Huamachuco

Evidence That the Site Is Unfinished

I have mentioned several times that Viracochapampa was never finished. This interpretation was been more fully documented elsewhere (Topic and Topic n.d.b; Topic, Topic, and Carmichael n.d.), but it is worthwhile to briefly review part of the evidence. This evidence includes the geological stratigraphy of the site, detailed observations on the techniques and sequence of construction, and the patterning of artifactual refuse. Here, I will only review some of the observations made by· McCown.

The relationship between the architecture and the geological deposits of red sandy clay at the site can be confusing. McCann (1945: 324) recognized that there were only three possible explanations for the relationship between the red clay and the construction: (1) flooding had deposited massive quantities of clay within the Finished structures; (2) the clay had been carried in by human agency after construction; or (3) the site walls were constructed in trenches dug down into the natural clay deposit.

The first possibility is easily discounted; there is a minor amount of alluvial deposition in Unit C and in some of the southernmost enclosures, but this is easily recognizable because of the sandier texture of the deposit.

Deposition by human agency is more difficult to recognize on the surface. We have, however, been able to identify the ground surface contemporary with the wall construction in most excavations. This surface is marked by a layer of angular sandstone pebbles that are foreign to the red-clay mudslide deposit. These angular pebbles were undoubtedly broken off the building stones and trodden into the ground surface during construction. Overlying these pebbles and the natural deposit is a variable amount of the red clay, overlain by humus and wall fall. No excavation has shown evidence of deposition by human agency below the constructional ground surface.

McCown's third alternative, which he considered unlikely, was that the site walls were built in trenches. Our excavations have clearly shown that this third alternative is correct. Wall foundations are well below the constructional ground surface, and the line of the trench along the face of the foundation is clearly visible in many excavations. Of course, it has also been shown that other Huari sites have foundations constructed in trenches (Schreiber n.d.: 29). In fairness to McCown, at Viracochapampa interpreting the stratigraphy as a result of construction in trenches is illogical unless accompanied by the interpretation that the site is unfinished. Excavated examples (from Unit A) of the logical problems are doorsills as much as 1.3 m below, and ground floor ceilings less than 6o cm above, the construction surface.

Other unequivocal evidence for the unfinished nature of Viracochapampa can be cited; the subfloor canal system was never connected, plaster floors were never laid, in some cases temporary masonry supports for the lintels of doors and large niches were never removed, and other finishing touches are lacking. More important, entire walls and possibly whole sections of the site remained to be built.

I should emphasize that the interpretation is not based on the scarcity of refuse at Viracochapampa (McCown 1945: 325). Indeed, although the fact that the site is unfinished helps to explain the lack of certain types of refuse-in some contexts, some refuse should occur in contexts associated with the housing of work crews engaged in constructing the site. We have already mentioned that some of the work crew may have been housed in small rooms along the course of the unfinished canal south of the site. It is quite likely that Cerro Sazon served as the major staging area for the construction of Viracochapampa (see below) so that only a few people might have been housed within Viracochapampa itself during the construction stage.

McCown (1945: 324-325) made four excavations in what we call Unit C. Unit C is essentially a patio complex with galleries along all four walls, but both the galleries and the patio have been subdivided in an atypical manner into small rooms, now very poorly preserved. McCown's excavations were meant to test the hypothesis that these buildings represented a late reoccupation of the site (1945: 272), and they produced his largest ceramic collections from the site (1945: 324). McCown (1945: 272) felt that the results of his excavations here were not conclusive, but he could find no reason to consider the small buildings not to be contemporary with the rest of the site.

Excavation was carried out in the small room along the west side of the patio of Unit C and the occupation does seem to be contemporary with construction activity. The west wall, which contains the large unfinished niches, stands 5.25 m above ground level (McCown 1945: 271). On the other hand, the east wall barely rises above the ground surface. In spite of such markedly unequal heights, the east and west walls are clearly major gallery walls. The north and south walls, however, give the appearance of being late divisions of the gallery meant to provide a shelter with a single shed roof the tops of both of these walls slope downward from west to east. At the west the tops of these walls are located just above the height of the ledgeniche line, so that the ledge in the west wall could have been used to support the roof beams. In the east, the wall tops are at the same level as the unfinished east wall of the gallery. The room had a trampIed clay floor with inclusions of pebbles and small charcoal flecks. The floor was located about 2 m below the ledge on the west wall. The foundation of the south wall, Iike those of the west and east walls, was dug down into compact sterile clay below the floor. Only the southwest corner of the excavation was carried to the base of the walls and showed that both the west and south wall foundations extended to the same level, more than 50 cm below the floor.

Unit C also presents one example of a pattern that occurs in other areas of the site. In Units A, B, and C, as well as in one patio unit west of the avenue, galleries occur in which one long wall is much lower than the other. In all these cases, one wall has a horizontal row of corbels, or sometimes a ledge, used to support the floor of the second story, while the parallel wall is much less than one story tall or in some cases not visible on the surface at all. McCown (1945: 271) was convinced that even if the parallel wall was not visible on the surface it must have existed at one time, and attributed its absence to destruction by plowing or cultivation. In Unit B there remains the possibility of such destruction, but our excavations in Units A and C indicate that for the most part this situation results not from the destruction of one wall but from the fact that it was not finished. The unfinished walls are sometimes just foundations, now covered by a thin layer of soil, but other times they stand 30 cm, 1 m. or 1.5 m above the ground surface. In many cases it is clear that the area around the wall has never been farmed and that the wall has not just toppled over. This is apparent because there is no pile of fallen stone or any indication that stones were removed for use in more modern constructions. In view of these data, it becomes clear that many of the galleries, as well as the low enclosure walls and even the site boundary wall, were not destroyed but unfinished.

The northern part of the avenue walls presents an even more extreme situation. McCown (1945: fig. 13) labeled these walls as "destroyed to the foundations." As our interpretation of the site was developing (Topic and Topic, n.d.b: fig. 1) we characterized these walls as having only the foundations completed, a very minor difference. It was not until 1984, when we went to inspect the damage caused by the building of a new school between Unit B and the avenue, that we really looked at these walls. In that area the avenue walls have no foundations at all. They are also wider than other avenue walls, are essentially unfaced, and have a proportion of mortar and stone that is different from the other walls at Viracochapampa. Finally, they are topped by cacti. The people who built the school told us that their "grandfathers" had built the walls to keep animals from wandering into the fields, and I see no reason to doubt this. Although they lined up the new walls with the avenue walls for esthetic reasons, they recognize clearly that the new walls are of inferior construction to the old walls, which they describe as pirca internacional.

They also said that the stone for these recent walls came from the L-shaped enclosure south and west of Unit B, that the stone was loose, and that no walls were destroyed to obtain it. This part of their statement is unverifiable now, but the fact that there is quite a bit of loose stone piled on top of ancient walls at the northwest corner of the central plaza suggests that this stone as well as that used along the avenue derives from clearing the adjacent enclosures for agriculture. The unanswered question is whether architecture was destroyed during the clearing or whether only piles of loose stone, hauled in from the quarries in ancient times in preparation for building, were moved. Further excavation might settle this question, although we do know of one example of stockpiled stone, indicated on the map (Fig. 2) by the irregular oval east of Unit C.

Together, the evidence for temporary housing in Unit C, the stockpiled stone east of Unit C, and possible stockpiles of stone northwest of the plaza and southwest of Unit B suggest that the focus of construction at the time of abandonment of Viracochapampa was in the northwest quadrant of the site. Certainly there are unfinished buildings in the other quadrants of the site, but construction in those quadrants had proceeded far enough to provide us with an idea of the intended plan. In contrast, we do not have enough information on the northwest quadrant even to speculate on the intended plan or density of architecture.

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