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THE PROVINCIAL CAPITAL
The location of Incaic Huamachuco has been the subject of some controversy among those who have worked or visited in the area over the past century. The largest site in the region, Marcahuamachuco, lacks Inca architecture and artifacts and has never been a serious candidate for the Inca center. Two other locales have been championed by various writers: the modern town of Huamachuco and Viracochapampa, a site lying 2 kilometers north of town.
Charles Wiener (1880: 141-142), one of the earliest travelers with "scientific" interests to make his way through Huamachuco, considered Viracochapampa to be the main Inca center. He also noted the presence of an artificial platform in Huamachuco, under the chapel San José on the north side of the plaza (fig. 2.2). He concluded that the platform was ancient, though not necessarily Inca (Wiener 1880: 145). Somewhat later, E. M. Middendorf (1974: 227) considered Viracochapampa to be an early Spanish town whose construction was never completed; he did not specifically address the question of where the Inca center was located. Uhle spent three months in the Huamachuco area in 1900. He reacted very strongly to the numerous inaccuracies in Wiener's work and went out of his way to show, Wiener wrong whenever possible (Uhle 1900: 110-111). He insisted that Huamachuco was essentially a modern town, that San José itself and the platform on which it stood were early Spanish constructions, and that occasional finds of Inca pottery in the town indicated only that a .small settlement had existed there. Uhle felt that Viracochapampa must have been the main Inca settlement, citing the lack of Spanish-style streets there, architectural similarities to Inca sites, and similarities in plan to Pachacamac to back up this view (Uhle 1900: 110, 134-138). Julio C. Tello (in Mejia 1955: 336) visited Huamachuco briefly in 1937 and pronounced the platform under San José to be ancient, though he, like Wiener, did not specify that it was Incaic.
McCown was aware of all these opinions and carefully examined the platform. He noted that there were two very thick rubble walls incorporated into the platform that suggested pre-Hispanic workmanship, whereas the chapel itself dated from the early Spanish occupation (McCown 1945: 256-257). He assumed, erroneously, that this chapel was the original convent built in the 1550s by the Augustinians, in the same plaza where the Incas had large buildings (Juan de San Pedro 1992 [1560]: 157). Despite these observations, he considered Huamachuco to be largely a Spanish town with no evidence of a major Inca occupation (McCown 1945: 256, 330). Largely because of similarities to Pikillacta, McCown identified Viracochapampa as the main Inca center (McCown 1945: 273, 330-331, 343).
Thatcher (1972: 94-95) dated eleven sites to the Late Horizon, but he did not consider any of these to be the Inca capital. Viracochapampa was, of course, eliminated as a candidate since he was able to date it to Middle Horizon 1B (Thatcher 1972: 87-88). Although he never discusses the modern town in any detail, he clearly did not think that Huamachuco was the Inca center, suggesting instead that the Inca site should be sought some 10 kilometers to the south, in the Pampa de Yamobamba (Thatcher 1972: 95).
We have decided that the most likely locale for the provincial capital is Huamachuco itself, on the following grounds:
Huamachuco has been heavily settled for several centuries, and nowhere in town is any original Inca construction visible. Occasionally pieces of worked stone are pointed out as Incaic, but many of these could well be colonial. For example, shaped and drilled pieces of trachyte served as the original pipes for the fountain in the plaza and are probably Spanish in date. Other blocks of trachyte, however, are shaped like ashlars, with their largest dimension varying between about 30 and 80 centimeters. These are not very common but do occur occasionally in wall foundations, curbs, borders of patios, and as post bases. An informal survey consisting only of walking around the streets of Huamachuco and visiting in a few houses suggests that these worked stones are most common in the blocks surrounding the southern half of the plaza.
The Huamachuco plaza is exceptionally large for a town of this size, and unusual in its shape. The plaza is trapezoidal, narrower in the north and wider in the south, and its southwest corner forms a very acute angle. The Augustinians probably established their convent at the southwest corner, not where San José now stands. Their statement on this point is worth quoting in full: "And here they placed another house in the very pampa or plaza of Huamachuco itself where there were large buildings of the Inca, and now the monastery is in the same building that they call there 'tambo' where the order has been and is now" (Juan de San Pedro 1992 [ 1560]: 157, our translation). It is clear that the Augustinians did not just build in the general area of the plaza, but rather that they occupied existing Inca buildings. The principal church was located on this corner in 1785 when Martinez Compañon (1978) made his inspection and founded a school alongside the church. Although both the school, now called San Nicolás, and the church have undergone complete rebuilding since then, they are still oriented at an angle to the plaza.
The streets extending south, or uphill, fan out from the corners of the plaza, while those extending to the north tend to converge slightly. Probably the orientation of these streets was at least partially determined by the layout of the Inca plaza and buildings. We suspect that the platform under San José at the north end of the modern plaza was the Inca ushnu (ritual complex consisting of a platform, basin, and drainage system [Hyslop 1990: 69ff.]) and that the Inca plaza may actually have extended much farther to the north. While no diagnostic Inca masonry is preserved on the exposed faces of the platform, local tradition considers it the Inca ushnu. It now has three stairways, on the south, the east, and the west. Wiener (1880: 145) notes that there, were originally four stairways and that these served as the points of departure for the layout of the Spanish streets. As just discussed, this last statement does not seem to be true of the north-south streets in the center of the town, but it may be true of the east-west streets on the northwest, north, east, and southeast sides of the plaza.
Like the worked-stone blocks, finds of Inca-style artifacts are most common in the area to the south, southeast, and southwest of the plaza. Examples include:
We think it unlikely that any intact Inca architecture will be found in Huamachuco or that the size and layout of the city can be determined without an intensive program of excavation. The information just presented, however, suggests that Huamachuco was at least a medium-sized Inca center which had a large plaza, complete with ushnu, probably two kallanka-type buildings, and perhaps a royal en- closure. The layout of streets and the distribution of artifactual material suggest that the majority of Inca buildings were located around the southern half of the plaza. The scarcity of worked stones suggests that much of this architecture might have been built of adobe or unworked stone set in mud mortar.
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