Palaces and Power in the Americas: From Peru to the Northwest Coast

Introduction

Introduction Jessica Joyce Christie One of the most spectacular examples of a residence with political functions is without any doubt the palace of Versailles, built in France in the seventeenth century. Commissioned by Louis XIV as a royal residence as well as the seat of government, Versailles materialized Louis XIV’s conception of kingship in its architectural layout and luxurious decoration. Building on the new scientific discoveries by Galileo Galilei that indeed the sun and not the earth was the center of the universe, Louis XIV claimed to be the human personi fication of the sun, the central celestial body. This notion entered into the architectural design of Versailles in that the royal bedroom was the central room of the large palace complex. Other official rooms were associated with the known planets and were arranged around Louis XIV’s bedroom, approaching a circular formation that imitated the planets’ rotation around the sun. Louis XIV’s identification with the sun also entered into court ritual. All members of the royal court were required to gather in the bedroom to watch the daily lever (rising) and coucher (going to bed) rituals of their Sun King, and the whole court could only be active after Louis XIV had risen in the morning and until he had fully withdrawn for the night. Several other examples of the identification of the ruler and his power with the palace exist outside the Western tradition. The Royal Palace of Benin, for example, expressed through its scale, exclusivity of access, and ornamentation the power of the Oba. The Forbidden City of China displayed royal power through these means and through its cosmic imaging and associations. The examples from the Americas are different in many ways. The goal of this volume is to present cases of ancient American residential architecture for which there is evidence of a specific political context or propaganda strategy. We selected case studies from North America, Mesoamerica, and South America and from early to close-to-contact chronological periods to show that the relation between political power and architecture is a pervasive theme in the Americas. Nevertheless, the chapters presented should not be considered a complete whole that exhausts the topic. Some areas are noticeably missing, for example, the Mississippian culture in the southeast- 2 jessica joyce christie ern United States or the Sican culture on the north coast of Peru. Rather, we hope that this volume will inspire palace studies in these missing areas as well as others outside the Americas and that scholars will be able to compare and contrast their data with the findings presented here. The volume would further be of interest to architectural historians seeking to understand the form of palaces in the Americas. Most of the existing literature on the subject has been concerned with identifying and classifying residences. Indeed, as noted below, this is the subject of a number of the articles in the present volume. In the Maya area, the scholarly debate focused on the differentiation between temples and palaces in the early twentieth century (Spinden 1913; Tozzer 1911). Temples were understood as tall flat-topped pyramidal platforms supporting single-room structures, whereas palaces were longer multiroom structures standing on low platforms. As the data and number of known examples increased, researchers began to recognize hierarchies among residences (Christie 2003; Willey and Leventhal 1979; Willey et al. 1978). Palaces came to be understood as the royal residences as well as the seats of government and administration , and they were set apart from elite residences and the houses of commoners, which had only domestic functions.The distinguishing criteria were primarily size, quality of construction materials, sculptural decoration, and location with respect to proximity to the ceremonial center. Similar issues have been discussed in southwestern and Moche archaeology . In Anasazi sites, a clear distinction can be drawn between religious structures or kivas and houses, as the latter are relatively small and simple rectangular rooms. It has not been possible to establish a hierarchy among rooms but perhaps among sites (Lekson, this volume). The well-known Moche structures of Huaca del Sol and Huaca de la Luna have been variously interpreted as temples or palaces (Benson 1992:303– 315; Moseley 1993:166–178). This discussion is particularly complicated by the fact that Huaca del Sol has never been professionally excavated. Claude Chapdelaine (this volume) presents evidence supporting some palace functions at Huaca de la Luna. Other studies have attempted to reconstruct ancient social...