Charles River Editors, Jesse Harasta - Tiwanaku and Puma Punku_ The History and Legacy of South America’s Most Famous Ancient Holy Site

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Tiwanaku and Puma Punku: The History and Legacy of South America’s Most Famous Ancient Holy Site By Jesse Harasta & Charles River Editors

Janikorpi’s picture of ruins at Puma Punku

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Introduction

Brattarb’s picture of building blocks at Puma Punku

Tiwanaku and Puma Punku “Tiahuanaco is not a very large village, but it is celebrated for the great edifices near it, which are certainly things worth seeing. Near the buildings there is a hill made by the hands of men, on great foundations of stone. Beyond this hill there are two stone idols, of the human shape and figure, the features very skillfully carved, so that they appear to have been done by the hand of some great master. They are so large that they seem like small giants, and it is clear that they have on a sort of clothing different from those now worn by the natives of these parts.” - Cieza de Léon, 1883 Few ancient ruins capture the imagination like the mighty holy site of Tiwanaku, located on the high Andean altiplano plateau outside of La Paz, Bolivia. Unlike some ancient sites, such as Machu Picchu in neighboring Peru

or Chichen Itzá in Mexico, Tiwanaku has never been “lost”; on the contrary, it has been marveled over for centuries by Incan nobles, Spanish Conquistadores, modern backpackers, and UFO fanatics alike. Despite this history of amazement, Tiwanaku has remained something of an enigma until recently, but it appears that this would have probably been pleasing to its creators. It was created to be a mysterious, sacred, and beautiful place, one with many secrets and a public face characterized by PT Barnum-like showmanship. Skillful modern archaeology has allowed people to look behind the facade and see, for the first time in many, many centuries, some of the secrets behind it. The story is fascinating, complex, and thoroughly human. The modern visitor arriving to Tiahuanaco finds him or herself in, as Cieza de Léon noted almost 130 years ago, a not very notable, dusty, chilly settlement south of Lake Titicaca. The place would not be of any great interest except that to the east and south of the modern village, within walking distance of the center, rise a number of remarkable ruins. The eastern complex is the larger of the two and encompasses the ceremonial heart of the ancient settlement, including the massive Akapana Pyramid, the Kalasaya Temple, and the famed Puerta del Sol (Gate of the Sun). Visitors typically pose before this remarkable gateway, carved out of a single 10-ton block of andesite and decorated with elaborate carvings, including a curious figure in the center of a man bearing two rods or staffs in its hands. Visitors leaving this central complex travel south — perhaps stopping at the Ceramic Museum, containing typical works of red and white geometric and zoomorphic images on red earthenware — to the southern complex, centered on the famed ruins of Puma Punku. While this typically makes up the entirety of a visitor’s time in the ruins, what is often overlooked is that these ceremonial buildings were surrounded by a vast array of lesser structures, many of which appear to have been cannibalized for their stone to build the modern town, especially the church of San Pedro in the main square (Bolivia es Turismo 2016). Beyond this was an impressive system of aqueducts and irrigation, broad expanses of carefully controlled fields, outlying settlements, and a vast network of dependent, conquered territories. Together they make up the political, spiritual, economic, and artistic world which today is called “Tiwanaku,” a place, empire, and cultural tradition that is the focus of this text.

The ancient world often evokes wonder, respect and even confusion, and few places accomplish any of that more than the incredible ruined stone temple of Puma Punku. Part of the larger ruined city of Tiwanaku in the altiplano plains of modern Bolivia, Puma Punku is a marvel of engineering, stonemasonry and design. These facts are obvious to even the lay observer, as Puma Punku’s stonework is remarkable even for the Andes where visitors have long wondered at ancient stone joints where even a knife bade could not fit between the stones. This level of craftsmanship has caused some, mostly those who have never been to the Andes, to speculate of a fanciful origin for the site, maintaining that such a wonderful and mysterious place must be the work of extraterrestrial or super-human forces. However, Puma Punku’s stonemasonry is often considered its most notable feature only because until recently so little was known about the site or the Tiwanaku culture that built it. This would be like visiting the ruins of the Vatican or Westminster Abbey centuries from now and being wowed by the quality of construction. While the construction is impressive, that aspect is not the most interesting story that the sites can tell. Today, through the diligent work of scholars from many countries, the disciplines of archaeology, art history, comparative ethnography and other modern historical sciences have begun to peel back the story of Puma Punku, and historians can once again begin to tell the stories behind the stones. That work has highlighted the enigmatic ruins from many points of view, and have helped explain how it was a place of ritual, showmanship, mythology and, of course, the finest workmanship. Tiwanaku and Puma Punku: The History and Legacy of South America’s Most Famous Ancient Holy Site examines some of the most important preColumbian ruins in the world. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Tiwanaku and Puma Punku like never before.

Tiwanaku and Puma Punku: The History and Legacy of South America’s Most Famous Ancient Holy Site About Charles River Editors Introduction Origins of the Name Tiwanaku Origins of the Name Puma Punku Layout and Orientation of the Ruins Today The Layout of Tiwanaku at Its Peak Major Sites within the Settlement The Layout of Puma Punku and the Residences Founding of Tiwanaku and Its Early Years Classic Period The New Sacred Core Puma Punku as a Center of Pilgrimage The Decline of Tiwanaku Post-Tiwanaku and the Incan Rehabilitation The Inca and Spanish at Puma Punku Modern Tiwanaku Archaeology at Puma Punku Online Resources Bibliography Free Books by Charles River Editors Discounted Books by Charles River Editors

Origins of the Name Tiwanaku

The exact origins of the name “Tiwanaku” remain obscure, but what is known is that it is probably not the name the builders of the site gave it. Instead, the term came from the local inhabitants of the region who speak Aymara, one of the largest Native American languages in the world, with over a million speakers and a major language of Bolivia. The site gained this name from the name of the modern community, which existed under Incan dominance before the Spanish arrival. Today there are two alternative ways of writing the name: “Tiwanaku” and “Tiahuanaco” (and sometimes even “Tiahuanacu”). “Tiwanaku,” which is more common in English, is derived from contemporary spellings of Aymara, while “Tiahuanaco/u” (pronounced the same) is derived from Spanish language spellings. Spanish does not widely use “W” or “K,” but Aymara does, in part to differentiate itself from Spanish in exactly these circumstances. This work uses the standard English system of “Tiahuanaco” for the modern Aymara-speaking town and “Tiwanaku” to refer to the ancient settlement and civilization. This gives precedence for the preferences of the indigenous peoples whose story is intertwined with that of Tiwanaku itself. It also retains the original spelling in quotes used by the contemporary sources. Origins of the Name Puma Punku The ruins of Puma Punku are part of the larger ruined city of Tiwanaku, which can also be written using Spanish spelling rules as “Tiahuanaco” or even “Tiahuancu.” Tiwanaku is not by any means a “lost city,” as it is located in the valley of Lake Titicaca and is approximately 20 kilometers to the southeast of the present-day shores of the lake. This is one of the most ancient centers of civilization and the region has always been densely populated; in fact, the site still has one of the highest population concentrations in the nation. Hence, the existence of the ruins was always known to the local Aymara people, and the Spanish became aware of the site in some of their earliest expeditions into the region. Today Puma Punku is located within the borders of the Bolivian department of La Paz and is roughly 67 kilometers from the capital city of La Paz itself (Perry-Casteñeda).

Unlike many archaeological sites named by the outside archaeologists or explorers who first brought them to light to the outside world, the name Puma Punku apparently predates the Spanish arrival, though it may very well not be the original name given to the site by its actual builders or inhabitants. The name that survived to the present day comes from the Aymara people who make up the majority of the population today in the surrounding Titicaca Valley. The first word “Puma”, is, remarkably the same in English as in Spanish and the indigenous languages of Aymara and Quechua to the north. In fact, English borrows the word from Spanish explorers who in turn learned it in their South American journeys (Harper 2016). The great cat “…was an important element in the religion of many indigenous cultures [of the western and southern South America]. Pumas were represented in ceramics, textiles, metallurgy, bone and other media.” (Giesso 2010:150) The second element of the name, Punku, is more obscure to the English speaker. The word roughly translates a “Gate,” which means the overall name roughly means “Puma Gate.” However, this obscures the phenomenal importance of gates, portals and entryways throughout the ruins of Tiwanaku. Archaeologists have long noted that the city was notable for its “unprecedented elaboration of gateways” (Moseley 1992:205). There is a long technical and stylistic evolution demonstrated in gateways, culminating in the Gateway of the Sun “which is also the most complex statement of Tiwanaku iconography” surmounted by the “Gateway God” or the “Staff God” (Moseley 1992:205). As will be described below, there is a strong argument that this phenomenal piece of sculpture was actually originally located at Puma Punku and is perhaps the “Puma Gate” itself, and was moved at a later time. Because of the differences between English, Spanish and Aymara, there are a number of variant spellings of the prominent sites involved in this work. Puma Punku is most commonly spelled in English as “Puma Punku”, but in the Aymara fashion it is spelled as "Pumapunku." Sometimes Tiwanaku is spelled using Spanish orthography as "Tiahuanaco." These spellings are all equally legitimate, but for the sake of uniformity, this book uses "Pumapunku" and "Tiwanaku," except in quotes or in the modern-day town of Tiahuanaco, where the original spelling is kept. Layout and Orientation of the Ruins Today

“The funnel-shaped valley of Tiwanaku opens up toward the shallow blue waters of Lake Titicaca; across the valley floor, hemmed by rising mountains, are small villages and scattered adobe houses that blend into a landscape of spiky brown grass. [...] Crumbling hilltop fortresses speak of centuries of endemic warfare… but periodically powerful states have taken control. The first of these, Tiwanaku, [ruled] uncontested over the fertile, reed-line lakeshore in the latter half of the first millennium.” - Alexei Vranich, 2003 Tiwanaku was one of the two most important cities of the Andes in a period known as the Middle Horizon, from approximately 600-1000 CE[1], though the city was considerably older and lasted sometime beyond this golden age (Quilter 2014:201). This was a period of relative stability and centralization in the Andes, and Tiwanaku, along with Wari to the north, was the center of a massive and profitable network of other cities and communities. This period was followed by a time of chaos and decentralization in the Andes which in turn led to consolidation of power in the late 1400s by the Incan Empire. Tiwanaku’s power and importance is directly tied to its unique location and the resources (material and symbolic) it could draw upon there. The settlement lay approximately 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) to the south of Lake Titicaca, the largest lake in South America and the highest navigable lake in the world; not only is it the largest in the Andes, but it is the only significant lake in the entire region. This place has captured the imaginations of Andean peoples for untold centuries and has long been a center of civilization; even today the Bolivian capital of La Paz (population 2.3 million) is nearby in the broad lake basin. But more than that, it was believed to be “the place of origin, whence the primeval couple were sent out to call mankind forth from the springs, rivers, rock and trees” (Ching 2011:267). This mythological status as the place of humanity’s birth has long set it apart as a place of pilgrimage and spiritual prominence, something that Tiwanaku drew heavily upon. Materially, the lake also serves to mitigate the local microclimate. The Titicaca Basin is approximately 3,800 meters (2.36 miles) above sea level and has always been a difficult place for agriculture, as the climate is chilly with frequent frosts and irregular rains. However, the lake water remains a stable 10.5° C (51° F) at all times, meaning that around its shores, radiated heat can mitigate many frosts and protect plants. In general, humidity tends to decline

rapidly as one travels away from the lake, and only about 33.9% of the basin lands are arable (WWAP 2003). Still, the region is very high and very chilly. La Paz is the highest capital city in the world (at approximately 3,660 meters above sea level [Ching 2011:267]), and Tiwanaku was the highest city in the ancient Americas (Giesso 2010:188). All of this made life challenging for the Tiwanakus and led them to create many innovative agricultural technologies. But while the basin appears grim when compared to a bountiful place like California’s Imperial Valley, for the Tiwanakus it and the lake at its heart were literal and figurative givers of life, oases of warmth and water in a cold, hard landscape. While the Titicaca Basin is high, it is surrounded on all sides by even higher Andean peaks, which are clearly visible from Tiwanaku (and the rest of the basin) as a great wall ringing in their world. These surrounding mountains played an important role for the Tiwanaku civilization. Symbolically, the mountains had meanings and were often associated with powerful deities; major structures in Tiwanaku’s golden age were constructed in alignment with some of these peaks as well as designed to shape the visitor’s viewsheds of them, revealing the splendor of the mountains at particularly crucial moments. In addition, the proximity of the mountains gave a varied set of terrains for resource exploitation. Tiwanaku was well within the tropics (despite its cold climate), meaning that temperatures and weather did not tend to vary significantly by the season. Instead, temperatures and climates vary dramatically with changes in altitude and proximity to mountains, giving the Tiwanakus access to different plants, animals, and minerals. The Layout of Tiwanaku at Its Peak

The settlement of Tiwanaku was laid out with careful central planning and massive amounts of labor on the broad plain to the south of Lake Titicaca. It was approximately six square kilometers (about 2.31 square miles) in size at its height (Quilter 2014:201). The city planners diverted the nearby Tiwanaku River, the only major local tributary into Lake Titicaca, into the city to create artificial moats around the ceremonial urban core (Kolata 1996:228). The district within this core, approximately 65 to 70 hectares (161-173 acres), contained the majority of the most important structures, including the Akapana Pyramid and its accompanying temples, the Kalasasaya and the Semi-subterranean Temple. The most significant building outside this core was the Puma Punku complex to the southeast, but there would have been a

more secular district surrounding the moat, including places for visiting pilgrims, storehouses for their offerings, buildings under construction and deconstruction, and housing for the support staff (Quilter 2014:201-205). There is no indication of districts dedicated to manufacturing, nor to the military, defense, or even the residence of a large number of permanent citizens. Surrounding the city was an agricultural landscape as tightly controlled and shaped by the Tiwanakus as the city itself. As one approached the city, he or she passed through vast (estimated up to tens of thousands of hectares) of raised fields, called Sukakollos in the local Aymara dialect, which were designed to maximize water use and mitigate cold temperatures. The Sukakollos were themselves fed by an elaborate irrigation system based on the Tiwanaku River. Hence, as the visitor approached the sacred precincts, they would pass through an impressively managed and productive agricultural landscape (Erikson 1988; Erikson and Candler 1989).

Alfonso F. del Granado Rivero’s picture of archaeologists doing a robotic dig on the Akapana Pyramid

Major Sites within the Settlement

Modern visitors and undoubtedly ancient pilgrims alike all marvel at the Puerta del Sol, the Gateway of the Sun, which today stands near the Akapana Pyramid (though that was probably not its original location). The massive archway is approximately three meters tall and four meters wide; the door itself is narrow, and it is flanked by two wide supports. The presumed front of the Gateway is mostly free of carving on its lower “legs” except for a single recess on either side. However, along the top of the structure is an elaborately carved lintel, with forty-eight identical figures and geometrical patterns flanking a central humanoid figure. This individual is wearing elaborate regalia and has either a headdress or rays radiating from its head. While the rest of the carving was excavated in relief into the plane of surface, the head and body of this figure projects outwards from the structure, meaning that travelers passing through the gateway would have felt it looming over them. This being, referred to as the Gateway God, is described in greater detail below. The presumed back of the Gateway is carved with a geometric design, including two large recesses on the archway’s legs and four along the lintel.

The Gateway does not appear to have had a door and was a freestanding structure, not attached to a wall (Stone-Miller 1996).

The Gateway of the Sun Beyond today’s location of the Gateway rises the Akapana Pyramid, the most physically impressive structure at the site. When viewed from above, it has the form of a “Tiwanaku T,” essentially a “stepped” T shape which was widely found in sacred imagery throughout the region but was especially popular in Tiwanaku art. Like all pyramids in the Americas, it was built as a series of six-stepped terraces, unlike the smooth shape of Egyptian pyramids. The structure was 200 meters (696 feet) long and 17 meters (57 feet) high. It has an earthen core, but was faced with cut stones (Quilter 2007:201-2). At the top of the T, in the very center was a wide ceremonial stair that ascended all the way to the top, where the visitor briefly emerged to an incredible view of the surrounding sacred mountains (which had been obscured during the trip) and the lake, before their pathway descended again into a 50-meter wide (164 feet) sunken courtyard in the shape of an Andean Cross, a pattern that long pre-dates Tiwanaku and continued in regional iconography long after the city (Ibid 202-203). Visitors would have had more than simply impressive views to admire. The Akapana was not only symbolically linked to the mountains, but also to the water. The surfaces were covered in layers of green gravel imported from distant regions, and the hydraulic systems that brought water into the moats

and irrigation ditches were also linked to the pyramid, as all of the water that fell on it was collected and then released in a controlled fashion along drainage canals on the Pyramid’s surface. Thus to pilgrims, it seemed like water sprung forth from the man-made structure miraculously, akin to the streams and springs that issued forth from the sides of mountains. This water then flowed off the pyramid and into the moats and, from there, to the Sacred Lake, connecting the complex to the life-giving lake while serving the practical purpose of providing drainage during infrequent rains (Ibid 203). While looters have caused significant damage to the Akapana while searching for treasure, archaeologists have found burials at the pyramid’s top, including seated men who were not buried with any wealth, hinting at the possibility that they may have been ascetic monk-priests. Near the Akapana is the Kalasasaya Temple, a massive platform with a sunken courtyard in the center, much in the way that there was a sunken temple at the top of the Akapana. While not as tall as the Akapana, the Kalasasaya’s footprint rivals its neighbor: it was 120 meters by 130 meters in size. The square complex is surrounded by smooth stone walls with regular jutting pillars — almost like pickets on a modern fence — along its edge. Visitors ascended a central staircase to the top of the platform, where they immediately pass through a stone gate to yet another wall before descending into a concealed courtyard, which has itself another sunken courtyard in its center (Quilter 2007:203).

Pictures of the wall and the ruins of the Temple of Kalasasaya In the middle of the central courtyard is the Ponce Stela, a monolithic stone pillar. The Stela (carved stone) is in the form of a human covered in geometric forms carrying something in each hand, held to its breast; it may be the Gateway God or a priest or leader. The objects the figure carries are a staff or rod in one hand and a beaker called a Kero or Qero in the other (Cartwright 2014). One feature of this site that captivates many visitors is that the walls are studded with human and animal heads that jut out (the style is referred to as “tenon”) from the otherwise smooth walls; this is a style of carving reminiscent of the Gateway God jutting out of the Puerta del Sol. Today, that remarkable gateway arch is located at the corner of the Kalasasaya Complex. Also in the moated ceremonial core are the small Semi-subterranean Temple and the Putuni Palace. Probably one of the oldest structures in the complex, the Semi-subterranean Temple appears to be built on the same style as the Kalasasaya: a sunken pit more than two feet deep with laid cut stone walls and a central stone pillar, the Bennett Stela. The Bennett Stela is similar to the Ponce Stela in its design with two significant differences: it is taller (the tallest

surviving stone sculpture in the Ancient Andes) and, enigmatically, the figure is weeping. The temple’s walls are also studded with carved tenon heads (Cartwright 2014). Located adjacent to the Kalasasaya, the Putuni Palace is a late addition to the complex and appears to be an inhabited space, with areas that have been identified as storage rooms and ovens. High-status burials (those that are accompanied with elaborate clothing and adornments) have been found under this structure (Quilter 2007:203). The final significant structure in the central enclosure was the Kerikala, which is still little understood but has been argued to have been a more humble (but still grand compared to the everyday Tiwanaku home) residence, perhaps of a priestly order. The Layout of Puma Punku and the Residences

“About a kilometer away [from Kalasasaya], the very finest andesite and sandstone block masonry, along with exquisitely carved gateway fragments, are found at the ‘Puma Punku’ platform. Standing 5 m high and measuring 150m square, the front of the platform had a majestic megalithic façade with two or three separate stairways leading to an equal number of grand portals individually carved from single slabs of andesite weighing tons. Behind the gateways lay a sunken court…” (Moseley 1992:205) As one leaves the present-day town of Tiwanaku and enters the dusty plains surrounding the settlement, a curious structure looms up in the southern outskirts. While ruined for centuries, thanks to masterful construction, a favorable dry climate and recent efforts of restoration and preservation, much can still be made of this complex, the famed temple of Puma Punku. The visitor passes through a simple gate in a chain link fence, past the guard station and along an unpaved pathway. The structure rises up from the plain, forming what is apparently a low pyramid. However, this is deceiving because as the visitor crests the top of the grass-covered platform, he or she realizes that while there is a flat area around the top of the square temple, this is the border for a depression building to the rock – almost like a cubist meteor crater. Littering the ground here are large cut stones, often with rectilinear segments cut out of the side of them. There are still some parts of the wall standing here or there, as well as paved areas. The site is simple, with only a few interpretative signs and roped-off walkways leading through the more interesting sections of the ruins.

Throughout the structure, the walls and floors alike were paved in carefully cut stone. Most of the construction at Tiwanaku was adobe, and even the homes of elites had adobe upper stories on top of stone foundations. However, Puma Punku and other central religious sites were constructed entirely of stone (Giesso 2010:188). Much of the modern wonder at this workmanship has come from the remarkable precision used to cut these stones, not just their outer forms, but also the carved circular, cross-shaped or T-shaped holes or depressions in them, often for reasons that are not immediately understandable to the modern observer. They also often cut rectilinear depressions, sometimes several of them in sequence into the edges, especially around the gates. Quilter notes that “the complex appears to have been left unfinished, as is also true for some other buildings, but it still contains some of the finest stonework at the ceremonial center, including splendid ashlar blocks held together by bronze clamps, a feature of the most prestigious stonework.” (2014:203). In fact, the fabulous stone masonry of Tiwanaku, which reached its apex at Puma Punku, was so renowned throughout the ancient Andes that the Inca would eventually import all of their stone masons for their capital of Cuzco from the region (Stone-Miller 1995:128). Despite some claims to the contrary, the stones at Puma Punku are relatively common and easy to work with: red sandstone and andesite, which is a dark igneous rock and is commonly found throughout the Andes (in fact its name “andes-ite” is derived from the region). It has a hardness of 7 on the Mohs scale (which measures the relative hardness of rocks), which is harder than most sandstone (6 on the scale). In practical terms, this means that the stones use to construct the site were not easy to work with but were well within the capacities that were typical of Andean peoples of the region.

Picture of a stone with a straight line and loopholes cut into it

Brattarb’s picture of pieces of block at Puma Punku What is not immediately evident to modern visitors is how impressive this site once was – for that, they need to rely upon the arts of the archaeologists who have not only dug there but in other areas of Tiwanaku and throughout the Andes. Drawing upon information here and upon inference and comparison to a hundred other sites can provide a more vivid reconstruction of what it is likely this site once looked like. The broad platform – what appears to be a pyramid from the outside – is in fact made up of three layers, each slightly smaller than the previous, built like a wedding cake. The overall form, still visible from the air, was in the shape of a “T”, which was typical of Tiwanaku style. The visitor approached the complex through a lower gate at the base of the “T” which allowed access to a set of stairs leading up the side of the structure to a second gate at the base of the third platform. The top of the platform was surrounded by a low wall, which was not usable for defense but instead more symbolic. The overall structure was two hectares (about five acres) in size (Quilter 2014:203).

Traveling through the structure also involved transforming one’s perspective towards the landscape around it. “Once at Tiahuanaco, neither [Lake Titicaca] nor [Mount Illimani] would have been visible until the pilgrims climbed the Puma Punku and the snowy peak reemerged beyond the city skyline.” (Quilter 2014:205) People today can only surmise the symbolic importance of emerging through gateways into a view of these sacred sites. As one crosses the top of the platform and approaches the depression in the center, still walking in a straight line from the original gate, there is another set of stairs down into the depression. On the far side is another set of stairs (meaning the visitor has ascended three levels, descended one level again and then ascended again) to approach a long structure along the back side. This is where today’s visitors arrive at the site, and most do not have a full understanding of the form of the original structure. They may also not realize that they are standing in the ruins of perhaps not the biggest but definitely the finest example of what archaeologists have described as a “Tiwanaku Semi-Subterranean Temple,” a form which was perfected at Puma Punku and then exported outwards to other ritual sites under the great city’s influence, where it is quite likely that rituals mimicking those at the original site were conducted (Kolata 1987:36). The Semi-Subterranean Temple tradition (and Puma Punku, its culmination) was itself an outgrowth of a long Andean tradition of “sunken courts”, which involved building recessed spaces in sacred sites. The temple would have included an area excavated out of the earth with a staircase at either end which participants would enter in a procession from one end, pass through, and exit on the far side. These temples existed from some of the earliest pre-ceramic sites and continued until the Tiwanaku period, where the tradition died. Moseley supposes that “perhaps the pits were places for re-enacting the dawn of creation when people emerged from the inner earth through caves, springs, and holes in the ground” (Moseley 1992:111-112). There is little doubt that Puma Punku served a primarily ritual or symbolic purpose, as scholars have found no evidence in the period of its construction that it was a residence, fortress, place of industrial labor or other similar use. Instead, it served (along with the two other main ritual centers at Tiwanaku) as a central stage by which residents and pilgrims could participate in and presumably be awed by, elaborate rituals. “The Puma Punku Complex was

designed to funnel groups of people across specially constructed architectural spaces, and to display a series of symbolically important and ritually charged images and activities.” (Vranich 1999) Much of the Tiwanakus’ attention at the site was apparently given to the manipulation of water. Rainwater would collect at the top of the structure during the periodic violent thunderstorms that sweep through the Titicaca Valley from December until March, and that water collected in the recessed central depression but was drained away by stone-lined subterranean channels. Water collected in this cistern was, in turn, channeled outwards probably in four directions towards the outer walls. When the water reached the outer walls, it did so on the vertical surface of the terrace, where it emerged in form of a fountain or cascade which then reached the flat surface of the next lower terrace where it proceeded for a short distance before being once again channeled under the surface to re-emerge in the same fashion on the next terrace platform. It would continue in this way, weaving in and out of the earth, until reaching the ground where it would be channeled into the moat that surrounded Puma Punku. This water would eventually drain into Lake Titicaca itself. Thus, at Puma Punku, the manipulation of water went beyond merely the existence of the moats; the complex’s architecture focused on managing the flow of water throughout, symbolically connecting the city to the Lake. Pilgrims would have seen the waters emerging from the central areas, trickling down to feed the greater waters of the moats and, by extension, Lake Titicaca itself. The visitors would have been familiar with the region’s long traditions of irrigation and canalization of water, but the complexity of the systems at Puma Punku would have been beyond anything they had encountered before. (Ortloff 2009). In many ways, this system parallels the natural drainage of water from the surrounding mountains which collected in high lakes and then descended the steep slopes, periodically emerging and disappearing from the earth. Without this mountain water, agriculture – and therefore complex civilization – would not have been possible in the Titicaca Valley. It would, of course, also been an impressive show of technological sophistication that would have undoubtedly awed visitors. (Kolata 1996:232-3).

To fully understand Puma Punku as a sacred space, one must also put the site within its context, both in comparison to other sacred sites within the city and in the surrounding landscape. “As at other ceremonial sites in the Andes, Tiahuanaco’s architecture was integrated into a sacred landscape that included alignment with geographical features and celestial events.” (Quilter 2014:205) The urban center is built around the Akapana Pyramid, which is the southernmost of a pattern of great Andean platforms. 15 meters high and 200 hundred meters on a side, like Puma Punku, the pyramid is surmounted with a flat top with stone structures and a sunken court (Moseley 1992:203-4). This is surrounded by other stone temples and sunken courtyards. West of the central platform “and aligned with it, monolithic stairs surmounted by a prominent gateway provided access to the spacious summit of the ‘Kalasasaya’ platform” (Moseley 1992:204).

Alfonso F. del Granado Rivero’s picture of archaeologists doing a robotic dig on the Akapana Pyramid The layout of the city was therefore defined by three major temple complexes: Akapana, Kalasasaya and Puma Punku. The first two are located

close together and form a central north-south axis, while the placement of Puma Punku may have divided the city into two unequal halves – which was a typical Andean social organization (until the 19th century) that divided social groups into moieties of unequal size and importance (Stone-Miller 1995:127). Today they form the center of the main historical park and are close to the Tiwanaku Museum and the ceramics collection.

Pictures of the wall and the ruins of the Temple of Kalasasaya The Andean cultural organization was based on the concepts of duality, in art as well as in society and Puma Punku was designed to be the center of the lesser of the city’s two halves. Each was “deliberately surrounded by a moat to establish this complex as a ringed sacred islands, the cosmogenic center of the city and state” (Giesso 188-9). The ancients built Tiwanaku to represent a spiritual center of the earth – what is referred to in comparative religious studies as an “axis mundi.” Part of this involved the concept of sacred islands – in fact both the Tiwanaku and the Inca many centuries later would venerate sacred sites on the Island of the Sun and the Island of the Moon both on nearby Lake Titicaca (Giesso 2010:88-89). Like Akapana, which it mimics in form if not size, Puma Punku “is an elaborate mountain shrine designed to collect water and thread it from one structural terrace to the next as a powerful icon of fertility and agricultural abundance.” (Giesso 188-9). The original name of the site is believed to be “Taypikala” – or “Stone in the Center” – which refers to its place at the heart of the sacred universe (Kolata

1996). While some modern observers have argued that Puma Punku was designed for the arrival of extraterrestrials, any serious observer of the site realizes that its layout, while still remarkable, was far more earthly, as the entire structure echoes, amplifies and refers to the landscape around it. As people interpret the meanings and uses of the buildings, this link to the sacred landscape, especially to Lake Titicaca, is foremost to remember. Founding of Tiwanaku and Its Early Years

It seems that the identity of Tiwanaku is intertwined with the worship of the Gateway God, the figure who appears over the Puerta del Sol. As the city developed, it became a center for devotion to this deity, drawing pilgrims and admirers from across the central Andes. Therefore, the story of Tiwanaku begins with the story of the Gateway God. The Gateway God is the Tiwanaku expression of a pan-Andean deity called the Staff God. The Staff God is featured in the oldest-known religious iconography found in the Andes, a 4,000-year old carved gourd that has been radiocarbon dated (Hoag 2003). The common elements of the icon include a figure shown straight on from the front with spread feet, the head having a broad fanged mouth and/or a headdress, and a staff in each hand. The deity was often attended by two lines of lesser beings, sometimes human or avian (Moseley 1992:206). The Gateway God on the Puerta del Sol has a number of these elements: two staffs, the headdress, and the avian accompaniment (though in this case forty-eight arrayed in two parallel equal groups. The Staff God was particularly important in the city of Chavín, which predated Tiwanaku, but the two cities overlapped approximately two centuries before that earlier civilization collapsed. Chavín was located much farther north of Lake Titicaca and on the coast, but had a massive ideological and religious impact upon much of what is now modern Peru and Bolivia. In Chavín, this figure represented the duality of both male and female natures (Cartwright 2015a). Influences from mighty Chavín arrived along the trade routes into the Titicaca Basin. However, it is unknown to what extent the Titicaca Basin residents had already worshiped the Staff/Gateway God and to what extent they adopted or changed their beliefs under the influence of Chavín. Who were these people? Because of a lack of written history and breaks in oral history from both the Incan and Spanish Conquests, the identity of these

people will always be somewhat of a mystery. The best educated guess is that they were a group known in the colonial period as the Puquina; though the Puquina language is today extinct, remnants of the group still existed in the 1600s. They spoke a language distinct from the dominant tongues of the Incan Empire (Quechua and Aymara), and their traditional lands, the southern shores of Lake Titicaca, had been conquered by those people in the time after the decline of Tiwanaku (Faura 2014). The earliest date for the actual founding of Tiwanaku is approximately 400 BCE, when the settlement was a small riverine community, one of many presumably Puquina-speaking towns taking advantage of the favorable climate of the Titicaca Basin and the surrounding rivers. Slowly, Tiwanaku emerged out of this context as the dominant power of the southern side of the lake, though the details of this rise are lost to time. During these early centuries, the northern side of the basin was dominated by another presumably Puquina-speaking settlement named Pucará, which was predominant from roughly 300 BCE-300 CE. The earliest layers of archaeological remains at Tiwanaku show a predominance of Pucará-style pottery (Britannica 2001). Both Pucará and, eventually, Tiwanaku were characterized by increasing levels of social, political, and economic complexity and hierarchy. While this level of centralization of authority had been present in other areas of the Andes before this (like Chavín), the Titicaca Basin had never had any type of settlement other than small, independent farming villages. However, the two emerging powers were not only larger than the surrounding communities, but may have dominated them politically. Eventually, approximately fourteen significant communities emerged, with the two dominant powers and approximately a dozen mid-level settlements and numerous smaller farming villages. This led to a complex political situation where the competition between the two great powers most likely played out in a pattern of shifting alliances and conflicts between the lesser communities laid out on the basin landscape between them (Stanish 2003a). Despite the fact that Tiwanaku and its rival were the largest and most sophisticated settlements that the Puquina of the Titicaca Basin had ever seen, their governments, economies, and social structures were relatively rudimentary compared to what Tiwanaku would become in later periods. The government was a system called a “chiefdom” by anthropologists, which means it was centered upon the power of a single ruler who maintained control

through direct rule over his people. This lack of a bureaucracy between the ruler and the ruled meant that there was a finite upper limit to the size of the area that Tiwanaku could control: that which its leader could directly manage. Moreover, the focus upon single leaders without the existence of a stabilizing bureaucracy meant that chiefdoms were relatively unstable and often collapsed into internal conflict. The chiefdoms of the Titicaca Basin can be identified archaeologically by the creation of a peculiar form of public building: a semi-subterranean temple. The example of these from Tiwanaku (described above) may have been one of the earliest structures to survive, and as the settlement rose in prominence, it was joined by a second major structure: the Kalasasaya Temple. It is probable that the early settlement consisted of these ceremonial structures, surrounded by the home of the leadership and his closest followers and then less powerful agricultural and artisan families. These structures also became the template that the most remarkable buildings at the site, the Akapana and the Puma Punku, were based upon. It has been argued that early Tiwanaku may have had a lunar-based religious system, with an emphasis on a calendar based upon the cycles of the Moon. Evidence for this is based upon the placement of these two early structures and their alignments with lunar phenomena. However, by the 300s, Pucará’s influence began a terminal decline, and this was accompanied by a surging power and influence for Tiwanaku, which emerged by the 400s as the largest and most influential settlement in the entire Titicaca Basin. Classic Period

“They would approach the gates of Puma Punku – perhaps the tremendous Gateway of the Sun – and see the pyramid’s sides covered in brightly dyed llama-hair tapestries, colored ceramic tiles and highly polished gold and silver plaques and enter the complex. Perhaps they would encounter images of their own local huaca, reminding them both how they were subservient to these people but also how they were members of the greater religious collective embodied in this place. They may have felt proud of the masterful work of the pilgrims who preceded them and the glory of their gods.” – Dr. Jesse Harasta, 2013

It is unknown whether Tiwanaku conquered its rival or if the city’s leaders simply took advantage of a beneficial situation and filled the power vacuum. What is known, however, is that this was the start of the most significant period of Tiwanaku’s history and when the city gained its unique features. This period, often called the Middle Horizon by regional historians, is here referred to as Tiwanaku’s “Classic Period.” The disappearance of Pucará triggered the most significant and rapid shift in Tiwanaku’s long history. Beginning perhaps around 375 CE and extending into the 400s, this period involved the fundamental transformation of Tiwanaku’s governing structure and a remaking of its ceremonial urban core. Tiwanaku’s elites found themselves suddenly in control of a territory much greater than they could control using their old techniques of personalized “chiefdom” governance. While the exact nature of the government they created is lost to time, they obviously created an efficient and effective form of state-level governance and did so quickly enough that no rival emerged to challenge their rule. This must have involved some form of indirect bureaucracy, and we can see evidence that the emergence of Tiwanaku as a centralized state led to the creation of new forms of social class differentiation across the basin. As they centralized this economic and political power to themselves, they created what archaeologists have referred to as an “agropastoral state” (Moseley 1992:206-8). Because agriculture was limited in its scope and range, much of their power instead came over the control over pastoral areas — that is, those areas of the basin where people dedicated their lives to raising camelids (principally llamas and alpacas) for meat and fibers. This follows a widespread Andean pattern where limited agricultural lands, compared to other riverine empires elsewhere in the globe (like Egypt or China), meant that state builders instead often relied upon animal husbandry rather than grain as a basis for their economic power (Browman 1981). The agricultural side of this equation was based around three crops: quinoa, maize (corn), and potatoes (and other tubers). The rich lakeside lands were carefully managed by the people of the basin, building large raised beds and elaborate irrigation and drainage measures (Erikson 1988; 1989). Quinoa was the most important of these lakeside crops, but as time passed it appears that more maize was grown, perhaps to suit changing tastes. Over time, maize was grown in even poor climatic conditions in outlying settlements, while tubers came primarily from the colder surrounding communities (Schultz 2010). Tiwanaku’s preference for the consumption of maize can be seen as an

example of a non-centralized form of influence on other settlements, with tastes creating favorable market conditions that shifted other communities. Tiwanaku solidified its control over the central basin through a system later used by the Inca known as “huaca capture.” Though the term is Incan and the Puquina speakers of Tiwanaku probably had another name for them, a “huaca” is a Pan-Andean concept for a “shrine or entity suffused with the sacred. Huacas include anything from double-yolked eggs to portable elements to prominent features of the natural landscape such as a boulder, cave, mountain, or spring, or a religious monument of the built environment” (Giesso 2010:76). By seizing control over these sites and objects, the Tiwanaku elite could assert spiritual dominance over the landscape. They then took physical representations of these often far-flung sites, typically sculptures, and placed them in their sacred sites as emblems of these links. The ritual centers created or rebuilt in this new period, including Akapana and Puma Punku, were “full of sculptures in non-Tiwanaku styles, representing huacas that are geographically, temporally, stylistically and ethnically foreign to Tiwanaku” (Giesso 2010:189). This is the origin of the so-called “Wall of Humanity,” the numerous tenon heads found at the Semi-subterranean Temple or the Kalasasaya Temple. These might be analogous to a cathedral in England displaying flags and crests of various regions of the British Empire depicting peoples and animals foreign to the British Islands (Giesso 2010:189; Leicht 1960:76-8). On a spiritual plane, the huacas formed a network of power connected together and bolstering the sacredness of the central temples in Tiwanaku. This precise strategy was repeated later by the Incas. However, the story of Tiwanaku’s rise does not seem to parallel the rise of empires elsewhere. There is no evidence that the Tiwanaku legions marched forth in conquest nor that Tiwanaku maintained an elaborate system of direct governance. While the settlement was absolutely the dominant force in the Titicaca Basin and beyond, it appears that this dominance did not take a military or political form, but was instead primarily economic and spiritual. Tiwanaku elites appear to have been deeply invested in long distance trade using great caravans of llamas to cross long distances. They imported, in particular, salt and silver from as far away as today’s central Peru and northern Chile (Schultze 2008). In turn, they appear to have exported wood carvings, textiles, gold, and ceramics, and archaeologists have shown that as Tiwanaku rose in prominence, its goods (or goods in its styles) are increasingly found in other places (Moseley 1992:207).

One particularly important product for archaeological interpretation of the site has been pottery; pottery — even broken pottery — preserves well and is widespread, allowing it to serve as a major source of information from archaeological sites around the world. During this period, the broader Tiwanaku political-economic community (not necessarily the central pilgrimage site itself) appears to have mass-produced ceramic goods with distinctive symbolic stamps on it. The exact meaning of this standardization is difficult to determine; it may show centralized management of the process by a Tiwanaku government (a traditional interpretation), but it may also be indicative of how these objects were standardized through the needs of shared ritual in the way that the Catholic church does not produce all of the implements used in every Mass in the world, but sets the standards by which all of these implements are created if they are to be used and considered sufficiently holy. In the case of Tiwanaku, these ceramics took two forms: Keros and Tazones. While they were distinctive, both were red stoneware drinking vessels with flared mouths and decorated with standardized patterns. As these communities also had simpler, less fine everyday ceramic vessels, these distinctive Tiwanaku forms may have been used for ceremonies taught by priests of the Gateway God, and their possession indicated dedication to that deity. These were so widespread that it appears they were used by all strata of society (Haupt). One of the better studied and more prominent of the outlying sites in Tiwanaku’s orbit was the nearby settlement of Lukurmata, which had approximately 1,000 inhabitants farming raised beds and fishing along the shores of Lake Titicaca to the north of Tiwanaku proper (Bermann 1994). Lukurmata straddled a main pilgrimage route into Tiwanaku and prospered on the passing traffic, but it does not appear that this small settlement was directly controlled by or its economy directed by Tiwanaku in the way that the Inca would direct outlying settlements in later centuries (Haupt). That said, they used many Tiwanaku-style ceramics and enjoyed a shared knowledge of irrigation, civic planning, and agriculture with their more famous neighbor (Ortloff and Kolata 1989). Lukurmata shows how Tiwanaku had a tremendous economic, spiritual, and cultural influence upon its neighbors without necessarily dominating them. It appears that the Tiwanaku elites were able to take advantage of a preexisting shared religious system based around the Staff/Gateway God. The economic system of the Titicaca Basin was already relatively precarious, and

due to the lack of a major basis of grain agriculture, it appears that local elites were never able to completely solidify control; instead they created a loose trade network of city-states around themselves that shared a single religion centered completely on the site of Tiwanaku and pilgrimage to the central settlement. It appears that rather than governing, the Tiwanaku elites served as religious mediators and counselors to the many smaller settlements. In time, the settlement of Tiwanaku came to be completely rebuilt around this new religio-political dimension. The New Sacred Core

“In the central city, buildings and monuments went up and down, up and down at an incredible rate… nothing ever got finished completely because they were just concerned with the facades. They had to keep changing the exhibits to keep the crowds coming” (Vranich, quoted in Mann 2005:234). Since the Tiwanaku did not write down their religious ideas, the best source of information on this political, social, and religious revolution instead comes from the architecture displayed in the sacred core of Tiwanaku. In his text on analyzing ancient Mayan cities, Brett Houk (2017) notes that when interpreting cities inhabited by people who either did not write (like in Tiwanaku) or from whom little writing survives, we can interpret three layers of meaning from the very design of their cities themselves. Drawing from Smith (2007), the three layers of meaning are low-level, middle-level, and high-level. Low-level meanings are those ways that the built environment of a city channels and shapes people’s behaviors: Where can they walk? What can they see? How are some spaces built for some activities and not others? Middle-level meanings are those messages that the designers intended to convey through their buildings: What was this building for? Does it convey grandeur or fear or inspire awe? What does it say about what happens within it? High-level meanings are “cosmological and supernatural symbolism that may be encoded in buildings and city layouts” (Smith 2007:30). This approach is particularly useful with Tiwanaku because what Houk writes about the Ancient Maya appears to be equally valid for Tiwanaku: “Because Maya rulers were so intimately tied to their cities, the developmental history of a Maya city is a proxy for the political and economic success of its

rulers” (2017:20). In the absence of written texts, people can treat the urban landscape of Tiwanaku — as carefully managed and planned as any place in the ancient world — as a text full of meaning to be interpreted. What was constructed at Tiwanaku in a single generation in the late 300s was remarkable for its audacity, skill, and permanence. Charles Mann (2005) argues that what emerged was a mixture of “the Vatican” and “Disney World.” By the Vatican, he means a place of supreme sacredness — a site filled with ancient holy buildings, monuments, and artifacts where religious leaders of supreme spiritual, but only indirect political, power reside. By Disney World, he adds the idea of showmanship, of superficial glamor, and of manufactured wonder. But what both comparisons share is that it is a place of singular attraction that draws in visitors from across many nations and languages to a shared experience. The argument goes that by the height of the Classic Period, Tiwanaku was less a city than a destination and did not have a population so much as a staff of caretakers. Across Tiwanaku’s ruins, archaeologists have come to understand that there was an ongoing interest in the experience and perception of the visitor — a classic example of low-level meanings. There was a keen awareness of viewsheds and controlling the visitor experience. For example, Quilter notes that “once at Tiahuanaco, neither [Lake Titicaca] nor [Mount Illimani] would have been visible until the pilgrims climbed the Pumapunku and the snowy peak reemerged beyond the city skyline” (205). This was a city famous for its gateways, and scholars have surmised the symbolic importance of emerging through gateways into a view of these sacred sites and of ever-more impressive wonders. Pilgrims were carefully moved through the sacred complex from one experience to another: one moment plunging in the dark and damp “underworld” of semi-subterranean temples where priests spoke through the mouths of statues and then the next, surfacing into the bright light of day and looking out upon holy places and hearing myths and legends. Moseley describes the site like this: “perhaps the pits were places for reenacting the dawn of creation when people emerged from the inner earth through caves, springs, and holes in the ground” (1992:111-112). In an example of high-level meaning, it appears that there was a conscious attempt after 500 CE to integrate the built landscape of Tiwanaku into two elements of the natural world: the cycles of the solar calendar and the sacred landscapes of the Titicaca Basin. A change of this level undoubtedly was accompanied by major reforms in religious doctrine and the tectonic shifts of

social class and hierarchy; it is possible that the social transformations came first and the new doctrines came as a comfort to people seeking to understand their places in a newly hierarchical landscape. This argument for religious innovation as a balm for the social upheaval that accompanied the development of mass agriculture and hierarchical, bureaucratic states has been made by historians of religion since the philosopher Karl Jaspers in the 19th century. Drawing from Jaspers and later thinkers, Karen Armstrong (2000) argues that there is an “Axial Age” when these transformations occurred and during which new religious systems emerged that define our modern world; she discusses the examples of Hinduism and Buddhism in India, Confucianism and Daoism in China, Jewish monotheism and Greek rational philosophy all as products of the deep spiritual malaise of this “Axial Age” (Armstrong 2007). It is possible that, though not nearly as well understood as these examples because of the lack of written records, the religious transformations in Tiwanaku followed a similar pattern and set the stage for the solar religion of the Incas. Tiwanaku had no markets, no industry, and no major population because it, essentially, was not actually a city any more than Disney’s Main Street USA is a small town thoroughfare. Pilgrims arrived from near and far, bringing offerings of goods and labor. They were met by priests who assisted them in every step along their experience. In addition to their experiences in the Sacred Precinct at the city’s core — probably a high point of their pilgrimage — they would also have labored in the city (offerings of labor have been a feature of Andean pilgrimage for centuries). However, there were so many pilgrims that it appears that the priests had to invent labors for them. Thus in the outer sections of the city, pilgrims were put to work building great stone structures with no purpose, and then other groups of pilgrims would take those buildings apart stone by stone so that others could build them again. Sometimes, it appears that some of these structures were only half-deconstructed, perhaps to give an air of antiquity to the city as ruins (nothing is more atmospheric than an ancient, evocative ruin). Offerings fed the priests and other staff and kept them in a lifestyle of some grandeur. Tiwanaku’s power was maintained through the careful control of perception, and in doing so, it maintained its preeminence in the region (Vranich 2003). Across the basin and beyond, believers constructed Tiwanaku-like temples, used Tiwanaku-inspired goods (especially ceremonial cup ceramics), and apparently willingly sent envoys and pilgrims laden with offerings and gifts to

Tiwanaku. What first appeared archaeologically to be an empire of conquest and coercion instead appears now to be something subtler but perhaps just as potent: an empire of the spirit and the mind, a community of believers united by the Gateway God and the shared love and experience of the wonders of Tiwanaku. Puma Punku as a Center of Pilgrimage

“The natives say that all these edifices were built before the time of the Yncas, and that the Yncas built the fortress of Cuzco in imitation of them. They know not who erected them, but have heard their forefathers say that all these wonderful works were completed in a single night. The ruins appear never to have been finished, but to have been merely the commencement of what the founders intended to have built.” - Garcilasso de la Vega, 1530s (quoted in Cieza Léon 1883: CV) The construction of Puma Punku dates back to approximately 500 CE, based to radiocarbon dates taken from organic materials found in the fill under the lowest levels of the structure (Vranich 1999). This would place the structure firmly within the period of the blossoming of Tiwanaku society, when camelid caravans and pilgrims flowed into the city from across the Andes and the city was firmly in control of its immediate surroundings in the Titicaca Valley. Unlike many sites throughout the Americas, Puma Punku appears to have been conceived and planned in its entirety and constructed more or less in a single prolonged period of work. There is no evidence of earlier versions of the temple at the site, nor of major renovations. Considering the structure’s harmonious symmetry, it seems that any renovation or expansion that broke the uniformity would have been anathema to the Tiwanakus. The remarkable quality of the structure and its masonry is also mostly likely due to this unified conception and execution; the techniques and designs would have been already perfected elsewhere (such as at the Akapana complex) and needed only to be put into masterful use at the site. In fact, they had not only their own sites to draw upon but models in other regional sites, such as the nearby city of Lukurmata. In essence, all the people of Tiwanaku had to do was take these models and make them bigger and better (Schultze 2008:100). While the construction of the site definitely represents the architectural and artistic climax of the Tiwanaku civilization, it did not require a major leap in

construction technology. The main material are stone blocks carved of andesite or sandstone. The techniques for this type of carving were widespread throughout the Andes at the time and are demonstrable in other areas of Tiwanaku and ruins beyond it. Some of these stones were held together using metal clamps made of an alloy of copper, arsenic and nickel, which were cold-hammered together into a single metal. In this regard, the Andean peoples were renowned for their metallurgy and especially for their complex alloys. For example, the ancient peoples of modern Colombia created a remarkable alloy of gold and copper called tumbaga.

A pectoral of tumbaga Since the Tiwanakus did not possess writing and both the Inca and Spanish empires were hostile to the preservation of the knowledge of previous Andean civilizations, there is no direct account or knowledge of the process of construction of Puma Punku. However, historians can infer much based upon the nature of the structures and of what is known of Tiwanaku and Andean social orders.

The basic social unit throughout the Highlands is the “Ayllu,” a term which exists in the Aymara communities of the present-day region as well as the Quechua peoples to the north in the heart of the old Inca Empire. An ayllu is a group of people who all trace their descent to a single shared ancestor – though that ancestor may be a mythological figure. They share a territory and are relatively economically self-sufficient. These groups would typically control a number of different environmental zones in the highlands and therefore have access to many types of resources and would all worship at, at minimum, one shared huaca. Since the control over numerous climate zones required sophisticated organization of labor – often with different specialized jobs that needed to take place simultaneously in different places – the ayllu developed the ability to manager and direct their own labor at a distance in complex ways, an element of their organization that was heavily utilized by the eventual empires that would emerge in the Andes (Moseley 1992:49-65). Much of the process of state-building in Tiwanaku involved capturing huacas and the loyalties - not to mention the human and material resources - of various ayllu. Tiwanaku at its height can be understood as a shifting confederation or collection of ayllu, probably encompassing a number of linguistics and ethnic divisions. The temple of Puma Punku, with its many displays of huaca, would be indicative of this polyglot, poly-identity community (Janusek 2004). The majesty of Puma Punku is itself a product of this entity, and its construction would have involved employing pilgrim labor sent by various ayllu, who in turn took care of the upkeep and organization of the work (Goldstein 2005). Spanish observation of ayllu labor in the Incan Empire shows that these systems could be highly effective at organizing massive building projects, from Puma Punku to Machu Picchu. It is likely that the construction of Puma Punku in the sixth century was due to the fact that Tiwanaku had recently emerged as the dominant city in the region. For much of its early history, Tiwanaku had been one of many rival polities around Lake Titicaca but by the second century its only rival was Pukara on the northern side in today’s Peru. However, at some point in the 3rd century, Pukara simply collapsed and the city became uninhabited, with the population dispersing to the countryside. Whether this elimination of Pukara was due to direct action by Tiwanaku or due to outside and/or natural factors,

the ultimate result was that Tiwanaku was able to consolidate control over the region, which meant that it was the source of immense wealth and power by the 6th century. (Mann 2005:230). Undoubtedly, this consolidation and creation of a Tiwanaku-oriented elite involved the conquest or absorption of many more huacas throughout the Titicaca Basin. In order to control this expanded populace, Tiwanaku became a “predatory state,” and the empire comprised an “archipelago of cities that acknowledged Tiwanaku’s religious pre-eminence” and were “awed by its magnificence, [and] fearful of the supernatural powers controlled by its priesthood.” (Mann 2005:230). However, for this strategy to succeed, the elites at Tiwanaku needed sufficiently impressive structures in which to draw visiting pilgrims and perform their needed rituals. It can be inferred from the quality of the workmanship demonstrated in the site and the incredible cost it must have incurred that Puma Punku was apparently a cornerstone in this strategy. Religion seems to have served as the unifying force for the region, tying together peoples who did not share language or ethnic traditions but could be bound by veneration to a shared deity and the shared experiences of pilgrimage and offerings at the central shrines of Tiwanaku like Puma Punku. Once constructed, Puma Punku appears to have served primarily as a place of display, intimidation and awe. The modern conception of the “city” is a place that combines many features, such as a large populace, administration of government, places for religion and militaries, large markets, places of specialized economic production, and central transportation hubs. Tiwanaku in the era after the construction of Puma Punku does not share these features, instead appearing more hollow then archaeologists expected. The anticipated markets, vast workers’ neighborhoods, military defenses, and production centers have yet to materialize. The settlement appears to have had many splendid buildings but few homes, and few practical areas. Alexei Vranich, whose analysis of the site in the late 1990s was revolutionary, argues that archaeologists so were caught up in their own assumptions about what a city was supposed to be that they fell for the same posturing and image-making that the Tiwanaku priests used upon the conquered peoples. Instead of embodying some mixture of an ancient Andean Washington, D.C. and New York, Tiwanaku appears to be equal mixtures of

the “Vatican and Disneyland” (Mann 2005:232-4; Vranich 1999), a metaphor which conveys both the seriousness and showmanship of the site. Part of the mystery comes from the fact that it appears that Puma Punku, and the other main structures of the city, were never completed. “In the central city, buildings and monuments went up and down, up and down at an incredible rate… nothing ever got finished completely because they were just concerned with the facades. They had to keep changing the exhibits to keep the crowds coming.” (Vranich, quoted in Mann 2005:234). It was less a city than a destination, with a staff on hand, as opposed to a permanent population. As was typical of the Andes then and now, pilgrimage would often be accompanied with communal labor at the site of the pilgrimage. After buildings were completed, some would then be prematurely damaged to create rubble and the air of antiquity about the city. Pilgrims in the heyday of the city thus would arrive at Tiwanaku and pass by many glorious buildings, some ancient “ruins,” and other building sites crawling with their fervent fellow travelers. They would wind their way into the center of the city, over the moat and onto the sacred island, where they would see the massive bulk of Puma Punku and the other great stone temples rising up to create a distinctive skyline. They would have brought with them goods – from the mundane to the exceptional – as offerings from their respective communities and would have deposited them in storehouses before they went any further. They would approach the gates of Puma Punku – perhaps the tremendous Gateway of the Sun – and see the pyramid’s sides covered in brightly dyed llama-hair tapestries, colored ceramic tiles and highly polished gold and silver plaques and enter the complex. Perhaps they would encounter images of their own local huaca, reminding them both how they were subservient to these people but also how they were members of the greater religious collective embodied in this place. They may have felt proud of the masterful work of the pilgrims who preceded them and the glory of their gods.

Daniel Maciel’s picture of the Gate of the Moon at Tiwanaku

The Gate of the Sun at Tiwanaku in the late 19th century

A 19th century illustration depicting the Gate of the Sun At the top of the structure, and beyond the second gate, evidence shows that it is probable that visitors would enter a structure on the top of the pyramid and then would descend into a watery “underworld” where temple priests would manipulate devices and tubes to make images of deities and demons to appear to speak and make noises – all impressive and possibly even terrifying – before the pilgrim emerges on the far side, rising again out into the day light and to their first vision of Lake Titicaca and the sacred mountains since entering the city. They would be symbolically leaving the dangerous underworld into the blessed rays of the Gateway God’s sun, just as the original humans did when they were born on the islands out on Lake Titicaca. While the Spanish would eventually value gold and silver for their rarity and therefore their ability to serve as a stable form of currency, the Andean peoples instead valued these metals for their malleability and reflective properties. The central square of the Incan capital of Cuzco was, for instance, completely walled in golden plaques which, when combined with the white sand floor, would shine brightly in even the least daylight, showing off the glory of their sun god, Viracocha. It is likely that the Puma Punku temple was similarly decorated, especially once the pilgrim emerged onto the topmost levels – perhaps creating a dazzling, blinding effect akin to the presence of a god itself. If so, it would

have been a religious and entertainment experience which had no parallel (Vranich 1999). There are several anthropological theories that help explain the power of these rituals in fusing together the many ethnicities and polities of the loosely held religious community. One of the most important of these is Victor Turner’s conception of Communitas. The term denotes “intense feelings of social togetherness and belonging, often in connection with rituals. In communitas, people stand together ‘outside’ society, and society is strengthened by this.” (Nielsen) Turner builds upon an earlier theory called the “rite of passage” by a French anthropologist named van Gennep. Van Gennep looked at rituals from around the globe and described how many of the most powerful of them involved three stages: (1) separation, (2) liminality, and (3) reintegration. The idea is that the participant is physically and symbolically separated from their everyday life. This begins the time of “liminality,” which is a special state in which the participant is no longer part of the normal social structure; perhaps they do not do their normal work, wear their normal clothes, speak in the normal way, eat their normal food, etc. During this period of liminality, they may go through tests, ordeals or trials (even largely symbolic ones) before being allowed to return to society. This is the stage of reintegration, when the person returns but has been fundamentally changed by the process. Rites of passage take many forms: marriage, ordination, birth, funerals, coming of age or – particularly important for understanding Puma Punku – pilgrimage. Many rites of passage are done not by individuals but instead by groups who move through their liminal state and its many trials together. Those who do these things together – such as cadets at a military academy or priests who are ordained together – often develop a strong sense of camaraderie, which is at the heart of communitas. (Turner 1986). Another source of symbolic power was undoubtedly the crossing of the gateways. Puma Punku's name - the Cougar's Gate - captures some of the importance of gateways to the site. These remarkable stone structures, always carved like the Gateway of the Sun from a single piece of stone, were central to the stages of the ritual. The visitor may have passed through gates to enter the city and again before crossing the moat, but he or she definitely passed through a gate at the base of Puma Punku and again the first time he or she

summited the complex before descending into the dark. The person would do so again before leaving the darkness and re-entering the daylight at the summit. For over a century, anthropologists of religion who have studied liminality have noted that the passage across thresholds has been a central element in building a sense of liminality or ending the liminal period, cross culturally. Other examples include the Western tradition of a groom carrying a bride across the doorway when they first enter their home, or the Jewish Mezuzah a small prayer on a parchment rolled into a case that is attached to a door frame of a Jewish home in the Ashkenazi tradition and is touched before entering or leaving. The architecture of Puma Punku, as well as the prominence of the Gateway God as a liminal deity mediating the passage between elements of the ritual, shows how crucial this element was to Puma Punku. It is likely that the pilgrimage to Tiwanaku, with its emotional climax in a temple like Puma Punku, created and nurtured the sense of communitas amongst its participants. Pilgrims left their distant homes, an act of separation, and traveled a long distance together in a liminal state as pilgrims. They probably dressed, ate and spoke differently; certainly they did not do their normal daily chores. Arriving at the sacred city, they deposited their llamas, offerings and travel goods, probably dressed themselves in special clothing and perhaps performed acts of purification and then crossed the sacred moat, a second act of separation. As they crossed the final gateway threshold of the temple of Puma Punku, they entered their deepest state of liminality, apparently leaving this world all together. Here they faced demons and creatures of legend before emerging once again on the far side into the world they knew. As they stood on top of that pyramid, looking down upon the sacred mountains and lake at the axis mundi (center of the world), they would have felt the ultimate communitas. As Turner put it, “a sense of harmony with the universe is made evident and the whole planet is felt to be communitas.” (1986:43). This moment is the ultimate goal of the entire pilgrimage. Myth and ritual undoubtedly reinforced each other mutually at Puma Punku, as the structure of separation-liminality-reintegration that characterizes ritual also structures much of myth. While controversial, the scholar Joseph Campbell argued that most of the world’s great myths follow the same

narrative structure as the ritual, with the mythical hero separating from the world and undergoing trials before returning to the world with a “boon” that restores and improves the world (Campbell 2008). While it is unknown what kind of myths were related to the people at Tiwanaku, historians do know the tales their cultural descendants, the Inca, told. They spoke of Viracocha, a sun god depicted as carrying two staves and surrounded sun rays – undoubtedly a deity connected to the pan-Andean Gateway God. Viracocha emerged from the waters of Lake Titicaca or a nearby cave. When he did so, he brought with him not only light but all of the secrets of civilization. Facing great trials, he disguised himself as a beggar and wandered the world, bringing these gifts to all of humanity (De Gamboa 1907).

A depiction of Viracocha It is likely that a myth very similar to this one fueled their beliefs of the Tiwanaku pilgrims, who saw themselves as walking in the footsteps of the Gateway God as they descended into the dark and wet depths of Puma Punku only to rise again from their own sacred isle to bring civilization to the farflung corners of the Andes where they originated. Undoubtedly those who participated, probably willingly and even with great enthusiasm by the height of the city’s power, left with a great sense of belonging to the official faith, of close ties to their fellow pilgrims and belief

in their own special status as returned pilgrims loyal to the faith. For the city’s priestly managers, this system both drew in wealth (in the form of offerings), which allowed for them to prosper despite not controlling any manufacturing or any armies of extortion, and it also protected and reinforced their standing, creating new generations of loyal followers.

Lombards Museum’s picture of a tablet found at Tiwanaku The Decline of Tiwanaku

Tiwanaku and Wari – Two Rival Empires or Spiritual Partners?

At the same time Tiwanaku flourished in the Titicaca Basin, another power was emerging to the north in what is today Central Peru. The great city of Wari (also written “Huari”) emerged as a Classical imperial power, and it appears that the rulers of this city commanded armies, conquered and ruled their neighbors, established colonies, and supported a major population in their capital. This is in stark contrast to Tiwanaku, where the rulers appeared to have not exercised direct control, but instead commanded spiritual loyalty. It would appear at first glance that Tiwanaku was ripe for conquest by its expansionist, militaristic neighbor, but despite centuries of coexistence, this never happened. To the contrary, it appears that the two regions enjoyed different areas of influence and even overlapped at points. Much of this may be due to the fact that the elites of Wari also worshiped the Staff God, which they probably adopted from the previous civilization of Chavín. For instance, Wari pottery and art of the time period show many of the same motifs and clearly the same deity as that in Tiwanaku (Cartwright 2015b).[2] It is possible that the people of Wari recognized the special status of Tiwanaku and respected its spiritual authority; a similar example might be seen in the complex relationship between centralized, militaristic China and its neighbor, the decentralized, spiritual Tibet (Szczepanski 2016). At times, the two were politically distinct and independent, and at other times, Tibet was a vassal of China, providing spiritual guidance in return for protection, while the Tibetans themselves dominated large areas of China without becoming “Chinese.” Nowhere is this relationship more enigmatic and interesting than in a site along the border of the two zones of influence: Cerro Baul. A terraced mountain fortress-city, this strong point was built by Wari overlooking the Moquegua Valley, which was inhabited by people who appear to have been aligned with Tiwanaku. Both societies had elaborate irrigation technologies, and it appears that at Cerro Baul, they shared water, allowing both communities to flourish side by side for a prolonged period. However, there is no evidence for one group conquering the other, nor is there evidence of extensive trade or economic connections between the two (Mann 2005). This remarkable location shows that some accommodation was made between the elites of Wari and Tiwanaku. Tiwanaku was not like other great capitals of the world, and its eventual decline and disappearance also did not follow models seen elsewhere in the world. Tiwanaku did not fall to invasion nor did its populace rebel or die of plagues or wars. Instead, it appears that the city simply began to slowly fade in

prominence and relevance; this slow decline took centuries, and undoubtedly the Tiwanaku elites with their mastery of perception and performance hid this decline well for as long as possible. In retrospect, scholars believe that the beginning of the decline — the turning point in the community’s fate — began in 562 CE when the region began to experience a prolonged drought which began a long, slow decline of the population of the basin (Moseley 1992:228). While arguments on the decline of ancient civilizations that hinge upon these people being mere puppets to their environment are at times troubling — and at worst repeating racist presumptions about the helplessness of non-Europeans — in this case, one can observe how the Tiwanaku leadership was able to creatively and carefully adjust to changing circumstances and prolong their power for centuries of what was essentially a managed decline. At first, this drought may have actually accentuated Tiwanaku’s power. The central settlement’s raised agricultural fields were more resistant to drought, and many remained productive long after the surrounding lands had declined, which may have contributed to the myth of the city’s blessed status (Kolata 1996:37). The decline may be masked by the long-standing tradition of deconstructing and reconstructing buildings; however, ultimately Tiwanaku’s power rested upon the willingness of people from distant lands to travel to the city and bring offerings with them. A decline in population or prosperity in these outlying regions would eventually be felt at Tiwanaku. One piece of evidence for the declining power of the centralized authorities in Tiwanaku was the fact that while the broader Tiwanaku-influenced cultural region continued to use ceramics with Tiwanaku-inspired designs and motifs, these were increasingly produced locally and used an ever-wider array of styles and interpretations (Haupt). Centuries passed, and Tiwanaku’s master planners could not have been oblivious to this decline. An example of their creative manipulation may have involved moving the Gateway of the Sun from its original location, perhaps at Puma Punku, to the central district at the edge of the Kalasasaya Temple. This may have been an attempt to consolidate important artifacts in a smaller, more manageable area; “obviously somebody believed in the sanctity of the city, but lacked the finance, technology, or knowledge to restore it to its original condition” (Moseley 1992:230). By sacrificing Puma Punka and other outlying portions of the settlement to the status of picturesque ruin, the managers were apparently able to maintain the illusions for a while longer.

Eventually, however, only so much can be sacrificed before there is nothing remaining. Thus, the settlement was not conquered or destroyed, but seemed to melt away, cannibalized by its own managers in their slow campaign to stave off the eventual decline. This process could only be carried on for so long before it became obvious to pilgrims, and when this happened, the illusion of Tiwanaku would be broken for those pilgrims. Perhaps when they returned home, they would convey their disappointments to their fellows, and fewer would come in the future, speeding up the end. By the time of the Inca, it is probable that the area was mostly ruin with a small agricultural community and some very impressive ruins that attracted a few pilgrims and maybe housed a few priests. This decline was probably complete by 1150 CE. Yet so much of the mythical status apparently remained even after the end of the golden age; the patina of power and mystery remained. One enduring element of this myth was the special status of Lake Titicaca as the sacred site of the mythical creation of humanity. This tale persisted so strongly that it was fully adopted by the Inca centuries later as part of their own official theology and continues in certain tales and practices in the region even today (SallesReese 1997). As will be demonstrated below, the Inca themselves viewed Tiwanaku as a city built by the gods and gave it great respect. They, moreover, continued to worship the Staff God under the name “Viracocha.” Finally, the region remained known for its stonemasonry, to the extent that the Inca transplanted masons from the basin to its capital in order to exploit their expertise. Post-Tiwanaku and the Incan Rehabilitation

The decline of Tiwanaku did not involve a transformation of the ethnic makeup of the Titicaca Basin — at least not at first. The Puquina continued their mix of fishing the lakes, irrigated lake-side agriculture, and camelidbased pastoralism in the surrounding dry flatlands. Some significant settlements made by people culturally and politically similar to Tiwanaku, like Lukurmata and Cochabamba, continued to be inhabited long after Tiwanaku itself faded, though they often shrunk in size (Haupt 3). Lukurmata, for example, no longer sat on a major pilgrimage route and returned to its earlier status as an agricultural village (Bermann 1994). Today there is no significant settlement in the area, but the residents continue to practice subsistence agriculture.

That quiet backwater status changed with the arrival of the Aymara. The Aymara people originated to the north of Titicaca in what is today central Peru, where their distant cousins who did not migrate south today speak the related languages of Jaqaru and Kawki. A militant, expansionist people — but not centrally organized under a single government or empire — the protoAymarans left their homelands after the decline of Tiwanaku and Wari in the 1200s. Invading the Titicaca Basin, they apparently took advantage of the power vacuum to establish themselves. This was a time of great chaos in the Titicaca Basin, and it becomes evident that the fragmentation and violence accompanying the decline of the great powers and the invasion of the Aymara led to the peoples of the basin increasingly occupying dispersed settlements and fortified strongholds which are locally referred to as “Pukaras” (Stanish 2003b). Over time, the Puquina were the losers of this contest of power. Today, there are only a handful of peoples who still exist who are believed to descend from the builders of Tiwanaku. One group are the fascinating Uros people, who live on Lake Titicaca, where they work as fisherfolk and build artificial islands made of reeds on the lake, which they view as sacred. While they today speak Aymara, they are distinct from their land-bound Aymara neighbors and refer to themselves as “Lupihaques,” or “Sons of the Sun,” perhaps a reference to the solar Gateway God (Alfaro 1998). Further from the original location of Tiwanaku are the Uru and Chipaya peoples, who live in the remote Sabaya Province of Bolivia and to the east on the shores of Lake Poopo and preserve ancient, distinctive traditions, including a lifestyle as fisherfolk (Adelaar and van de Kerke). This dispersed Aymara domination of the region, never consolidated under a single government, eventually fell way to conquest by the mighty Incan Empire after 1470 CE (Yaeger 2002). The Inca were a remarkably centralized, militarized empire that sought to not only conquer, but culturally homogenize the lands they conquered. Hence, they would often move populations around their empire to break down ethnic ties of people to particular regions. The Inca had a particular mythology which claimed that theirs was the first civilization, and when faced with the proof of the antiquity and skill of Tiwanaku’s builders, they interpreted the city as being of divine origin (Vranich 2003). It appears that whatever remnants of Tiwanaku cultural memory existed when the Inca arrived were annihilated by their Empire:

populations were moved out to work as stonemasons elsewhere, the Aymaraization of the population accelerated, and stories that contradicted official Incan myths were discouraged. By the arrival of the Spanish, there is no folkloric memory of the previous settlement, even in the Aymara town of Tiahuanaco built over the top of it. This cultural and historic break, exacerbated by exporting local and importing more Aymara speakers, meant that the new local population’s ancestors, at most, had visited ancient Tiwanaku as pilgrims but did not have a relationship as inhabitants, priests, or staff of the site. That does not, however, mean that the Inca avoided or ignored the site. To the contrary, they appear to have celebrated the ancient ruins, re-inhabiting and adapting them to their own needs. While the original Tiwanaku was based around the Sacred Precinct around the Akapana Pyramid, the Inca instead favored Puma Punku. The Inca “radically reorganized the sacred space around the Pumapunku, creating at least five distinct activity areas” and transforming it from an entirely sacred space to a combined administrative center, palace, and temple. The Inca integrated the site into their own network of Huaca capture and appear to have treated the place with great reverence (Yeager 2002). This reverence is seen nowhere more than in the fact that when the Spanish conquered the Incan capital of Cuzco — itself viewed as a sacred city and the center of the universe — the last Incan emperor established a short-lived capital at Tiwanaku to challenge Spanish power from this site of obvious symbolic power and strategic position. Certainly, the social structures and populations established by the Inca remain relatively unbroken (though not unconverted and unconquered) all the way to the present-day community. Spiritually, it appears that the Inca inherited much of the Andean cosmology that has been promoted by Tiwanaku and, presumably, Wari. For example, the most important god of the Inca, the founder of their empire and ancestor to their rulers, was Viracocha. He was depicted almost identically to that of the Gateway/Staff God: facing forward and carrying two staffs with the rays of the sun radiating from his head. This myth had an even stronger connection to the Tiwanaku legacy; Viracocha was said to have been born out of either the waters of, or a cave nearby to, Lake Titicaca. In addition to being the lifegiving god of the sun, he also brought civilization with him. These tales were recorded by the Spanish, who documented the Incan religion even as they sought to destroy it, but one can undoubtedly read the echoes of Tiwanaku into

this (De Gamboa 1907). The entire architecture of Tiwanaku — the roofed semi-subterranean temples damp with the carefully collected and channeled rainwater, ending in stairways rising up to the glorious summit of the Akapana, where the pilgrim is bathed in sunlight and the view of the basin — were most likely the ritual accompaniments to these same myths. Pilgrims could be like the divine savior, emerging from their own caves and returning to their communities filled with the mysteries of the lakeside fantasy land. It is thanks to the Incan dedication to these shared pan-Andean myths that they have survived to this day. The Inca and Spanish at Puma Punku

When the Inca conquered the region in 1470, the renown of Tiwanaku preceded it (as seen above by the Incan use of stonemasons from the region). While the site was long-abandoned, it was adopted by the Incan priests as the mythological site where the creator god Viracocha created the first human beings from each ethnic group. Eventually, after the Spanish conquest of Cuzco, the last Incan Emperors established a capital at Tiwanaku to attempt an eventually unsuccessful conquest of their former empire (Yaeger 2002). Tiwanaku in general, and Puma Punku with its exceptional craftsmanship in particular, presented challenges to the Inca. Inca myth held that they were the world’s first civilization, and that when the great god Viracocha had created humanity, he created the Inca with a special civilizing mission and sent them to Cuzco to found that city as the axis mundi. Yet, here in Puma Punku, they faced the same problem that Christians dealing with dinosaur bones faced centuries later: concrete, incontrovertible fact that their mythical past and real history did not neatly align. To deal with this issue, the Inca cleverly worked Tiwanaku into their mythology. By stating that it was here that Viracocha created humanity, and that it was a city of the gods, not of men, the Inca were able to explain not only why the ancient city existed but why the incredible quality and size of the cut stones at Puma Punku rivaled or exceeded anything the Inca themselves had accomplished. (Vranich 2003). With the Incan Empire came a resurgence of agricultural life in the region and a cultural continuity that continues unbroken today despite conquest and conversion. The Inca had a habit of moving populations around their empire,

and this probably contributed to the repopulation of the area. Those arriving in the valley, ancestors of today’s Aymara, probably had only the most distant of connections to the sacred history - viewing it from the point of view of the pilgrims, not the priests – but they still held the lake and its islands to be sacred. The Inca, with their propensity for massive construction projects, brought not only agriculturalists to the Valley but also stonemasons and laborers. However, they appear to have largely ignored the Akapana and Kalasasaya complexes and instead focused all of their attentions at restoring Puma Punku according to their own models of what a temple should include and how the site should fit into their own mythological reinterpretation of the site’s past. The Inca “also radically reorganized the sacred space around the Puma Punku, creating at least five distinct activity areas: 1.

a formal audience chamber

2.

food storage and preparation areas

3.

probable feasting facilities

4.

small chambers on the north terraces

5.

the Puma Punku temple itself” (Yaeger 2002)

Hence, for the first time perhaps, Puma Punku became the center of a true city and the home of its elites, rather than one dramatic piece of a larger, fanciful, architectural pilgrim's wonderland. The Temple at the apex resumed its old function, though perhaps some of the drama of the old watery underworld was lost, but the surrounding areas of the structure took on novel roles. Leaders appointed by the Inca lived, ruled, feasted and worshipped at the site, which became an extension of the great network of religious sites (huacas) focused upon the new axis mundi: the great capital city of Cuzco. The first written account of the area and the ruins comes from the Spanish Conquistador Pedro de Cieza de Léon, who wrote The travels of Pedro de Cieza de Léon, A.D. 1532-50 (1883). When he arrived, the present-day community of Tiahuanaco already existed and was populated by Aymaraspeaking peoples who had been subjects of the Incas before being conquered by the Spanish. Pedro writes of the village and the Akapana pyramid rising above it, “Tiahuanco is not a very large village, but it is celebrated for the

great edifices near it, which are certainly things worth seeing. Near the buildings there is a hill made by the hands of men, on great foundations of stone. Beyond this hill there are two stone idols, of the human shape and figure, the features very skillfully carved, so that they appear to have been done by the hand of some great master. They are so large that they seem like small giants, and it is clear that they have on a sort of clothing different from those now worn by the natives of these parts.” (Cieza de Léon 1883: CV) He continues later on to describe what is now called Puma Punku: “In another [ruin], more to the westward, there are other ancient remains, among them many doorways, with their jambs, lintels, and thresholds, all of one stone. But what I noted most particularly, when I wandered about over these ruins writing down what I saw, was that from these great doorways there came out other still larger stones, upon which the doorways were formed, some of them thirty feet broad, fifteen or more long, and six in thickness. The whole of this, with the doorway and its jambs and lintel, was all one single stone. The work is one of grandeur and magnificence, when well considered. For myself I fail to understand with what instruments or tools it can have been done; for it is very certain that before these great stones could be brought to perfection and left as we see them, the tools must have been much better than those now used by the Indians.” (Cieza de Léon 1883: CV).

A frontpiece of Pedro de Cieza de Léon’s book When the Spanish arrived, the temples of Puma Punku were in considerably better shape than what can be seen today, especially in the fact they still had roofs over the main temple. A Spanish priest named Diego de Alcobasa who visited in the 16th century noted, “The walls, roofs, floor, and doorways are all of one single piece, carved out of a rock, and the walls of the court and of the hall are three-quarters of a yard in breadth. The roof of the hall, though it appears to be thatch, is really of stone. For as the Indians cover their houses with thatch, in order that this might appear like the rest, they have combed and carved the stone so that it resembles a roof of thatch.” (Cieza de Léon 1883: CV) While they do not specify that the buildings of the Puma Punku were being used by the local elites, archaeology has confirmed that this was the case, and it appears that abandonment of the grounds was part of a wider Spanish

campaign (probably before the arrival of Cieza de Léon, who was not with the first conquering wave) to divorce civil and religious life from what they saw as pagan monuments dedicated to the worship of the devil. In the same vein, the Spanish undertook efforts to damage them beyond use. Hence, in time, the center of civic life in the village moved north approximately a kilometer, about a 10 minute walk away. At that spot, the Spanish built an impressive gated stone paved plaza with a church dedicated to San Pedro, the current incarnation of which was built in the 17th century (Sultan 2012). Curiously for a town located in ruins so focused upon the symbolic power of gateways, Tiahuanaco village is the only settlement in Peru to have stone archways guarding each of the entrances to its central courtyard and the holy place of the Catholic Church. As is often the case, folklore grew around the site. Even in the 1500s, the ruins were a bit of a mystery to the Aymara locals, who attributed various interpretations as to why the great statues existed. Undoubtedly, these were considered to be folk religion by the Inca priests who held their own histories of the site, but as the Spanish did not consult them, there is no “official story.” Instead, historians have only folklore, much of which continued into later generations. The ruins were plundered for their cut stone, though many of the blocks were too large for the locals to easily move, and so the ruins shrunk block by block as the centuries passed. Modern Tiwanaku

Unlike other famed South American ruins, like Machu Picchu in Peru or the Ciudad Perdida in Colombia, Tiwanaku was never “lost” and rediscovered. The presence of the vibrant town of Tiahuanaco amongst the ruins, even using them as building material, especially for their church, meant that from the very first arrival of the Spanish, they were commented on. The first written account of the area and the ruins comes from the Spanish Conquistador Pedro de Cieza de Léon from his book, The travels of Pedro de Cieza de Léon, A.D. 1532-50 (1883), which is quoted in the opening introduction to this text. The buildings of at least the Puma Punku were still in use at the time of the Conquest, and all of them were in much better shape than they are today. Diego de Alcobasa, a Spanish Catholic priest, noted during his 16th century visit to the ruins that “the walls, roofs, floor, and doorways are all of one single piece, carved out of a rock, and the walls of the court and of the hall are

three-quarters of a yard in breadth. The roof of the hall, though it appears to be thatch, is really of stone. …they have combed and carved the stone so that it resembles a roof of thatch” (Cieza de Léon 1883: CV). Despite the fact that these buildings were obviously constructed of masterful ability and were the grandest in the region, the Spanish sought to break the connection between administration of government and what they viewed as “pagan” and “satanic” monuments. Therefore, while they marveled at the ruins, there is no evidence that they inhabited or used them, except as convenient sources of stone. The products, a broad-paved central town plaza and gated church (the only Catholic church in Bolivia with stone gateways over all of the entries to its courtyard), are evidence of this cannibalistic architectural re-use. Civic life migrated approximately a kilometer north and west from the pre-Columbian center (Sultan 2012). Attention to the pre-Columbian ruins of Latin America, both inside and beyond the region, began to increase dramatically in the early 20th century due to the discovery of Machu Picchu by Hiram Bingham in 1911 and the proindigenous, nationalist Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920 (Harasta 2013). Tiwanaku had the distinct advantage of being eminently accessible just outside of La Paz when compared to the epic expeditions sent to find Mayan, Olmec, and Incan ruins in formidable locations. Unfortunately, this meant that Tiwanaku was already looted of any remaining treasures by the time archaeologists arrived. The ruins have therefore not produced the remarkable artifacts of gold, silver, and precious stones that have attracted so much attention elsewhere in the continent, and the museum at Tiwanaku is mostly home to an impressive ceramics collection. Scholarly work at the site had begun hesitantly in the 19th century; an American antiquarian named Ephraim George Squier visited and mapped the site in the 1860s, and a small German expedition toured and documented it in the 1890s (Albarracin-Jordan 2011; Friedman 2008). Archaeologists began to visit with greater frequency and intensity in the early 20th century, including Arthur Posnansky in 1903 and Stig Ryden in the 1940s; however, scientific excavation was still in its infancy, and most of this early work was in the form of surveys and general description. It is likely that these archaeologists — themselves little more than looters working for museums — knew that Tiwanaku’s golden treasures were long gone (Kolata 1987:36).

At the same time, the Bolivian State was also becoming increasingly aware of the importance of its pre-Columbian heritage and the value of remarkable sites like Tiwanaku. An easy day trip from La Paz, it began attracting more and more visitors, both domestic and international, and is today frequently ranked as one of the top locations in the entire country (Touropia 2016). As was the case for centuries in one form or another, the villagers of Tiahuanaco have become increasingly dependent upon visitors to the site for their livelihood, and there has been a growth in tourist infrastructure: two museums, hotels, hostels, restaurants, etc. As the second half of the 20th century dawned, Bolivia was in turmoil, and in 1952, the indigenous peoples of the nation rose up in the Bolivian National Revolution. The resulting government instituted massive social reforms which empowered indigenous peoples, including the residents of Tiahuanaco. When archaeologists returned in 1957 — and there has been a continual archaeological project at Tiwanaku ever since — the twenty-three Aymara kinship groups in the surrounding community had negotiated amongst themselves to equally distribute the valuable positions on the dig crews, with provisions made for seniority. This process has also meant that the entire community has been active participants in the archaeology, as well as the tourism, generated by the site and has given some measure of protection for archaeologists and their work from the various political upheavals that have occurred since. Likewise, this recognition of the importance and value of the site has meant that local people are more likely to turn in looters than become them. In fact, during a 2001 indigenous uprising, armed Aymara militants, who saw it as part of their ethnic heritage, occupied the site in order to protect it from possible looters taking advantage of the chaos (Vranich 2003). The first serious, long-term archaeological project in the community began in the 1970s and was conducted by two archaeologists: Oswaldo Rivera and Alan Kolata (a Bolivian and American, respectively). They focused on the Akapana and the Sacred Precinct while others were left to dig Puma Punku later. Archaeology is a long-term process, and it took decades before they were able to synthesize this information in Kolata’s 1993 history The Tiwanaku: Portrait of an Andean Civilization. While Rivera and Kolata did solid, vitally important preliminary work, they were unable to fully comprehend the unique nature of the city. The assumption was that the traditional elements of ancient city life — vast residential

neighborhoods, industry, political centralization, and military complexes — were not absent, but simply had not been uncovered yet. This is one of the challenges for archaeology: determining what was actually present or not present at a site versus what remains under the soil, yet to be discovered. The contemporary understanding of Tiwanaku, not so much as a city, but as a “Vatican-Disney” center for pilgrimage based upon an economy of religious offerings and populated not by a city’s worth of citizens, but by a small staff, came not from Rivera and Kolata, but from the next generation of archaeologists. In particular, the most significant excavator and analyst who brought about the radical change in thinking about the site was Alexei Vranich. His revolutionary 1999 doctoral dissertation ignited new debates about the site, and he brought new computer spatial mapping techniques to the site (culminating in Vranich and Stanish 2013). He has continued to be important since then and today teaches at UCLA (Vranich 2017). Regardless of how it was interpreted, Tiwanaku became central to the Bolivian national identity, entering into the standard national curriculum and visited yearly by countless Bolivian schoolchildren. In 1986, the new 200 Bolivianos note (the largest denomination of the national currency) was drawn up to depict the monuments of Tiwanaku on its reverse, further cementing its presence in the national imagination. It is the only Pre-Columbian theme on any Bolivian currency (Abenteuer Reisen). In addition to this understandable enthusiasm and pride in the site, Tiwanaku has also attracted some unwanted attention over the last 60 years. One problem has been the “restoration” of the site by well-meaning guardians. A number of walls have been rebuilt and monuments repaired in ways that have only dubious basis in archaeological fact and run counter to the general reticence of archaeologists to attempt any reconstruction. Beyond Bolivia, Tiwanaku has also attracted the attention of numerous pseudo-scientific thinkers, especially many individuals arguing for an extraterrestrial origin of the site. Much of this attention has been particularly directed at Puma Punku, which has been said to be the extraterrestrial United Nations. The host of the television show Ancient Aliens said “Pumapunku is the only site on planet Earth that, in my opinion, was built directly by extraterrestrials” (quoted in Heiser). “It is unfortunate that these theories have emerged even as our understanding of not only how Puma Punku was

fashioned but also why the human beings who made it did so, and what it meant for them. The story of [Tiwanaku], with its remarkable connections not to the stars but to the landscape around it - the sacred waters of Titicaca and the islands and mountains - which inspired untold pilgrims for centuries is only now becoming revealed to us. The pseudo-science, often not only wrong in its interpretations but in fact in its basic facts […] threatens to drown out the real, fascinating and thoroughly human story.” (Harasta 2013). There are many questions that remain for future scholars studying this location, but it is hardly as mysterious or unexplainable as proponents of these theories proclaim. The sculpted tenon heads are evocative, but are clearly connected to the huaca capture tradition found elsewhere in the Andes, before and after; the incredible stone carving is testament to the skill and knowledge of the builders, but certainly did not require paranormal technology to accomplish. Tiwanaku gained the ultimate recognition of any ancient site in 2000 when it was added to the list of World Heritage Sites by the United Nationals Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), meaning that it is part of the shared patrimony of humanity (UNESCO 2014). It is a shame that in their zealousness to find aliens under every carved rock, the Alien Astronaut writers have essentially tried to steal a piece of this shared humanity from all of us and attribute it to fanciful visitors from distant galaxies. Hopefully in the future we will have enough respect for our ancestors to recognize their genius in a place like Tiwanaku, a place that is astonishing for what it tells us about humanity and our desire to be awed, to be humbled, and to enjoy a good performance. At the same time, Tiwanaku has always been a place of illusions and myths, and it should be no surprise that our modern mythologies have taken root here as well. Archaeology at Puma Punku

In the 20th century, interest in the pre-Incan ruins that dot Peru and Bolivia began to grow around the globe, especially in the United States, Western Europe and the Andean nations themselves. Hiram Bingham's revelation of the spectacular ruins of Machu Picchu to the world in 1911 turned historical and archaeological attention to the Central Andes, and it has never let up since (Harasta 2013).

It should be no surprise that much of that attention eventually turned to the spectacular ruins not lost in the jungles or mountains, but easily reached just beyond the village of Tiahuanaco. Despite the size of Akapana, for many it was the spectacular workmanship and the sheer size of the stones at Puma Punku that drew their attention. At the same time, this very accessibility meant that the site had been long picked over by locals searching for stones, grave robbers seeking plunder, and zealous Catholics seeking to root out paganism. The first scholarly visitor to the site was Ephraim George Squier, an American proto-Archaeologist who mapped and sketched the site in the 1860s, drawing upon considerable experience in the Mississippi Mound Builder and Central American culture areas (Albarracin-Jordan 2011). He was followed up by a more long-term interest by two Germans Max Uhle and Alphonse Stübel who, in 1892, published the most scientifically thorough account of the site to that point and also sought to gain official protection by the Bolivian Government (Friedman 2008).

Squier The first systematic excavations were conducted by a Bolivian gentleman of German ancestry named Arthur Posnansky in 1903, and he subsequently argued that Tiwanaku was the source of all cultural developments in the Americas. This type of thinking, today called "hyper-diffusionism", was common at the time, and other scholars argued that the Egyptians or the Maya were the source of all significant early culture.

Posnansky Posnansky produced a number of theories during his work that were created in line with the thinking of his day, but at times he was wildly inaccurate, and unfortunately, some of them still pop up from time to time in popular pseudoarchaeological writings. Posnansky was fascinated by pre-Columbian timekeeping, and he argued that the impressive inscriptions on the Gateway of the Sun was a calendar and that the entire site – Puma Punku and all of the other structures included – were laid out according to certain astronomical alignments he believed were important. He then attempted to determine the last time that these alignments were present in the skies over Puma Punku and came to the conclusion that the site must have been built 15,000 years ago. Today, all modern evidence has pointed to a far more plausible answer: that Tiwanaku was laid out according to alignments to the landscape around it, not the stars above, and that Posnansky’s sky alignments were a creation of his own fantasy (Sammells 2012). In truth, early archaeology during this time was only moderately better than the tomb-robbing that preceded it, because the goal was often the acquisition of impressive museum pieces rather than knowledge.As a result, in many cases the early archaeologists inadvertently destroyed important information (Friedman 2008). What's more, these archaeologists did not - like their modern counterparts - focus upon careful, systematic excavation of a particular area of the ruined city, such as the Puma Punku complex. Instead, they tended to survey the entire complex and, as systematic excavation was in its infancy, often did only spotty digs. This pattern continued into the 20th century; in the 1940s, the Swedish archaeologist Stig Ryden did basic surveys of the site (Kolata 1987:36). Therefore, there are no early studies of just Puma Punku. As the 20th Century passed, the Bolivian government began to slowly protect the site, setting up a museum on the site (slowing the exportation of ancient artifacts) and establishing it as a major touristic location for visitors to La Paz. Even as Peru to the north established Machu Picchu as its premier destination for those interested in the ancient past, Bolivia sought to establish Tiwanaku as a world-class destination. Today it is often ranked as one of the top 10 destinations in the country (as listed, for example, in Touropia 2016; Bolivia Travel Site).

The site has become woven into the economic and social fabric of the small village. The archaeological digs have become the largest employer in the community, and since the 1980s, the diggers have been unionized and today are an effective, professional group that often knows more about the site then the neophyte archaeologists arriving to supervise them. The 23 Aymara kinship groups in the surrounding community have negotiated amongst themselves for positions on the dig crews, with provisions made for seniority, and this intensive connection to the community means that digging continues even in times of political or social crisis (Vranich 2003). Though there have been almost continuous digs at the site since 1957, serious modern archaeology began in the late 1970s, led by American Alan Kolata and Bolivian Oswaldo Rivera and culminating in the first serious history of the site, Kolata's 1993 text The Tiwanaku: Portrait of an Andean Civilization. Kolata attempted to link Tiwanaku to contemporary peoples and bridged the gap in understanding between the Classic period and the arrival of the Spanish. However, his own excavations focused on Akapana, and while Puma Punku was excavated in a preliminary way by Gregorio Cordero Miranda, a Bolivian, in 1978, serious excavation and interpretation of Puma Punku would have to wait another generation (Kolata 1993). When Kolata's text was published, that work had begun to be conceived by the man who would become the most important excavator of Puma Punku and a radical interpreter of the entire site of Tiwanaku. Much of the modern interpretation of Puma Punku as a center of a "Vatican-Disney" pilgrimage center - rather than a traditional city - comes from the work of Alexei Vranich, starting with his Ph.D. research published on the site in 1999. His specialty is spatial mapping using computer methods, in which he used archaeological data to reconstruct the life of the ancient city, aiding in his unprecedented interpretations of the site (culminating in a book authored by Vranich and Stanish in 2013). Tiwanaku has become a symbol of contested national identity, with Puma Punku as a central ground for national debates. There were ill-conceived attempts to restore the site, with the re-erection of stones in dubious locations. Almost every Bolivian school child eventually tours the site, which is part of the national curriculum.

In 2001, there was an uprising of the indigenous communities of the region against the national government and the town – otherwise unremarkable – was occupied and protected by the uprising, as the Aymara see the site as part of their heritage as well (Vranich 2003). Despite all the chaos created by massive levels of visitation, strife and “restoration”, there were also advances in the preservation of the site as well. Puma Punku was fenced in and given a guard, and its ground was protected by the central government as a piece of national patrimony. As part of "Tiwanaku: Spiritual and Political Center of the Tiwanaku Culture," Puma Punku was added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage sites in 2000. Considered the globe's most prestigious list of heritage sites, this recognized Puma Punku and the rest of the ruins as central to the story of human history and culture. However, continued membership in this list required that the government allow UNESCO regular checkups of the site. In 2014, UNESCO released a damning report which, in particular condemned the attempts to restore Puma Punku; however, they also offered Bolivia $870,000 to improve their management (UNESCO 2014a, 2014b). Since the damning report, major changes have occurred to the site, including the government abandoning restoration in favor of preservation, the creation of a formal management plan, establishing a buffer zone between the ruins and the contemporary village, building new conservation labs and improvements to on-site museums (UNESCO 2015). At the same time, as people’s understanding of Puma Punku has increased exponentially since 1999, there has been a seemingly paradoxical growth of pseudo-science and obfuscation about Puma Punku more than any other part of the site. In 1968, Swiss hotelier Erich von Däniken published Chariots of the Gods?, in which he described his theory that extraterrestrials were behind the development of human history. By patching together fragments of archaeology and symbolism out of their original contexts, von Däniken created a fanciful account of human history which has continued to attract followers ever since. Much of this attention has been focused in recent years upon the ruins of Puma Punku, which von Däniken's intellectual descendants claim was unique and completely built by extraterrestrials as a form of "United Nations" of the alien world. As the host of the television show Ancient Aliens said, “Puma

Punku is the only site on planet Earth that, in my opinion, was built directly by extraterrestrials.” (quoted in Heiser). It is unfortunate that these theories have emerged even as people’s understanding has improved to help explain not only how Puma Punku was established but also why the civilization that made it did so, and what it meant for them. The story of the temple, with its remarkable connections not to the stars but to the landscape around it - the sacred waters of Titicaca and the islands and mountains - inspired an untold number of pilgrims for centuries and is only now being further revealed to modern visitors. The pseudo-science, often not only wrong in its interpretations but in basic facts (such as the show Ancient Aliens claiming that the Puma Punku rocks were made of the much harder diorite, and not the sandstone that they actually are), threatens to drown out the real, fascinating, and thoroughly human story of this remarkable temple. Online Resources

Other books about Native American history by Charles River Editors Other books about Tiwanaku on Amazon Bibliography Abenteuer Reisen ---“Bolivia (Banknotes)” accessed online at: http://www.bis-ans-endeder-welt.net/Bolivien-B-En.htm Adelaar, Willem and Simon van de Kerke ---“The Puquina and Leko Languages” from “Advances In Native South American Historical Linguistics. Accessed online at: http://52ica.etnolinguistica.org/adelaar Albarracin-Jordan, Juan V. 2011 Ephraim George Squier en Centroamérica, Perú y Bolivia in the series "Politica, Etnologia Norteamericanas del Siglo XIX. Fundación Bartolomé de las Casas and Plural Editores : La Paz. Armstrong, Karen

2007 The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions. Anchor Books Bermann, Marc 1994 Lukurmata: Household Archaeology in Prehispanic Bolivia. Princeton: Princeton University Press Bolivia es Turismo 2016 “Church of San Pedro de Tiahuanaco – La Paz.” Accessed online at: http://boliviaesturismo.com/en/iglesia-de-san-pedro-de-tiahuanaco-ingavi-lapazboliviaesturismo/ Britannica Online, Encyclopedia 2001 “Pucará”. Accessed online at: https://www.britannica.com/place/Pucara Browman, David L. 1981 “New Light on Andean Tiwanaku” in American Scientist. Vol 69, No 4, pp 408-419 Cartwright, Mark 2014 “Tiwanaku”, accessed online at: http://www.ancient.eu/Tiwanaku/ 2015a “Chavin Civilization”, accessed online at: http://www.ancient.eu/Chavin_Civilization/ 2015b “Wari Civilization”, accessed online at: http://www.ancient.eu/Wari_Civilization/ Ching, Francis DK, Mark Jarzombek and Vikramaditya Prakash 2011 NJ

A Global History of Architecture 2nd Edition. Wiley: Hoboken,

Cieza de Léon, Pedro de 1883 The travels of Pedro de Cieza de Léon, A.D. 1532-50: Contained in the First Part of His Chronicle of Peru,

translated by Clements R. Markham. Clements Markham (Trans.). Hakluyt Society: London. Accessed online at: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/48770/48770-h/48770h.htm#CHAPTER_CV Erikson, Clark L. 1988 “Raised Field Agriculture in the Lake Titicaca Basin” in Expedition. Vol. 30 No 3 Erikson, Clark L. and Kay L. Candler 1989 “14: Raised Fields and Sustainable Agriculture in the Lake Titicaca Basin of Peru” in Fragile Fields of Latin America: Strategies for Sustainable Development. Wesview Press: Boulder, CO Faura, Nicanor Domínguez 2014 “The puquina Language in the Early Colonial Southern Andes (1548-1610): A Geographical Analysis”. In the Journal of Latin American Geography. Vol 13, No 2. Pp 181-206 Friedman, Leslie 2008 "Making of Place: Myth and Memory at the Site of Tiwanaku, Bolivia. In: 16th ICOMOS General Assembly and International Symposium: ‘Finding the spirit of place – between the tangible and the intangible’, 29 sept – 4 oct 2008, Quebec, Canada. Accessed online at: http://openarchive.icomos.org/76/1/77-k6sB-142.pdf Giesso, Martin 2001 The A to Z of Ancient South America. Scarecrow Press: Plymouth, UK Harasta, Jesse

2013 Machu Picchu: The History and Mystery of the Incan City. Charles Rivers Editors: Cambridge, MA 2016 Puma Punku: The History of Tiwanaku’s Spectacular Temple of the Sun. Charles Rivers Editors: Cambridge, MA. Haupt, Beth ---“Tiwanaku Ceramic Style and its Influence on Theory, Interpretation and Conclusions of Andean Archaeologists”. University of Wisconsin - Madison Heiser, Mike ---Ancient Aliens Debunked. Accessed online at: http://ancientaliensdebunked.com/about/ Hoag, Hannah 2003 “Oldest Evidence of Andean Religion Found: God carved on gourd points to cradle of Peruvian Culture.” In the journal Nature. Accessed online at: http://www.nature.com/news/2003/030415/full/news0304144.html#B1 Houk, Brett 2017 Ancient Mayan Cities of the Eastern Lowlands. University Press of Florida Mann, Charles C. 2005 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. Alfred A. Knopf: New York Moseley, Michael 1992 The Incas and their Ancestors. Thames and Hudson, The Archaeology of Peru Series: London. Ortloff, Charles R. and Kolata, Alan 1989 “Hydraulic analysis of Tiwanaku aqueduct structures at Lukurmata and Pajchiri, Bolivia” in The Journal of Archaeological Science.

Vol 16, No 5, pp 513-535 Quilter, Jeffrey 2014 The Ancient Central Andes. Routledge World Archaeology: London and New York. Salles-Reese, Verónica 1997 From Viracocha to the Virgin of Copacabana: Representation of the Sacred at Lake Titicaca. University of Texas Press Schultz, Ashley 2010 the

“Analysis of Paleoethnobotanical Data at the Pirque Alto Site in

Cochabamba Valley of Bolivia: A Comparison to Primary and Secondary Centers” in UW-L Journal of Undergraduate Research. Vol 13 Szczepanski, Kallie 2016 “Tibet and China: History of a Complex Relationship” accessed online at: https://www.thoughtco.com/tibet-andchina-history-195217 Smith, Michael E. 2007 “Form and Meaning in the Earliest Cities: A New Approach to Ancient Urban Planning” in The Journal of Planning History. Vol 6 No 1, pp 3-47 Stanish, Charles 2003a “The Rise of Competitive Peer Polities in the Upper Formative Period” in Ancient Tiwanaku. University of California Press. 2003B “The Rise of Complex Agro-Pastoral Societies in the Altiplano Period” in Ancient Tiwanaku. University of California Press. Stone-Miller, Rebecca 1996

Art of the Andes. Thames and Hudson: London.

Sultan, Zack 2012 “La Plaza del Pueblito Tiahuanco” accessed online at at the website: http://llokhalla.tumblr.com/post/30664164389/llokhalla-la-plazadel-pueblito-tiahuanaco-con UNESCO 2014 "Decisions Adopted by the World Heritage Committee at its 38th Session (Doha 2014)." Accessed online at: http://whc.unesco.org/archive/2014/whc14-38com-16en.pdf Vranich, Alexei N 2017 “Archaeology Field School Peru” accessed online at http://www.dralexei.com/ Vranich, Alexei N and Charles Standish (eds.) 2013 Press

Visions of Tiwanaku. UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology

World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP) 2003 “Chapter 21: Lake Titicaca, Bolivia and Peru” in UN World Water Development Report 1: Water for People, Water for Life. UNESCO: Paris. Accessed online at: www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/SC/pdf/wwap_Lake %20Titicaca%20basin_case%20studies1_EN.pdf Yaeger, Jason 2002 “Investigations at the Pumapunku Temple” at the website “Archaeology’s InteractiveDig”. Accessed online at: http://interactive.archaeology.org/tiwanaku/project/pumapunku1.html

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[1]

The terms “CE” and “BCE” refer to the Common Era and Before Common Era; this is an

alternative form of “AD” and “BC” widely used by world historians and archaeologists operating outside of the traditionally Christian areas of the globe. [2]

For example see “Wari Staff Deity Cup” at http://www.hixenbaugh.net/gallery/detail.cfm?

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