emperor.
Paper:
Introduction
Time is an important tool of political and ideological power. Our daily routines are dictated by the clock yet we rarely take notice that our teaching and meeting schedules are set by higher university boards and that our movements, in traffic for instance, are slowed down by traffic lights controlled by city authorities. Numerous scholars (Rice 2007, 2008) have theorized time noting that it is a social construct derived from local cycles of day and night and the seasons which were traditionally linked to an agricultural calendar. The meaning of time is not universal but is grounded in the social, political, and economic settings of particular societies. Complex state-level societies use more fine-tuned calendars than simple time-keeping devices known in hunter-and-gatherer groups and such calendar structures mirror a society’s worldview and identity and can be manipulated politically. Prudence Rice (2007, 2008) has explored the power structures of the Classic, Postclassic, and Colonial Maya from this perspective and in this paper, I will use similar tools to better understand Inka control of time.
The Inka built an expansive state mapped out from their capital Cusco situated in the south-central Andes. Beginning in the early 1400s, they accumulated vast territories which eventually reached from the Quito area in present Ecuador in the north into northern Chile and northwest Argentina in the south and from the Pacific Ocean to the eastern jungle lowlands. Expansion was halted by the civil war between Washkar and Atawallpa and by the arrival of the Spaniards in the 1530s. It has always puzzled scholars that the Inka who could conquer and administer an empire did not have a clearly certifiable system of writing nor a calendar as, for example, the Maya. Spanish writers, among them Guaman Poma de Ayala, report that the Inka recorded festival days as well as other information (tribute lists, census data) on the khipu. The Andean khipu is a notted string device which consists of a main cord and multiple attached pendant cords. These pendant cords exhibit groups of knots at set intervals.[1] What is most intriguing about the khipu in the context of this essay is that when the main cord of a khipu is positioned in a circle and its pendant cords straightened out, it appears to be a striking material correlate to the Cusco zeq’e system comprised of 41 conceptual lines marked by shrines/wak’as, which radiated outward from the Temple of the Sun/Qorikancha in the center of Cusco. Historical lineages (ayllus and panaqas) in the capital maintained these wak’as by bringing offerings and performing rituals at a prescribed schedule hinting at a calendar system at least as it was understood by the Spaniards (see Bernabe Cobo). This cross-link between zeq’e wak’as and khipu knots was one of the starting points for Tom Zuidema in his life-long studies of an Inka calendar system. In 2011, he published the results of decades of meticulous multi-disciplinary scholarly work in a new book reconstructing a calendar of 13 months based upon solar and lunar observations. His primary concerns are to establish how exactly the Inka observed the movements of the sun and moon by matching the piecemeal and often conflicting reports by various Spanish writers with astronomical measurements in relation to documented locations in the Cusco region. My approach bypasses the debate about the nature of the Inka calendar but focuses on how the practice of tracing the movements of the sun on the horizon line was turned into state ritual on significant days of the solar year, such as the solstices.
It is well established that the Inka traced the movements of the sun from the usnu in the main plaza of Cusco and other locations in relation to sets of stone pillars which once dotted the horizon lines[2]. Here I will zoom in on the usnu as the archetypal example of an empowered stone situated in between the Awkaypata and Kusipata sectors of the main plaza since its spatial setting allows to reconstruct a potential scenario of state ritual in which the Inka ruler displayed his discourse with the Sun and ultimately control over time (IMAGE OF CUSCO, PLAN OF MAIN PLAZA). Nobody knows exactly what the usnu looked like because the descriptions by the chroniclers are not consistent (see, for instance, D’Altroy 2002:115,329; Bauer and Dearborn 1995:36). Juan de Betanzos (1996:47-49 [1557:part 1, chap.XI]) describes the usnu as “a stone made like a sugarloaf pointed on top and covered with a strip of gold.” Associated with it or next to it was a stone font or basin for holding liquids. Around this stone font, the people of Cusco buried gold statuettes representing the most important lords of each lineage in the city. «In the middle of the font they put the stone that represented the Sun» (Betanzos 1996:48 [1557:part 1, chap.XI]). This was meant as an offering to the Sun, mirroring the social organization of Cusco and its history[3].
In three authoritative publications, John Hyslop (1990:69-101), Tom Zuidema (1980), and F. M. Meddens (1997) have investigated the Cusco usnu(s), other usnus, and the complex symbolic connotations associated with them. They conclude that usnus could assume a number of material forms: they could be stone pillars, stone seats, stone basins or fonts linked to underground channels, platforms, as well as truncated pyramids. Depending on their forms, usnus could have a variety of functions. Hyslop (1990:70-72) focuses on usnu platforms and reasons that they constituted elevated and powerfully charged stage areas for the ruler. When he took his position upon the usnu, he oversaw rituals and military reviews, addressed his army, and perhaps also spoke justice in the role of a judge.
Zuidema (1980:357) emphasizes the idea that the usnu symbolizes an opening in the ground through which the earth sucks in rain water; this aspect of the usnu takes on material substance in the basin and drainage system. But the usnu also marks an observation point of the Sun (Zuidema 1980:318-331). At least a dozen chroniclers mention the existence of sets of small towers or stone pillars on the eastern and western horizons of Cusco (Bauer and Dearborn 1995:67-100, Hyslop 1990:61-62). Archaeologically, however, none of the Cusco horizon pillars has been identified. One point of observation may have been the usnu in the Awkaypata plaza. The Anonymous Chronicler (in Bauer and Dearborn 1995:35 [c. 1570]) describes the four western pillars and states that… when the sun reached the first pillar they prepared for the general planting and began to plant vegetables in the heights, as slower [to mature], and when the sun reached the two pillars in the middle, was the point and the general time of the planting in Cuzco, and it was always in the month of August. It is in this way that, to take the point of the sun between the central two pillars they had another pillar in the middle of the plaza, [a] pillar of well worked stone one estado in height, in a suitable indicated place, that they called usnu, and from there they watched the sun between the two pillars, and when it was exactly there, it was the time for sowing in the Cuzco Valley and its region.
This account is so important to my argument because it is the only one I know of which places the pillars into a relationship with an observation point, the usnu. However, the Anonymous Chronicler does not say who watched the sunsets. We might assume that he implies the ruler or a designated state official seated on the Cusco usnu. Various early Colonial documents indicate that the Inka and other Andean peoples trained specialists to trace the movements of the sun and moon (Bauer and Dearborn 1995:55-58). There must have been daily observations conducted for several years by specialists before the exact placement of the pillars as well as the crucial turn-around points of the Sun on the horizon line on the days of the solstices could be established. The midpoints between the extreme positions of the Sun on the eastern and western horizons would have marked the equinoxes. The August date mentioned by the Anonymous Chronicler above was most likely August 18, when the sun passes through its anti-zenith position in Cusco, and which coincides with the general beginning of a new agricultural season in the region. Such observations were easily carried out from the usnu in the main plaza since this was a public place.
The report of the Anonymous Chronicler ties solar observations to the need of scheduling agricultural activities. Some basic time keeping devices to mark the seasons are typically found in agrarian societies. But the Inka had constructed a complex state-level system and it is reasonable to suggest that once their astronomers had roughly charted the significant positions of the Sun on the horizon line (solstices, equinoxes, zenith- and anti-zenith dates), the Inka ruler selected certain dates – most importantly the solstices – as occasions for state ritual and pageantry. The Inti Raymi, a multiple day celebration around the time of the June solstice and the Capac Raymi at the December solstice, have been described by several Spanish writers. Parts of these festivals surely were held in the main (Awkaypata and Kusipata) plaza around the usnu. David Dearborn ( ) has made the interesting argument that the distances between the pillars which the Anonymous Chronicler provides are much too wide to specify a precise date. According to Dearborn’s calculations, the Sun would appear to set between the central pillars for nearly a week as seen from the usnu in mid-August. The large separation of the pillars also allowed most of the people gathered in Awkaypata/Kusipata to watch the sunset and not exclusively the ruling state officials on the usnu. Dearborn concludes that the primary objective of solar observation from the Cusco usnu was not astronomical in the sense of fixing a precise date, but ritual, meaning that all the people in the plaza watched the Sun set.
Dearborn’s argument gives important insights into the discourse between the ruler and the Sun as well as between the ruler and commoners. It has to be emphasized that the Inka emperor validated his authority by claiming that the dynastic founders were called forth by the Sun from a sacred rock outcrop in Lake Titicaca (see below) establishing a parent-son relationship. The complex layers of interweaving relations between the Sun, stone wak’as, and state power were materialized in the usnu and dramatized in imperial ceremonies including Sun watching (see Discussion and Conclusions).
Dearborn and Bauer have documented a second case in which June solstice sunset was tracked from a sacred boulder on the Island of the Sun in Lake Titicaca, Bolivia. In Andean origin narratives written down by the Spanish, a rock sanctuary with conspicuous holes features as the place of emergence of the Sun who later called forth the dynastic ancestor couple Manqo Qhapaq and Mama Oqllu from the same rock openings and sent them on an underground journey in a northwestern direction to reemerge south of Cusco, found the Inka capital, and civilize the world (IMAGES). Bernabe Cobo who composed a multi-volume History of the New World in 1653, describes the central outcrop in this sanctuary in the following way (copied from an earlier text by Ramos Gavilan):
The crag that was so venerated was out in the open, and the temple was next to it, …. The front of it (the crag) faces north, and the back faces south; there is not much to the concave part of it, which is what they worshiped. The altar of the Sun was inside. The convex part is the living stone, whose slopes reach out as far as the water, where there is a cove made by the lake. The adornment was a covering over the convex part, a curtain of cumbi, which was the finest and most delicate piece [of this cloth] that has ever been seen. And the entire concave part of it was covered with sheets of gold, and they threw the offerings into some holes that can still be seen now. Ahead of this crag and altar a round stone can be seen which is like a basin, admirably wrought, about as large as a medium-sized millstone, with its orifice; the stone is used at the foot of a cross now. The chicha for the Sun to drink was tossed into this orifice (Cobo 1990:96-97 [1653:Bk.13, Ch.18]).
The most recent and most comprehensive research program on the Islands of the Sun and Moon was conducted by Brian Bauer and Charles Stanish from 1994 to 1996. In the 1994-1995 season, they surveyed both islands and identified more than 180 pre-contact sites. The survey was followed up by test excavations and archaeoastronomy research during the second season. Their investigation of the Island of the Sun and its Sanctuary and of the Island of the Moon was thoroughly documented and contextualized by Bauer and Stanish (2001). As seen from the Sanctuary area, the sun sets over a ridge, called Tikani, to the northwest. Together with David Dearborn, they identified two structures on this ridge that flank the position at which the Sun sets on the June solstice as viewed from the plaza. Their findings indicate that part of the June solstice celebrations involved watching the sun set between these structures which so conspicuously marked the event: the elite stood in the plaza in front of the Sacred Rock while the non-elite gathered on a platform outside the Sanctuary wall at the first gateway on the pilgrimage road (MAP BY BAUER AND STANISH). The scenario on the Island of the Sun thus uses two view cones with a larger angle toward the plaza and a much smaller angle toward the viewing platform.
These data constitute a second significant case study in the emerging pattern of special foregrounded rocks serving as observation points of the sun in relation to sets of horizon pillars. Some of these observation points were usnus and others were carved or unmodified boulders. What bound these locales together was not their formal appearance but their material essence of stone. The liminal and metaphorical qualities of stone in reference to Inka state ideology lie coded in the sacred outcrop on the Island of the Sun: its rock formation reaching from the lake to the plaza area and its two openings into the rock marking the origin places of the Sun and of the Inka ancestors.
In the Sanctuary on the Island of the Sun, the grouping of the audience into status-based locales as outlined seems to stage a scenario similar to that on the Cusco main plaza. Although individuals of high and low social status both observed June solstice sunset, the Inka ruler and the nobility stood closest to the Sacred Rock whereas commoners had to remain at the outer entrance wall (Bauer and Stanish 2001:212). One questionable issue was the physical form of the two structures on the Tikani ridge. They are two rock-walled and rubble-filled buildings which hardly match the description of the Cusco horizon pillars given by the chroniclers. In August of 1995, Matthew Seddon and Brian Bauer specifically investigated these two structures (Seddon and Bauer 2004). They reconstructed two dissimilar and irregular buildings which were largely filled with rock rubble, gravel, and sand and did not contain any cultural remains. Intriguingly, certain formal aspects and higher quality masonry sections were oriented toward the Sacred Rock leading Seddon and Bauer (2004:90-91) to confirm their previous interpretation of the two structures as markers of the June solstice sunset when observed from the Sacred Rock.
As the third example, in 2005 and 2007, the observation point for the long known two Inka masonry pillars above the town of Urubamba in the Urubamba Valley has been identified as the large white granite boulder sitting in the center of the plaza of Quispiguanca, the palace of Wayna Qhapaq by J. McKim Malville, Michael Zawaski, and Steven Gullberg (Malville 2008) (IMAGES). Malville, Zawaski, and Gullberg confirmed that these pillars mark June solstice sunrise when observed from the vicinity of this very conspicuous granite boulder which has been documented and contextualized by Niles (1999) in her analysis of Wayna Qhapaq’s Quispiguanca palace. Elsewhere I (Christie 2007a) have listed the white granite boulder as one case of the plaza-kallanka-foregrounded rock pattern at royal estates. Malville now adds the function of observation point of the Sun in relation to the two horizon masonry pillars.
One fourth example which is still under investigation may be the Intiwatana complex at Machu Picchu. The Intiwatana is the famous carved boulder terminating in a vertical slab which occupies the highest point in Machu Picchu. The name intiwatana translates as “a place where the sun was tied” and is not a carryover from Inka times. It was given to a similar sculpted gnomen at the nearby site of Pisaq by George Squier in the nineteenth century and copied at Machu Picchu due to the similarity of stone forms. The standard interpretation is that the upright slab of the Intiwatana functioned as a sun dial: Inka authorities would observe the yearly movements of its shadows and program seasons and schedule agricultural activities accordingly.
Another possibility is that the carved Intiwatana boulder might have been used as an observation point of the sun in relation to the ridge of Cerro San Miguel to the west. As viewed from the Intiwatana, the sun sets west behind the long San Miguel ridge. Archaeological investigations in the early 1980s have reported wall foundations at the approximate location where the sun would set on the June solstice when observed from the Intiwatana. In 2007 and 2009, I organized a team to relocate these foundations, verify that they belonged to stone pillars, and measure the precise angle/azimuth in relation to the Intiwatana. We relocated the Inka stone wak’a on the summit of Cerro San Miguel but our exploration of the ridge stopped short at a chasm which we were not prepared to cross. This chasm is formed by steep rock formations resembling natural pillars. According to the calculations of my colleague Bernard Bell, these potential natural pillars sit very close to the equinox sunset position when viewed from the Intiwatana. This suggests the interesting scenario that we might have found the equinox markers and that the Inka might have substituted natural for manmade pillars. The question of possible horizon towers to track June solstice sunset from the Intiwatana is still open.
Recent investigations at the site of Chankillo (Ghezzi and Ruggles 2007) in the Casma-Sechin River Basin of the desert coast have documented a row of thirteen towers running north to south along a low ridge. Open space and building complexes extend east and west of this ridge. Within these structures, researchers have been able to pinpoint probable western and eastern observation points from which the full range of towers were and are visible and form a toothed horizon line. As viewed from these two locations, the spread of towers along the horizon corresponds closely to the range of movement of the rising and setting sun between the solstices. Ghezzi and Ruggles (2007:1241-1242) recorded the exact positions of sunrise and sunset on the days of the solstices, equinoxes, zenith and anti-zenith passage from the two observation points. The majority of these positions fall upon specific towers. Chankillo is solidly dated to the fourth century B.C.E. and thus predates the Inka by about 1700 years.
Discussion and Conclusion
Time as related to seasons has been a fundamental human concern since agriculture was first developed and possibly earlier for hunters-and-gatherers. In the Andes, people practiced many ways of tracking the positions of the sun, for example, by watching shadows change day by day along mountain slopes or the edges of carved rock outcrops. One observation method which required state infrastructure was the set-up of an empowered rock in relation to horizon pillars. Most of the sun watching conducted with this device was probably daily routine and served to schedule agricultural work. However, I argue that the Inka ruler selected and seized certain paramount days, such as solstices, equinoxes, and zenith, anti-zenith days, to transform ordinary skywatching into state ritual.
Chankillo demonstrates that the practice of tracing the movements of the sun through an arrangement of stone towers was not an Inka invention but was known by the late Early Horizon period. I reason that by analyzing the observation points, their spatial settings and relations with the towers, we can reconstruct aspects of the ritual and political contexts in which these solar observations took place. It is noteworthy that according to Ghezzi and Ruggles’ (2007:1241) reconstruction, the actual observation points at Chankillo were small architectural spaces with limited access, pointing to elite space. Of course, larger crowds may have viewed the towers from the surrounding open spaces together with the astronomical specialists positioned at the observation points identified by Ghezzi and Ruggles on designated days.
As calculated by Dearborn (see above), solar observations from the Cusco usnu would have engaged a large audience. We could envision a wide-angle view cone opening from the middle western pillars toward the main plaza. While timed and organized by the state, such events were intended to be public. Colonial writers inform us that in addition the Inka used other spaces from which they followed the positions of the sun; one very important and highly restricted observation point was the Qorikancha, the Temple of the Sun. Numerous historical sources describe the Qorikancha, the people who were permitted access and the many activities they carried out. Mariusz Ziolkowski (1966:52) specifically mentions that the Inka used two imperial representations of the Sun: the Punchaw figure of a one-year old boy made of shiny gold in the Qorikancha and the gilded usnu stone situated in the Awkaypata plaza. The former served the restricted cult of the ruler, royal panaqas, and the nobility while the latter, simpler and less valuable image could be accessed by the common folks. This dichotomy would have been performed in the associated ceremonies. The authority of the Sapa Inka rested to a large extent on his son-father relation with the Sun: the first Inka ruler had been called forth from the stony outcrop on the island in Lake Titicaca by the Sun and sent out on a mission to subdue and civilize the world. So when the ruler positioned himself on the usnu stone, watching the Sun’s position, he entertained discourse with his divine father and cemented public support. Garcilaso de la Vega (1966:117 [1609:Vol.I, Bk.2, Ch.22] and in Bauer and Dearborn 1995:47-49) speaks of Inka solar observations by means of tall stone columns and an east-west line drawn through their bases. Trained specialists observed how the shadows cast by the columns on the line changed throughout the year and at noon on the days of the equinoxes and the sun’s zenith passage, the columns would project no shadow at all. The Inka said the Sun would take his seat on top of the column and they decorated it and it turned into a day of great celebrations. In a parallel manner, the Inka ruler assumed the seat of the Sun when he sat on the usnu on the days of the equinoxes and zenith passage. I argue that Inka sun ceremonies most likely encompassed restricted and more private activities in the Qorikancha as well as open public events around the usnu in the main plaza in which the Sapa Inka acted out his special relationship with the Sun to reinforce confidence and loyalties in his subjects. In its public context, Inka solar observations were not a practice of astronomy but political and ideological events.
Similar contexts probably apply to the other cases of solar observations by means of a special empowered, usnu-like stone and related pillars as presented above. We must note that at royal estates, such as Machu Picchu and Quispiguanca, the audiences would have been smaller than in Cusco and most likely consisted of court members and yanakuna, the resident population who maintained the estates of the ruler. This emerging pattern of sacred carved and unmodified rocks utilized by the Inka as observation stations of the movements of the Sun along the horizon marked by masonry pillars adds a significant functional category to the study of rock wak’as as well as to discussions of time as it binds together the metaphorical concepts of stone, the Sun and its movements giving rise to seasons and time cycles, and political power on an ideological level which I have labeled stone ideology elsewhere.
Finally, it is intriguing to return to Chankillo for a moment. People at this large center dated to the fourth century B.C.E. apparently traced the positions of the sun but we know little about their social organization. Andeanists (Bauer and Dearborn 1995:66) have argued that commoners typically organized agricultural activities according to a synodic lunar calendar. Might the solar observations at Chankillo be one indication of an early organized social hierarchy?
- On the most basic level, it has been established that the knots increase in value of decimal units from the furthest outlying group registering ones toward the main cord. Recent khipu studies beginning with the authoritative work of the Ashers and Locke in the 1910s have demonstrated beyond doubt that many types of information were registered on the khipu (see also Quilter and Urton 2002; Urton 2003). ↑
- For example, Polo de Ondegardo states in 1559 [1585] Errores … that “El ano partieron en doce meses por las lunas, y los demas dias que sobran cada ano los consumian con las mismas lunas. Y a cada luna o mes tenian puesto su mojon o pilar al derredor del Cuzco donde llegaba el sol aquel mas. Y estos pilares eran adoratorios principales … “ in Zuidema 2011:102; according to Zuidema (2011:125-126), the Inka used three techniques to trace the movements of the sun and other celestial bodies: the alignments and architecture of the Qorikancha; the position of an observer in relation to horizon pillars (in most examples to the west); long-distance observations by means of various horizon markers. ↑
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This might very well have been a miniature recreation of the ceque system which had its center in the Qorikancha and each radiating ceque was maintained by a Cusco lineage.
Works cited:
Quilter, Jeffrey and Gary Urton (editors)
2002 Narrative Threads. University of Texas Press, Austin.
Rice, Prudence
2007 Maya Calendar Origins. University of Texas Press, Austin.
Urton, Gary
2003 Signs of the Inka Khipu. University of Texas Press, Austin.
Zuidema, Tom
1977 The Inca Calendar. In Native American Astronomy, Edited by Anthony F. Aveni, pp.219-259. University of Texas Press, Austin.
