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At Home with the Sapa Inca: Architecture, Space, and Legacy at Chinchero

2017; Duke University Press; Volume: 97; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-3824152

1527-1900

Sabine Hyland,

Latin American history and culture

For all the attention that has been paid to the magnificent Inca site of Machu Picchu, we know surprisingly little about the intimate landscapes where life took place within Inca royal estates. Insightful, evocative, and thoroughly researched, Stella Nair's new book explores the distinctive architectural spaces and structures of the royal Inca palace at Chinchero, Peru. Constructed for the Inca emperor Topa Inca Yupanqui as a retreat for himself, his favorite secondary wife, Mama Chequi Ocllo, and their son Capac Huari, the remains of Chinchero have intrigued travelers and scholars for centuries. Building on previous studies of Inca imperial architecture by Craig Morris and Susan Niles, Nair takes an explicitly experiential approach to comprehending the Inca use of space in the royal estate of Chinchero. As she explains in the introduction, her goal was to understand the site of Chinchero in the sense of the Quechua ideal of reqsiy, or to know by seeing. She guides the reader through the site, exploring both the landscape and the built environment, on a phenomenological journey informed by architectural data, colonial written records, and some excavations. The result is a highly readable and entertaining yet nuanced analysis of Chinchero, both as a private home for Topa Inca Yupanqui, his lover, and his son and as a stage for the expression of political power.In the introduction, Nair emphasizes how architectural analysis complements the use of ethnohistorical sources, particularly the writings of the Spanish chroniclers, which she draws upon heavily throughout the book. She suggests that an architectural imagination sensitive to how people move through a built environment can reveal previously overlooked aspects of the Inca use of space. The following seven chapters carry out different aspects of this ambitious project. The first chapter, which structures her analysis in the rest of the book, examines the Inca concept of pirca, translated as “wall.” In her discussion of the walls of Chinchero, she argues against approaches to interpreting Inca architecture that emphasize how form follows function. Nair proposes instead that the ancient Andeans understood their architecture primarily in terms of how it was made, of what materials and under whose patronage.The subsequent chapters consider the use and meanings of various constructed forms at Chinchero: the sacred landscape, plazas, doorways, houses, platforms, and communities, revealing novel insights. For example, Nair argues convincingly that the buildings known as cuyusmanco, generally believed to be council or judicial houses, were not defined by the Incas in terms of these functions but instead by their large central doorways, which served as dramatic backdrops to imperial rituals. She cites Spanish chroniclers, such as Agustín de Zárate, who observed how the emperor Atahualpa greeted visitors while seated in his royal chair in front of the threshold of a large doorway. As she states, “For this reception in the open space, buildings were not penetrated by the visitors, but rather served to frame the scene and articulate the status of the ruler” (p. 151).One of the most appealing chapters focuses on the private quarters of Topa Inca Yupanqui at the site. Nair delves into how the Incas conceptualized private, domestic space at the imperial level, with guarded, hidden entrances to the royal apartments. She contrasts the punona wasi, the “house of the bed,” where the emperor slumbered and had sex with Mama Chequi Ocllo with the houses in Cuzco where female captives were forced to have sex with unmarried Inca men (p. 165). She also provides a compelling explanation of the quarters purportedly for orphans, or uaccha wasi, that were supposedly a ubiquitous feature of royal Inca estates. These were not, she determines, refuges for poor orphans but instead housed the king's dozens of children by lower-status women.The book concludes with a fascinating look at how Chinchero was used after the emperor's death and, later, during Spanish colonization. Topa Inca Yupanqui's favored son, Capac Huari, lost his bid to replace his father as emperor and was forced to live in Chinchero under house arrest for the rest of his life tending to his father's mummy, which was treated as the still living emperor in typical Inca fashion. During the Spanish colonial period, she finds, many aspects of Inca architecture survived, but often in a creative, experimental spirit that would not necessarily have been allowed in Inca times.This wonderful work will be of great interest to Andeanists of all disciplines. Its highly accessible nature makes it ideal for undergraduate and graduate courses in architectural history, art history, archaeology, anthropology, and the history of Latin America.