Pikillacta: The Wari Empire in Cuzco

4 Pikillacta Architecture and Construction Requirements

4 Pikillacta฀Architecture฀and฀ Construction฀Requirements gordon฀f.฀mcewan Some of the most intriguing questions about Pikillacta are those revolving around how it was built, how long it took to build, and what it cost to erect such an enormous complex. Nearly everyone who has commented on the site has observed that it is extremely large and well ordered and therefore must have been important. While these are valid and logical observations, they do not shed much light on Pikillacta as a construction project in terms of the scale of human effort. The studies described here are an attempt to translate Pikillacta into more comprehensible human terms. During the course of the mapping project and excavations, we conducted a systematic investigation of the architecture of Pikillacta on a structure-bystructure basis that provided a great deal of architectural data. This study resulted from an attempt to understand how Pikillacta was built and what information analysis of its construction could provide about the Wari themselves . The uniform Wari architectural style is a testament to the concept of centralized planning and provides some very interesting insights into Wari organizational methods. Principles of Design and Sequence of Construction Pikillacta is a classic example of the Wari architectural concept that has been called “cellular orthogonal” by William Isbell (1991). At Pikillacta a structure or space is defined by its interior layout, while the exteriors are uniform and featureless or in some cases nonexistent because of the sharing of walls between structures. In the vast majority of structures in Pikillacta, there simply is no exterior perspective as there are no free-standing exterior walls (fig. 4.1). Spaces are defined from within by the various arrangements of basic architectural elements. These elements almost invariably produce arrangements that can be defined within the three basic structural types in the 64 | mcewan 4.1. Reconstruction drawing of structures in Sector 1. Wari typology. Although there are a few unique structures, they are generally variations on the theme of the three basic types. In many respects the structures at Pikillacta are analogous to the rooms in a large house or, perhaps more accurately , the rooms of a large palace, and in this sense the entire complex may be viewed as a single enormous building. The structural survey, made in conjunction with the mapping project, indicated that within each sector of Pikillacta, all of the shared walls, the walls serving as boundaries between structures , the walls serving as boundaries between structures and avenues, and the walls serving as the perimeter of the site were built first. This provided the basic structural shell since all of these walls appear to be bonded together. All of the major areas of the site were thus laid out in the preliminary stage of construction and must have been conceived as one master plan. This plan would have been extraordinarily detailed since the location of all major rooms must have been known in advance in order to construct such features as subterranean canals that would have to be built first. After the basic shell had been put up, or at least laid out, the interiors of each structure were then put together. The construction of the interiors allowed for a limited amount of flexibility since the interior walls are generally unbonded. It was therefore theoretically possible to modify the interior design of a structure by moving or adding a wall without the risk of disturbing neighboring structures. In her study of Wari architecture, Schreiber (1978: 148) has identified a four-step sequence of construction: (1) pre-construction layout, (2) foundations, (3) wall construction, and (4) finishing of interiors . Pikillacta conforms to this sequence, and data from other major Wari sites such as Viracochapampa (Topic and Topic 1983: 20–21) and Wari itself (Spickard 1983: 148) suggest that they also follow Schreiber’s sequence, confirming its validity for Wari architecture in general. Pikillacta Architecture and Construction Requirements | 65 Construction Process and Materials The actual process of construction involved first surveying and laying out the lines of the walls over undulating ground. We did not find any evidence of how this was accomplished, but it is clear that it was done with great precision . A glance at the ground plan or air photo of Pikillacta confirms that the Wari were masters of the art of surveying large areas. A standardized system of measurement must have been employed...