Tiwanaku:  The City and its Rise

 

                                                                      Tiwanaku Origins

 

1.  The necessary antecedent factors for the rise of Tiwanaku to domination over the entire south-central Andes were:

- a pan-Titicaca Basin religious belief (Yaya-Mama) - the basis for shared political ideology.

- an interacting network of villages collectively commanding broad economic resources (pastoralism, fishing, agriculture).

 

2.  Agricultural requirements on one hand (intensive sedentism, scheduling, labor organization, storage), fishing and pastoralism (mobility, socialization, transportation, control of distant areas) on the other, together created an incipient social complexity that laid the foundations for the urban centers and political “empire” that followed.

 

3.  Subsistence diversification and intensification allowed for relative freedom from short term environmental disruption (usually droughts), provided food surpluses for specialists and rulers and ensured long term stability.

 

4.  The rise of Tiwanaku to domination of the wider region by AD100 is not easily explained.  It may have been the result of successful military competition between the Titicaca Basin towns for land; it may have been due to the successful exploitation of the long distance llama caravan routes by local   rulers to obtain prestige items that increased their power.  In any case Tiwanaku grew between AD 100 and AD 500 to become the center of an urban highland society that then expanded throughout the adjacent region to create an “empire’ that lasted till around AD 1000.

 

                                    

                                            The Form and Structure of the City of Tiwanaku

 

General Character

 

1.  Tiwanaku was not a city of the western model with huge generalized urban population, busy markets and diverse institutions of economic, social and political management.  Instead it was a more narrowly oriented center in which ruling lineages and their clients and retainers used the architectural monuments of the city to communicate their Andean cosmology and as the sites of rituals that supported and expanded the potency of their own related ideology of political power. 

 

2.  There were no markets as in western cites.  The movement of commodities was through the reciprocal exchange of goods between kinship groups or through the “archipelago” in which long distance llama caravans acquired goods for elsewhere in exchange for goods and ritual items.

 

3.  Craft production was by clients of the ruling lineages rather than independent businessmen as in industrial societies.  Such goods were directly absorbed into the systems of political and religious power and monopolized for these purposes under the direction of the rulers.

 

4.  On a broader level Tiwanaku in its religious role as the center of the cosmos was a pilgrimage site that brought people of various ethnicities from afar, combining with its centrality in the caravan network to form the hub of an extensive religious-economic system that influenced the entire southern Andes.

 

The Sacred Urban Geography of Tiwanaku

 

1.  Tiwanaku in Aymara legends was the place at the center of the earth, located at the point of convergence of the eastern, moist, agricultural, terrestrial, female lands and the western, dry, pastoral, celestial, male lands.  It was at Tiwanaku that the entire cosmology centered and was anchored in its dual nature and the lake was the place where Viracocha, the Sun, created a new world order.  The city reflected this important mythical belief in its content and layout.

 

2.  Only the chief architectural monuments of Tiwanaku are well known.  Little has yet been learnt about the industrial and residential areas although some starts have been made in the last decade.

 

3.  The entire center of the city with its great architectural structures was surrounded by a moat.  This replicated the idea of the sacred island (as present in Lake Titicaca as the centers of mythic and religious importance) in the city itself, infusing the center with the same sacred quality and the ritual activities that were held there with religious import.  The center existed in liminal time and space (transitional between the mundane and the sacred) and represented the constant tangible presence of Andean cosmology.

 

4. The presence of the residences of the rulers of Tiwanaku within this sacred precinct embellished them with a sacred authority and underscored their role as mediators with the divine on behalf of their subject population.  On a social level the moat that enclosed the central precinct also distinguished its elite residents from their subjects in terms of hierarchy ands social rank.  Here social inequality was enforced and supported by sacred location.

 

5.  The layout of the central precinct was complemented by two other moats that enclosed sectors of the more peripheral urban areas.  Together these features identified the functions and religious importance f Tiwanaku.  In conjunction the entire settlement plan was an active living blueprint for the cosmology of the subjects of the city.

 

6.  The chief structures of the central architectural core are generally aligned North-South while the two great pyramids - the Akapana and the Puma Punku have stairs mounting their east and west sides.  The fact that the eastern flights are more elaborate than the western probably links them to the east-west path of the sun and gives priority to the east - the direction of the rising sun the life-giving creative force of the Andean world.

 

7.  Finally, the chief architectural features of Tiwanaku are arranged into two clusters.  The northern cluster contains the Akapana pyramid, and the adjacent Kalasasaya compound and Semi-Sunken Temple; a similar southern cluster contains the Puma Punku pyramid and adjacent features.  This dual arrangement may well also have a social implication with the city being occupied by two chief lineages or moieties like the later Cuzco.  Each sector of this dual society contained its own set of sacred monuments.  At Tiwanaku the senior moiety was associated with the northern cluster, the junior, the southern.

 

                                                     The Tiwanaku Ceremonial Core

 

The basic composition of the Tiwanaku core architectural area is a terraced platform constructed around an interior sunken court.  This is most evident in the two large “pyramids” - the Akapana and the Puma Punku but also appear in adjacent complexes such as the Semi-Subterranean Temple, the Kalasasaya and the Putuni.  However, the two chief structures (Puma Punku and Akapana) tower above the others, forming a distinct category of monumental architecture, while the others mostly adhere to the form of rectangular compounds built on low platforms.

 

Akapana, its Function and History

 

1.  The Akapana is the largest, most imposing building at Tiwanaku comprising a “pyramid,” with earth and clay core, rising in 7 stone-faced terraces to a flat top on which is a sunken court.  The structure measures approx. 600 feet at it’s longest side and is shaped like a three winged “Andean Cross.”  This form appears commonly in Tiwanaku iconography and probably represents a cosmological symbol.

 

2.  Building style consists of terraces faced by finely shaped stone blocks in which laterally oriented rows alternate with vertical pillars.  Each terrace top is capped by a row of large blocks that project beyond the terrace face.  The 6 upper terrace faces incorporate large stone panels originally decorated with the symbols of Tiwanaku ideology.   The interior of the terraces contains inclusions of bluish water-born gravel from the nearby mountains - this probably holds symbolic significance as the essence of the sacred mountains (huacas) from which it comes and their importance as the home of divinities that allow water to fall on them, ultimately providing life for the population of Tiwanaku.  Thus Akapana would have been a man-made “sacred mountain.”  This conception is similar to that of the Moche who also regarded their platform mounds as sacred mountains where rulers ensured the gift of water, and to later Inca practice in bringing sea sand to the central precinct of Cuzco as a symbol of life giving waters.

 

3.  The Akapana contained an internal water distribution system of stone-walled channels that collected water from the sunken summit court and transported it through internal vertical channel to the outside of the top terrace, then back into the interior to the next exterior surface, repeating this to the bottom of the structure from where it was collected in a subterranean drainage system and taken to the Tiwanaku River.  This elaborate system replicated the natural pattern where rain falls onto the mountain summit then runs both through subterranean courses and out across the hill slopes. The Akapana, as a sacred mountain, incorporated the same pattern.  Like the Moche platforms it probably served as the site of rituals in which elite officiates conducted the activities that enabled them to enter the supernatural to commune with divinities on behalf of their people in bringing water, fertility, and good fortune and maintain the balance of natural and human forces necessary for cosmic well-being. These rituals probably occurred in the sunken summit court.

 

4.  Elite residential structures surrounded the central summit court.  The walls were built at least partly of finely cut stone and they contained many ritual objects indicating the important ceremonial role of the occupants and the high religiously derived status accorded to them. 

 

5.  Numerous mummy bundles of individuals lacking heads were associated with elaborate offerings of ceremonial pottery, much of it embellished with trophy heads.  These may represent the ancestral bodies of subjugated groups, the taking of their heads symbolizing the “taking” of their identity and their absorption into the Tiwanaku Empire.

 

6. Around AD 600 the Akapana was modified in form with its elaborate drainage system blocked and the elite residential terraces expanded in extent.  This episode was accompanied by new dedicatory offerings of dogs and llamas.  This may represent the appropriation of the Akapana’s sacred quality by the ruling elite of Tiwanaku as a powerful addition to their authority.  At this time a second major platform the Puma Punku was built to the south with the hydraulic attributes of the Akapana.  This new structure may well have taken over as the principal earth ritual shrine at Tiwanaku with the Akapana henceforth primarily becoming a personalized shrine and guarantor for the rulers of the empire and their right to rule.

 

Semi-Subterranean Temple and its Images

 

1.  This structure, located north of the Akapana, comprises a rectangular sunken court lined with stone blocks and connected to the adjacent Kalasasaya compound by a flight of monumental steps and gateway.  Numerous stone heads are set into the side walls of the court and several stone stelae surround a central monumental sculpture- the 21-foot Bennett Monolith. 

 

2.  The Bennett Monolith is similar to other such statues at Tiwanaku and other sites in representing an elaborately dressed human figure holding a ritual drinking vessel (kero) and a scepter.  Embellishing the clothing of the figure are agricultural symbols, flowering plants including maize and hallucinogenic cactus, possible calendrical signs, and llama.  Similar representations have been found woven into Tiwanaku textiles so the Bennett version probably represents a richly decorated garb of an elite human or divinity.  The ritual content of this sculpture and its fellows links agriculture, llama husbandry, calendrics and ritual practice.  It thus presents an integrated cosmology of the subsistence cycles and the esoteric knowledge underwriting them in Tiwanaku conception.  Again given the medium of this symbolism - an elite individual - this statuary and its iconography links the activation of the subsistence and religious systems to the authority of the rulers, setting them squarely at the ideological and practical center of Tiwanaku society as the mediators and unifiers of the human and supernatural elements of Tiwanaku experience.

 

3.  The subsidiary sculpture of the Semi-Subterranean Temple represent a variety of styles from throughout the south central Andes.  They are probably the huacas or sacred emblems of subjugated areas, brought together in this place to symbolize both the subjugation of their homelands and their participation in the wider imperial ideology of Tiwanaku.

 

 

 

 

Kalasasaya

 

1.  The Kalasasaya is connected to the Semi-Subterranean Temple by a flight of stone steps and clearly shares in the wider ritual meaning of the complex.  It comprises a huge walled rectangular compound whose single gateway aligns with the sun and the center of the Semi-Subterranean Temple at the equinoxes. 

 

2.  The huge “Ponce Monolith” similar in form and embellishment to the Bennett Monolith stands near the top of the entrance stairs.  The Kalasasaya contains a sunken courtyard and several rooms near its entrance. 

 

3.  The location of various stone “portraits’ of individual rulers in the entrance rooms may identify the Kalasasaya with the ancestral cult of the rulers of Tiwanaku, linking them again with the wider ideology and cosmology that includes the symbolism of the Akapana and Semi-Subterranean Temple.

 

4.  Located within the Kalasasaya, the Gateway of the Sun is a massive stone gate whose lintel bears a rich iconography in which a central divinity standing on a 3-tiered platform has been identified as incorporating the various forces of nature.  The central divinity is flanked by rows of winged figures that may represent the months of the solar calendar.  The Gateway iconography again codifies Tiwanaku ideology and was widely represented on the ceremonial/ritual imagery of the Tiwanaku and Wari domains throughout the south-central Andes.

 

Tiwanaku  “Palace” Architecture: Putuni

 

1.  A complex of the most elaborate residential occupation at Tiwanaku flanks another sunken “temple” near the western side of the Akapana, directly connected to it be a flight of steps from the court itself to the adjacent platform on which stood the palace.  Together temple and palace form the Putuni Complex. 

 

2.  The Putuni appears to have been built during a phase of modification of the central precinct of the city.  Earlier less formal elite residential occupation of the area was leveled around AD 8-900 and its foundations covered by the new, more elaborate and less dense architecture.  It appears as if the status and residential setting of the rulers of Tiwanaku was elaborated at this time during the height of Tiwanaku power.

 

3.  As with the other sites discussed the architecture and its contents link the residents of the Putuni with the ritual and religious qualities of the city.  Several very elaborately accoutered human burials, at least one of a shaman in full regalia, were located at the corners of the palace as dedicatory offerings while other less elaborate burials were interred directly beneath the structure.

 

4.  The occupants of the palaces were served by an elaborate water distribution and sewer system, which ran through what were apparently private quarters as well as large kitchens with multiple ovens and storage areas. 

 

5.  The Putuni residential quarters contained a wealth of elaborate ritual items as well as domestic material.  Elaborately painted ceramic keros, ritual metal objects, and probably textiles, are very common.

 

6. Walls were painted with multi-colored murals (thus the “Palace of the Multi-Colored Rooms”) and carved stone lintels surmounted doorways.

 

 

                                                             Craft Specialization

 

1.  Outside of the central moated precinct a large residential area of lesser-ranking individuals acted as the retainers of elite lineages who ruled Tiwanaku and its domain.  The residences were less elaborate but still contained enough elaborate goods (textiles, fine pottery, metal, semi-precious stone etc) to indicate that their owners, while low-class relative to the rulers, still controlled many materials of status.  They were probably the privileged retainers of the rulers and the producers of the various categories of “symbols of power” that the highest elite used to communicate their rank and to use in the rituals of religious and political ceremony.

 

2.  There has still been little archaeology in the peripheral areas so the form and structure of craft production is not known other than a single huge ceramic workshop.  However, many of the materials found in the area indicate that the raw material from which they were made must have been transported long distances by llama caravan and the finished products crafted at Tiwanaku.