The configuration of built space at Pataraya and Wari provincial administration in Nasca

•Few choices for movement and significant opportunities for control.•Built space was manipulated according to political goals and political necessity.•Orientational cues may reflect distinctions between forms of political power. This paper uses access analysis to describe and analyze a system of reg...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of anthropological archaeology Vol. 32; no. 4; pp. 565 - 576
Main Author Edwards, Matthew J.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Elsevier Inc 01.12.2013
Elsevier BV
Subjects
Access
Ancient civilizations
Archaeology
Architecture
Bureaucratization
Complex societies
Cultural anthropology
Government
Hierarchy
Historic buildings & sites
Imperialism
Peru
Political power
Politics
South America
Space syntax
Transport
Wari
South America
Space syntax
Architecture
Complex societies
Government
Wari
Access
Politics
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Summary:•Few choices for movement and significant opportunities for control.•Built space was manipulated according to political goals and political necessity.•Orientational cues may reflect distinctions between forms of political power. This paper uses access analysis to describe and analyze a system of regulated and hierarchical communication within the small Wari enclosure at the site of Pataraya—located near Nasca, Peru—and interprets this system within the context of Wari imperialism and bureaucratization. The site appears to have served as a frontier way station along a key transportation route, focused on the extraction of coastal products and their transfer via interregional roads to the highlands. The analysis suggests that Pataraya’s builders manipulated spaces and the connections between them to considerable affect. In general, space syntax graphs and calculations reveal a non-distributed building where there are few choices for movement within the space and significant opportunities for control. Orientation patterns also suggest a tension in Pataraya’s architecture between access on the one hand and privacy and hierarchy on the other that may reflect a possible distinction made by Wari architects between overt expressions of political power as opposed to the more bureaucratic, day-to-day workings of political power.
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ISSN:0278-4165
1090-2686
DOI:10.1016/j.jaa.2013.09.004