The Diversity of Ceremonial Architecture in the Eastern Highlands of Áncash during the Late Intermediate Period: An Approach from the Site of Marcajirca 

Purpose and framing

The article defines ceremonial architecture as non-domestic buildings whose construction required coordinated labor beyond the household, and whose continued use implies a group that performed rituals there. The authors point out that archaeologists often explain any ceremonial building generically as a place of ancestor veneration (citing Whitley's critique), or else as a place of fertility rites, astronomy, payments to the pachamama, or cult of the dead. They argue instead that a building's surrounding space, accessibility, visibility, size, and labor investment can reveal what kind of ritual took place there. Marcajirca has four distinct types of ceremonial structure, so it offers a chance to show that many kinds of ritual were practiced side by side over several centuries.

The Late Intermediate Period (1000–1476) is presented as a time of political fragmentation, frequent conflict, regionalized styles, widespread chullpa construction, and a shift from large settlements on flat ground to small, dispersed hilltop sites.

The site

Marcajirca lies between the districts of Cajay and Masin, east of the city of Huari, on a low summit between 3,720 and 3,850 m. The sacred mountain Llamoq rises 2 km to the north at 4,400 m. The site sits at a tinku, the confluence where the Huaritambo and Mosna rivers form the Puccha, which flows into the Marañón. Tello mapped it in 1919 without describing it, and Márquez Zorrilla mentioned it in 1965. Ibarra produced the first plan in 1999, and excavations ran from 2005 to 2014. Fifteen radiocarbon dates place the occupation between 1040 and 1600, with the main phase in the LIP and some Inca presence, including a chullpa and two rectangular structures dated to 1438–1518. At the time of the Inca conquest under Tupac Yupanqui (around 1476), the Huari lived north of the Puccha River, where Marcajirca is located, and the Pincos lived to the south.

A cliff and a series of walls divide the site in two. The upper sector to the north extends about 350 m from the cliff edge to a northern wall up to 3 m high, and it is reached by zigzagging stairways. The main sector to the south covers about 40 ha and is subdivided into three parts. The residential area has more than 50 houses, with burnt camelid bone, sooted pottery, drains, and a possible guinea-pig pen, plus seven chullpas, four caves, a small plaza of 12 × 30 m, and two altars. The funerary area holds 37 chullpas and 22 caves; chullpas and caves were used at the same time and contain similar goods, and there are hearths in front of the chullpa doorways and patio walls added later. The ceremonial area contains the Amphitheater, the Torreón, and the huanca.

The four types of ceremonial architecture

The altars. Two altars stand in the residential sector. Each is built on top of a huge boulder whose uneven surface was leveled with retaining walls and mud mortar, giving a view over the houses and beyond. Altar 1 is 3.2 m high with a circular top 3 m across. It has no stairway, so people probably climbed up from the west. Its surface held fine, thin-walled sherds, possibly from miniature vessels, and a flat stone slab of about 60 × 30 cm marked with small red-painted holes. Painted slabs occur in mortuary contexts in the southern highlands, but those have more elaborate designs. Altar 2 measures 2.6 × 1.6 m, is about 2 m high, and has a narrow six-step stairway on its west side. The two altars are about 30 m apart, with an unmodified flat boulder between them. Because both were approached from the west, a person climbing up would face east toward the sunrise and toward most of the houses, which hints at solar associations. The authors interpret the altars as places for small, everyday rituals. They draw an analogy with present-day herders who wake in the night to chew coca and watch the stars, reading late-rising or vanished stars as signs of change. On this reading the dotted slab could be a kind of star map, and following Catherine Allen, coca chewing is treated as a ritual that preserves community memory and binds people to the pachamama and the jircas.

The ushnus. Three low platforms stand in a row on the rocky summit of the upper sector. The North Ushnu is semicircular, about 11 × 11.7 m, faces 14° NE, and has walls 1–2 m high. Its east side drops straight to the cliff overlooking the Puccha valley, and it is the only ushnu with a clearly visible doorway, 50 cm wide, in its southwest corner. The Central Ushnu is the largest at 20 × 12 m. It is perfectly rectangular, aligned exactly north, and has walls 2–3 m high, with stone alignments on its surface and an attached lower patio; the authors consider it the most important of the three. The South Ushnu is a near-oval platform of 14 × 7.7 m, faces 8° NE, and is the only one built with the pachilla technique. It is the first structure a visitor meets after climbing the steep trail from the main sector. The row of ushnus controls the obligatory passage between Marcajirca and Llamoq. Seventeenth-century chroniclers mention alignments of ushnus, and the dimensions match ushnus in Ayacucho. The authors trace these LIP ushnus back to Recuay pirushtus, circular platforms on hillsides, which supports the view that the ushnu concept predates the Inca. Because the ushnus are set apart from the houses and tombs and are surrounded by open space, the authors argue they hosted large, infrequent gatherings that drew people from across the valley. Strontium isotope data showing people from multiple valley sites buried at Marcajirca support this. Suggested occasions include the agricultural new year, communal cleaning of canals and paths, and assembly before the pilgrimage to Llamoq.

The Torreón. This tower-like circular building in the ceremonial sector has no known parallel in the region. Its inner chamber measures 5.3 m across and is surrounded by a double wall 4 m thick, giving an outer diameter of 14 m and a height of 2.6 m. A 40 cm bench runs around the inner patio. A narrow corridor cuts through the wall at the southeast, and a stairway 2.1 m wide on the southwest leads to the top of the wall. Excavation found that the floor had been destroyed and the interior, including the bench, deliberately filled with about 40 cm of sterile stone fill. The upper layer, linked to the final occupation, yielded 15 sherds. Because of its massive scale, the authors think the Torreón may be the oldest building at the site, possibly older than the LIP. In its first phase, the enclosed, bench-lined interior with almost no outward view suggests restricted, private ceremonies such as healing, shamanism, or meetings of an elite, without libations or feasting. The authors connect this to Recuay-era bench and spiral structures nearby, which they read as Recuay practices of restricted power. Later, the interior was filled in and the stairway was added. The stairway looks toward the Amazon basin, where lightning from jungle storms is visible at night. This transformed the building from a nearly secret space into a public, visual one that commands the whole Puccha valley.

The Amphitheater. This oval complex of 26 × 20 m sits against the central perimeter wall. It has five parts. An atrium wall 12.5 m long and 3 m high has an attached platform with east and west passages. Stepped terraces run along both sides, three on the west and two on the east. An access stairway 17 m long descends from the south, and a chullpa built into it shows that the Amphitheater was constructed after the chullpas. A sunken central plaza, or stage, 10 m across, held 116 sherds, a modern belt buckle in the plowed layer, and wet, muddy soil at 1.8 m depth that suggests underground water. Finally, a small "custodia" (Structure 1) of 2.6 × 2.2 m sits on the uppermost platform. It has a sealed east doorway and two small cists in front containing a few sherds and a piece of quartz, and the authors interpret it as a store for ritual paraphernalia. From the plaza itself, nothing is visible except the tiers, so ceremonies there focused on performers watched by an audience, such as dances or assemblies, rather than on the surrounding landscape. The Amphitheater was built at about the same time as the walled patios around the chullpas, when rites for the dead moved into those enclosed spaces.

The huanca. The site's only huanca, a 2.2 m upright stone leaning on a boulder, stands on one of the Amphitheater platforms. Following Duviols and Dean, the authors describe huancas as embodiments of founding ancestors that guarded fields (chacrayoc) and towns (marcayoc) and signified the ancestor's possession of the land. A 2 × 2 m excavation recovered sherds, burnt animal bone, a whole polished stone point, two point fragments, and flakes, along with an ash and charcoal lens at the base of the stone that indicates ritual burning, probably watched by the Amphitheater audience. Similar points come from Reparin, Purhuay, and Chavín, where they are associated with the Huarás style. Following César Itier, the authors distinguish movable huacas from fixed huancas. They reject a fertility or water interpretation of this huanca because there is no water source nearby, and they argue that the Amphitheater served a double purpose: performances, and veneration of a founding ancestor.

Discussion and conclusions

The authors note that most studies of Andean ceremonial architecture focus either on early monumental centers (Late Archaic to Early Horizon) or on Inca ushnus, leaving non-domestic, non-funerary LIP buildings in the highlands understudied. Because Marcajirca has several distinct ceremonial structures, each was probably dedicated to a particular kind of ceremony. The Inca administrative centers of Soledad de Tambo and Huaritambo, each about 8 km away, have their own ushnus, so the authors date Marcajirca's ushnus to the LIP and argue they served a different, non-ancestral purpose. The altars set among houses have no close parallels; the nearest are a carved rock huaca-huanca at Kipia in the Cordillera Negra, which is associated with tombs, and Chachapoya houses built on boulders.

The conclusions sort Marcajirca's ceremonies by scale and frequency. The altars hosted daily, small-group rites such as coca chewing. The ushnus hosted rare, valley-wide gatherings. The Amphitheater combined performance with veneration of the founding ancestor through the huanca, and its construction marks an increase in ceremonial activity. The Torreón changed over time from private to public use. In the chullpa patios, rites for the dead became private ceremonies for kin. Burnt offerings and stone objects appear throughout, and libations are likely. Except for the ushnus, which developed from Recuay pirushtus, these structures are unusual elsewhere, and the huanca reflects a tradition reaching back to the Late Archaic. The article closes by arguing that reducing Andean ritual to a single explanation, such as fertility or ancestor veneration, needs to be reconsidered.