Huamachuco

Huari Labor Requirements

The major resource that we know Huari exploited, directly or indirectly, in Huamachuco was local labor for construction projects. It is possible to estimate the amount of labor. The major monument, Viracochapampa, will be considered first. Throughout, it is assumed that the work day lasts only five hours (Erasmus 1965). It is also assumed that men were the builders because comparative work figures are based on adult males.

We calculate that the boundary wall is 2,312 m long (the angle in the south wall causes the length of the boundary wall to be somewhat greater than the sum of the measurements given above), and the other walls have a combined length of 13,890 m. The foundations for these walls were dug to various depths and seem generally to be deeper in the south than in the north. Using round figures, a foundation trench 2 m wide and 2 m deep for the boundary wall and 1 m wide by 1.5 m deep for the other walls would require 30,083 m3 to be excavated. Erasmus (1965: 285) found that a man with a digging stick could excavate 2.6 m3 in a five-hour day. Coles (1973: 73) reports that General Pitt-Rivers and another man excavated chalk and flint with primitive tools at the rate of 1 m3 per three man-hours. The sandy clay at Viracochapampa is quite hard, the trenches must be excavated with vertical sides, and the material must be lifted out of the trench. To be on the safe side, I estimate that the trenches could be dug at the rate of one man-day per cubic meter, which gives a figure of 30,083 man-days.

The walls have a high proportion of stone to mortar, even including the hearting. 1 estimate that 90% of the volume of the walls is stone. The volume of wall actually completed is difficult to estimate. The average of the heights of the boundary wall at the north and south gates is about 2 m. This is the same as the estimate of the average depth of the foundation and reflects the facts that the boundary wall is little more than a foundation and that the depth of the foundation was generously estimated. I estimate the volume of the other walls as 2.5 times the foundation volume. These estimates provide a total volume of 61,336 m3, of which 55,202 3 is stone.

This stone was quarried from the hills south of the site using river-rolled limestone or quartzite boulders and cobbles, and perhaps pry bars. The sandstone is easily quarried by undermining a face. Using one of the quartzite boulders on an exposed face, I was able to quickly detach a large volume of stone, but I did not quantify this experiment. I estimate, though, that a cubic meter of stone could be quarried in about three hours. Quarrying would require a total investment of about 33,121 man-days.

Hauling the stone to the building site is the most labor intensive aspect of the entire project. The sandstone weighs about 2,300 kg per cubic meter. It had to be carried an average distance of about 750 m to the center of the site, but fortunately this trip was all downhill. Erasmus (1965: 287) found that a man could move about 500 kg of stone a day over this distance. Hauling the stone involves a total of 253,93I man-days.

Water also had to be hauled to the building site to mix the mortar. Assuming that there was no functioning canal at the site, the nearest source of water is the Rio de las Cuevas, about 600 m from the center of the site. About 6, 134 m3 mortar was needed, and mixing one part water to three parts earth results in a requirement of 2,044.,667 kg of water. I do not. know how this water was carried, but have assumed twenty kg loads, with each man carrying fifteen loads a day. This results in 6,816 man-days.

Erasmus (1965: 292) reports that Maya stonemasons build walls at the rate of about four man-days per cubic meter. I doubt that this figure applies to Viracochapampa but know of no comparative figures for pirca construction. I estimate that the walls of Viracochapampa could be laid up at the rate of one cubic meter per man-day, once all the materials were at hand. If this is a reasonable estimate. about 61,336 man-days were required.

The total labor requirement for the construction of Viracochapampa is on the order of 385,287 man-days, but a more meaningful idea of the labor requirement can be obtained if we can specify the size of the crew. By specifying the size of the crew we can estimate the duration and the degree of coercion involved in the Huari presence.

We can make a rough estimate of crew size by considering the quarries. There are about 15-20 different quarrying spots on the hillsides south of the site. These are concave shallow excavations of varying size, but average perhaps 5 m across. If we estimate that about three men worked in each quarry and that all quarries were worked simultaneously, there could have been about fitty quarriers. This number of quarriers could have completed their work in 662 days. If the rest of the work was being done simultaneously, the builders would have needed about 384 men to move the stone, ten men to carry water, forty-five men to dig foundations, and ninety-two men to build walls. This adds up to a crew size of 581 men.

If we now take this crew and its productivity and use it to build La Cuchilla (13,400 m3), the storerooms at Cerro Amaru (480 m3), and the mausoleum at Marca Huamachuco (1,760 m3), it would take them another 169 days. So our rough estimate of labor requirements amounts to almost a half-million man-days, based on a crew of 581 working for 831 days.

These are not heavy labor demands, and their effect on Huamachuco can be analyzed briefly. In 1567, only a few years after Cieza de León had lamented the great loss of population in Huamachuco caused by the conquest and civil wars, the province still could muster 3, 128 tributarios (Espinoza 1974: 81). It seems that the province of Huamachuco in Middle Horizon times was about the same size as the Incaic and early colonial province, at least in terms of territory. The labor to build Viracochapampa and the other sites would have required only a fraction, perhaps a fifth, of the tax-paying population. Erasmus (1965: 281) has a useful discussion on the relation between the number of days per year worked in corvée systems and the degree of coercion present. Forty days per year requires little coercion, while 150 days a year or more was apparently common in feudal situations but did require some coercion. Based on these rates of service, all the construction could have been completed in 5.5 to 21 years by only one fifth of the number of taxpayers present in the sixteenth century.

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