Inca Sacred Space

This volume explores the ushnu, a central feature of Inca sacred architecture used for ritual, sacrifice, and solar observation. Built as stepped stone platforms linked to drains or basins, ushnus symbolised the flow of sacred essence between gods, rulers, and people. Drawing on papers from a 2010 British Museum conference, contributors examine their construction, placement, and role in territorial control, landscape management, and cultural continuity from pre-Inca times to the present Andean world.

This book focuses on one of the most significant manifestations of Inca sacred space – the ‘ushnu’ – a place of sacrifice, ritual and celebration, where the sun god was worshipped and where astronomical observations were made to monitor the yearly seasonal cycle. Physically the ushnu is a (stone built) stepped platform linked to a drain or a basin into which liquids can flow. The ushnu is seen as a place for the circulation of sacred essences between the world of the gods, the ruler, his people and their ancestors. The authors in this book examine the practical and symbolic principles underlying the construction of ushnus, the rationale for their placement, their function within the landscape and the activities that took place on them. The ingenious symbolic and practical architectural construction of the ushnu complex was deployed to appropriate and transform newly conquered subject territories. The best-known surviving ushnu platforms are conspicuous features at all the main settlements and administrative centres on the Inca royal roads, and at nodal points in the wider environment. This great arterial network and its associated ushnu complexes were fashioned to enhance the productive capacity of the landscape and to regulate the flow of key agricultural commodities. When Pizarro took the Inca king, Atahuallpa, prisoner, he did this at a location of Atahuallpa’s choice which we now know to have been the ushnu platform at the centre of the Inca site of Cajamarca, in the Northern Highlands of Peru. The papers united in this volume review the nature, expression, role and function of the ushnu concept from its pre-Inca origins through its interpretation in Tawantinsuyu, the Inca empire into its current Andean cultural context.

Introduction: Inca Sacred Space: Landscape, Site and Symbol in the Andes

Frank Meddens, Katie Willis, Colin McEwan and Nicholas Branch

The ushnus of Cusco and sacred centres in Andean ethnography, ethnohistory and archaeology

Professor R Tom Zuidema

Cognizing and marking the Andean landscape: ushnu, apachetas, sayhuas and wankas

Colin McEwan

The Link: of sacred persons and places

Susan Ramirez

Boundaries at the roof of the world: the ushnu and divisions in political and religious space

Frank Meddens

Ushnus and interiority

Catherine Allen

Learning about ushnus: social memories of the Inca state in a modern school setting in highland Bolivia

Denise Y Arnold

From Cuzco to the Four Quarters & vice-versa: connecting sacred spaces through the movement of stone, sand, and soil

Dennis Ogburn

The landscape, environment and pedo-Sedimentary context of Inca stepped platforms ('ushnus'), Ayacucho, Peru

Nicholas Branch, Millena Frouin, Rob Kemp, Nathalie Marini, Frank Meddens, Chiwetazulu Onuora and Barbara Silva

'Ritual Mixing': An Ethnographic Approach to the Combination of Fills from Different Origins in Inca ushnu platforms

Francisco Ferreira

If All the World's a Stage Then What's anushnu?

Lawrence S. Coben

Staging Sound: Acoustic Reflections on Inca Music, Architecture and Performance Spaces

Henry Stobart

Sacred Mountains and Rituals in the Andes

Carmen Escalante Gutierrez and Ricardo Valderrama Fernandez

The Incas in the territory of the Chancas: Usnukuna Platforms and their Antecedents

Cirilo Vivanco Pomacanchari

Altars and Altitude: The ushnu and the puna during the Late Horizon

Gabriel Ramon Joffre

Lightning (Illapa) and its Manifestations: Huacas and Ushnus

John E. Staller

Astronomical Observations on Inca ushnus in the Southern Andes

Ricardo Moyano

The Centre of the World and the Cusco ushnu Complexes

I.S Farrington

Choqek'iraw and its Ceremonial Platform called ushnu

Patrice Lecoq and Thibault Saintenoy

The ushnu, the centre of the Inca world: an overview from the highlands of Piura, northern Peru

Cesar Astuhuaman

Tambo Colorado: An ushnu and more

Jean-Pierre Protzen

The ushnus of Condesuyos

Mariusz Ziolkowski

An 1800-year Ice core history of climate and environment in the Andes of southern Peru and its relationship with highland/lowland cultural oscillations

Lonnie G. Thompson and Mary E. Davis

Afterword: power and propitiation in the Andes

Tristan Platt,

Contents

Introduction: Inca Sacred Space: Landscape, Site and Symbol in the Andes

Frank Meddens, Katie Willis, Colin McEwan and Nicholas Branch

The ushnus of Cusco and sacred centres in Andean ethnography, ethnohistory and archaeology

Professor R Tom Zuidema

Cognizing and marking the Andean landscape: ushnu, apachetas, sayhuas and wankas

Colin McEwan

The Link: of sacred persons and places

Susan Ramirez

Boundaries at the roof of the world: the ushnu and divisions in political and religious space

Frank Meddens

Ushnus and interiority

Catherine Allen

Learning about ushnus: social memories of the Inca state in a modern school setting in highland Bolivia

Denise Y Arnold

From Cuzco to the Four Quarters & vice-versa: connecting sacred spaces through the movement of stone, sand, and soil

Dennis Ogburn

The landscape, environment and pedo-Sedimentary context of Inca stepped platforms (‘ushnus’), Ayacucho, Peru

Nicholas Branch, Millena Frouin, Rob Kemp, Nathalie Marini, Frank Meddens, Chiwetazulu Onuora and Barbara Silva

'Ritual Mixing': An Ethnographic Approach to the Combination of Fills from Different Origins in Inca ushnu platforms

Francisco Ferreira

If All the World's a Stage Then What's anushnu?

Lawrence S. Coben

Staging Sound: Acoustic Reflections on Inca Music, Architecture and Performance Spaces

Henry Stobart

Sacred Mountains and Rituals in the Andes

Carmen Escalante Gutiérrez and Ricardo Valderrama Fernández

The Incas in the territory of the Chancas: Usnukuna Platforms and their Antecedents

Cirilo Vivanco Pomacanchari

Altars and Altitude: The ushnu and the puna during the Late Horizon

Gabriel Ramón Joffré

Lightning (Illapa) and its Manifestations: Huacas and Ushnus

John E. Staller

Astronomical Observations on Inca ushnus in the Southern Andes

Ricardo Moyano

The Centre of the World and the Cusco ushnu Complexes

I.S Farrington

Choqek’iraw and its Ceremonial Platform called ushnu

Patrice Lecoq and Thibault Saintenoy

The ushnu, the centre of the Inca world: an overview from the highlands of Piura, northern Peru

César Astuhuamán

Tambo Colorado: An ushnu and more

Jean-Pierre Protzen

The ushnus of Condesuyos

Mariusz Ziólkowski

An 1800-year Ice core history of climate and environment in the Andes of southern Peru and its relationship with highland/lowland cultural oscillations

Lonnie G. Thompson and Mary E. Davis

Afterword: power and propitiation in the Andes

Tristan Platt

• Edited by Frank Meddens
• Edited by Katie Willis
• Edited by Colin McEwan
• Edited by Nicholas Branch

"This is a terrific book...The volume is well-edited, superbly illustrated, and consistently insightful...comparative chapters are complemented by outstanding case studies...This brief review cannot fully convey the rich insights throughout Inca Sacred Space: Landscape, Site and Symbol in the Andes which the reader should study and savor." Journal of Historical Geography - February 2015
—

This is a terrific book...The volume is well-edited, superbly illustrated, and consistently insightful...comparative chapters are complemented by outstanding case studies...This brief review cannot fully convey the rich insights throughout Inca Sacred Space: Landscape, Site and Symbol in the Andes which the reader should study and savor.

—