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An Archaeology of Rituals

Rituals and the Archaeological Record

The use of the plural term rituals in the title of this volume points to the variety of theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of ritual in anthropology and archaeology. One approach to the study of ritual has been to follow a theoretical view based primarily on practice theory, which posits that the structure of daily life serves as a small-scale reflection of the broader organizational tenets of society (Bourdieu 1977). This perspective aligns with the argument made in religious studies by Bell (1992) and later reinforced in anthropology by Moore (2005) that ritual action and ritual belief cannot be separated. Ritual is viewed as more than just action, but one wholly embedded within the larger social structure of the particular society. In this sense, this practice approach opened the platform for studying ritual from an everyday life perspective and away from an emphasis on monumental archaeological sites. Some of the case studies in this volume, while not necessarily following this theoretical perspective, do discuss ritual in a variety of non-monumental contexts, including mountain-pass shrines (Nielsen, Angiorama, and Ávila), quarry mines (Van Gijseghem and Whalen), and small architectural structures (Contreras).

The approach to ritual followed by many contributors to this volume is the one exemplified by Rick, who defines ritual as customary actions that are effective in obtaining outcomes over which the participants have little controlling power. In this sense, many of the scholars in this volume understand ritual as a specific set of practices conducted to legitimize certain power relations. For some of these scholars, ritual is interpreted as an important medium of integration (Onuki, Vega-Centeno Sara-Lafosse), resistance (Capriata Estrada and López-Hurtado), assimilation (Abraham), decentralization (Contreras), and competition (Chicoine et al.). Rituals are also approached in this volume as social action that addresses non-human agents (Nielsen, Angiorama, and Ávila). In this regard, ritual can be seen as an enactment of relationships tying humans to spirits, gods, ancestors, animals, and objects. Because these relationships are acted out based on personal experience, every ritual can be acted out in unusual ways (Houseman 2004:76). As argued by Swenson (2011), the study of ritual can be particularly valuable when it is engaged with the historical specificities of political organizations as structured by unique cosmologies. In this sense, some of the case studies in this volume discuss particular Andean meanings to show how ritual worked actively in the construction of distinctive landscapes and worldviews (see Nielsen, Angiorama, and Ávila; Onuki; Rick; Van Gijseghem and Whalen, this volume).

Scholars have debated whether ritual should be understood as religious (e.g., Bell 2007; Bradley 2003; Fogelin 2007; Renfrew 2007). Bell, for instance, argues that we can identify ritualization if we can distinguish how a society made such distinctions as those between sacred and profane or domestic and ritual (Bell 2007:284–85). If not, Bell argues that it would be a challenge for archaeologists to argue for the presence of ritual (ibid.:285). Dualist models would separate religious from secular ritual (e.g., Renfrew 2007). Religious rituals imply the invocation of the supernatural, as when in a Catholic baptism God is invoked to bless the baptized. Secular rituals would not involve the supernatural; and they can be political (e.g., presidential inaugurations or monarch coronations), educational (e.g., raising the flag at school every morning), or social (e.g., civil marriage). As many scholars argue, however, the relationship between religious/sacred and secular/domestic is more complex, and each element cannot be disentangled from the other (Angelo 2014; Hastorf 2007:78; Hodder 2010:14; Iteanu 2004:99).

Bradley (2003), for example, argues that the opposition between ritual and everyday practice is not helpful in understanding later prehistoric European contexts. He understands ritual as an extension of daily life, a practice that affected the ways artifacts, food, and settlements were formally placed (ibid.:21). The excavations and research at Neolithic Çatalhöyük have also revealed evidence of ritual in domestic houses, such as repetitive and formal installations of wild animal skulls, claws, and teeth on the walls of houses (Hodder and Cessford 2004). Hodder has recently argued that all of the buildings in Çatalhöyük show ample evidence of both ritual and quotidian activity (Hodder 2010:16). Similarly, ethnographic and archaeological research in the Andes shows that many communities experience ritual as part of their daily life, in part because their material world is perceived as powerful, animated, and subjective to human agency; therefore, many quotidian activities are embedded with acts of ritual (e.g., Allen 1988; Hastorf 2007; Sillar 2004). Bolin (1998) demonstrates this when she discusses the sacrificial offerings of llamas made to the earth (Pachamama), the mountains (apus), and the Thunder God (Qhaya) to increase the size of the camelid herd.

While the distinction between religious and secular may not have been clear in prehistory, most rituals seem to involve the invocation of a greater power. As many studies have shown (e.g., Allen 1988; Bolin 1998; Fernandini and Ruales, this volume; Rick, this volume; Van Gijseghem and Whalen, this volume), the entanglement between ritual and domestic does not preclude scholars from understanding ritual in a variety of ways in different Andean societies across time.

More recently, Aldenderfer (2011:24) has criticized archaeologists for focusing too much on ritual at the expense of religion, creating what he calls a “disembodied ritual.” According to Aldenderfer, what archaeologists seek to understand is “religion in action” (ibid.) and what it did for specific societies. Aldenderfer is not concerned with a definition of religion but rather with what religion does. Similar to Bell’s (2007) argument about explaining religion in archaeology, Aldenderfer (2011:28) talks about recognizing “contrasts” in the archaeological record. One way to do this is through careful documentation of changes in the archaeological data across time (see, for example, Abraham, Chicoine et al., this volume).

The identification of ritual depends on the society and the culture. Hodder (2010:14) has argued for a contextual and interpretative approach in archaeology. Particular spaces, particular configurations of artifacts or other archaeological material can point to the presence of ritual activity in a contextually situated society. As mentioned, while ritual can be intertwined with everyday practice, Hodder observed that “some events stand out” (ibid.:16) in their context. From a different perspective, Handelman (2004:4) has claimed that it is possible and necessary to first separate ritual as a phenomenon from its sociocultural surrounding and then reinsert the ritual back into its environment to assess an interpretation. He has suggested thinking about ritual in its own terms. This perspective is not followed by most of the authors in this volume. For the most part it is argued here that ritual has been a motor of transformation in the past and present Andes in a variety of ways. This is also an interpretation seen in many ethnohistoric sources on the Andes. For example, provinces who rebelled against the Inka were punished, as the Inka would publicly insult the provincial gods until the rebellious group surrendered. At this time the non-Inka gods were restored to their places and properly honored (Cobo 1997 [1653]:3–4). Further, the Inka famously reordered and rebuilt ceremonial places during their conquests based on existing practices to facilitate the establishment of the new ideology and thus enact sociopolitical change through ritual practices (MacCormack 1991:88). This is not to say that ritual was always used to produce intentional outcomes; but in the Andean cases studies shown here, ritual is interpreted as more than ritual for its own sake.

At a methodological level, if ritual is understood as the performance of sequences of informal and formal acts (Marcus 2007:45; Rappaport 1999:24) to unfold action, its repetitive character should leave traces in the archaeological record and allow the identification of its performative location and related paraphernalia. Rituals can have a repetitive character because they tend to include formal aspects in terms of both action and time. Ritual participants may know the sequence of specific rituals and what to expect before they attend. The periodicity of ritual varies according to the specific practice, but participants usually know when to expect it. A ritual can be practiced daily (e.g., nightly prayer before bedtime), be seasonal (e.g., solstice festival), or be prompted by specific circumstances such as an individual’s life cycle (e.g., birth, maturity, marriage, sickness, death) or extreme environmental factors (e.g., drought or flooding; see Fernandini and Ruales, Rick, this volume). Of course, not all repetitive activities should be interpreted as ritual, but repetition is one of the characteristics that helps archaeologists identify ritual in the archaeological record.

Since ritual is about social actions and performances, its recurrent patterns, while not static, can help archaeologists engage theory with evidence. There are at least three observations for the identification of ritual in the material record: (1) archaeologists can identify types of places where rituals tend to occur (e.g., burials under house floors or platforms in some Andean sites; see Onuki, this volume), and (2) archaeologists can identify the last ritual performed in an area in which the same type of ritual occurred multiple times. These areas may be key locations for ritual, but they may also be cleaned every time, leaving few traces until the last ritual is performed and the space is abandoned (e.g., open patios for sponsored state feasts, closure rituals; see Capriata Estrada and López-Hurtado, Edwards Fernandini and Ruales, this volume). Finally, (3) archaeologists can find an area of repetitive ritual performance that is used over and over again without being cleaned each time, and the archaeological material therefore accumulated over time (e.g., shrines; see Nielsen, Angiorama, and Ávila, this volume). Finally, we need to remember that archaeologists may only find a portion of the artifacts used in a ritual. Certain artifacts were probably used repeatedly but conservatively and were not left as dedication in the ritual area.

Ritual in the Andes

The Andes, a succession of parallel and transverse mountain ranges, or cordilleras, extend over the modern-day South American countries of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, Chile, and Argentina. The archaeological record demonstrates that the Andes were the backdrop of some of the world’s best-known prehispanic cultures (e.g., Nasca, Moche, Inka). Moreover, we know from ethnohistorical, ethnographic, and anthropological sources that ritual was a key component in the formation and maintenance of many of these prehispanic societies, as well as of present-day Andean indigenous communities (Abercrombie 1998; Bolin 1998; Isbell 1978). Many scholars have observed that some of the ritual practices and traditions are continuations from prehis- panic times. For example, the present-day worship of the Andean mountains (apus) has been documented throughout many Andean areas (Allen 1988; Anders 1986; Bolin 1998; Reinhard 1985), and ethnohistorical documents indicate that the Inka also practiced this type of ritual (Gose 1986; Kuznar 2001). Andean archaeologists have used this evidence to make archaeological inferences about pre-Inka apu worshipping practices for societies such as the Wari (AD 550–950) (e.g., Glowacki and Malpass 2003; Moseley 2001; Williams and Nash 2006). While the rituals may have continued through time, their meanings were constantly reconstructed. Following this tradition, some case studies in this volume deal with certain rituals (e.g., termination rituals, apacheta/cairn worship, and mountain worship) that appear to have been recurrent in many parts of the Andes as fluid and dynamic practices (Edwards; Nielsen, Angiorama, and Ávila, Van Gijseghem and Whalen, this volume).

Through the study of archaeological, ethnographic, linguistic, and historical evidence from northern Peru to northern Chile, Bolivia, and northwest Argentina, the authors in this volume show the significance of ritual from pre-contact to the present day in the Andes. The volume, however, does not follow one specific theoretical or methodological approach; instead, broad topics are of concern to many of the contributors. The analysis of Andean ceremonial architecture to infer power relationships is present in many of the case studies (e.g., Abraham, Chicoine et al., Edwards, Fernandini and Ruales, this volume). This is not surprising, given that the social effort implied in public construction can be understood as a reflection of power (Moore 1996 :3) and also because people’s values and beliefs shaped Andean architecture (ibid.:123). However, current research (Bray 2015; Meddens et al. 2014) has demonstrated that rituals can be performed beyond architectural walls and in a variety of entities. Some of the authors in this volume demonstrate this phenomenon; Nielsen and colleagues discuss rituals at mountain passes and apachetas, and Van Gijseghem and Whalen focus on rituals inside mines. Other scholars, while focusing mostly on architecture, connect rituals in human-nature engagements such as with canals and water (Rick, this volume) and floors and fire (Onuki, this volume). Another important topic is the relationship between Andean cosmologies and social memory (e.g., Onuki; Nielsen, Angiorama, and Ávila; Van Gijseghem and Whalen, this volume). The chapters in this book demonstrate how the archaeological study of ritual activity can help us better understand past ideology, site function, elite strategies of power, local adaptations to colonialism, and perceptions of space and landscape.

The chapters in this volume are organized based on common themes and loosely chronological associations. Of course, other divisions could have been possible, since some similar topics (e.g., the study of structured depositions) crosscut different theoretical approaches and time periods. However, a chronological order was needed since the essays deal with data from one large region: the Andes. The volume begins with a discussion of ritual to understand cosmologies and ideologies during Chavín times in present-day Peru. After discussing the taphonomy of ritual evidence at Chavín de Huántar, John Rick details a variety of ritual locations, which include pits, construction fills, and, most notably, underground galleries and canals. While the canals functioned to drain and supply water, Rick interprets the complex design and content of part of the canals as places where water-related rituals took place. The concentration of complete but smashed vessels at the conjunction of canals is understood as an indication of possible locations of ritual sacrifice. Situating his interpretation within specific Andean cosmology, Rick suggests that these particular contexts could have represented the Andean belief tinku: the ritual encounter of water and people. These water-related rituals were perhaps performed to control the risks and outcomes involving water’s energy, which would have been part of the complex belief system at the temple of Chavín.

Both Onuki and Contreras analyze the relationship between Andean ideology and cosmology by studying the early ceremonial architectural style known as Mito. Daniel Contreras discusses the presence of Mito-style architecture at the margins of the site of Chavín de Huántar and its relationship to the contemporaneous use of monumental structures in the core of the Chavín landscape. Contreras argues that the diversity in ritual architecture demonstrates that a variety of social and religious sources existed contemporaneously at Chavín, which allowed authorities to reinforce different ritual practices at this early ceremonial complex. His work reminds us of the importance and complexity of understanding ritual architectural relationships and their social implications within one site.

Yoshio Onuki discusses ritual innovation and ideology during the early Formative in the northern highlands of Peru. He interprets the processes of temple burial and renovation of Mito ceremonial architecture at the site of Kotosh as part of an ideology that may have originated from Amazonian myths and the slash-and-burn agriculture practiced in the tropical lowlands. He also claims that the stone sculptures and gold objects found at the site of Kuntur Wasi show animal and plant themes in common with those of the tropical lowlands. Onuki concludes that these data could provide evidence of a pre-Chavín tropical forest/highland interaction.

Other contributors consider the relationship between architectural design and differential access to and control of ritual participation and performance. Rafael Vega-Centeno Sara-Lafosse analyzes spatial organization and the movement of people at the site of Pampa de las Llamas–Moxeke in the Casma Valley of Peru during the early Formative period (1800–1200 BC). Previously, archaeologists had hypothesized that the architectural complex Huaca A had mainly been used as an administrative center. Through the analysis of corridor and door arrangements, Vega-Centeno argues that it was used exclusively by small, elite groups of people to perform rituals. Furthermore, he suggests that Huaca A summit architecture had a system designed to congregate and integrate multiple social groups.

From a regional and diachronic perspective, David Chicoine, Hugo Ikehara, Koichiro Shibata, and Matthew Helmer use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to reconstruct landscapes of ritual practices in the Nepeña Valley of coastal Ancash, Peru, and to monitor their changes during the second part of the Formative period (circa 1100–150 BC). They argue for the use of ceremonial monuments as tools for social control, political integration, and inter-communal competition. Their analysis of isovistas shows that the buildings of the middle Formative period were designed to impress large audiences and viewers beyond the immediate architectural precinct. Leaders were interested in reaching and integrating most of the plains communities. During the final Formative period, however, their isovista analysis reveals more restrictive viewsheds of the religious buildings, which suggests a marked concern toward increased control over and exclusivity of ritual spaces and performances. The causes of these changes are still under research.

In the next three chapters, termination rituals and structured depositions are discussed in connection to political relationships. Matthew Edwards focuses on ritual closure at the site of Pataraya in the Southern Nasca Region of the Peruvian South Coast around AD 950. He argues that the abandonment of Pataraya was planned during the time when the Wari Empire began to disintegrate. Edwards interprets a detailed sequence of closing ritual practices that includes burned offerings, smashed pottery, and obstructed passageways. The architectural analysis revealed a pattern that limited travel within the enclosure. This suggests the obstructed passageways were part of a sequence of ritual events that perhaps included a procession across the site. This chapter highlights particularly well the ways archaeology can reveal past ritual systems, as the Wari enacted a type of funeral service for the closure of Pataraya that gave architecture the same respect and farewell as would a human burial.

Francesca Fernandini and Mario Ruales analyze the archaeological evidence at Cerro de Oro, a Middle Horizon site in the Cañete Valley on the Central Coast of Peru. They discuss the permeable boundaries between the mundane and the eventful and focus their analysis on a series of practices that include offering pits, closure rites, and intrusive burials to understand the ritual spectrum occurring in this settlement. They compare these rituals in size and place across the site and conclude that they were regular and repetitive practices involving the community at many different scales.

Camila Capriata Estrada and Enrique López-Hurtado contribute to the topic of termination rituals by exploring the intentional burning of selected spaces at Panquilma, a Late Intermediate Period–Late Horizon settlement located in the Lurín Valley on the Peruvian Central Coast. They found no evidence of foreign vandalism or extensive destruction at the site; instead, evidence of burned roofs over the clean floors of ceremonial areas suggests that this destruction was carefully planned and executed by local people. Capriata Estrada and López-Hurtado suggest that this burning was part of a terminal ritual performed by local ruling elites before abandoning Panquilma at the time the Inka polity arrived in the area.

The chapters by Abraham, Nielsen and colleagues, and Van Gijseghem and Whalen discuss ritual in late prehispanic and colonial times in very particular places: chapels, shrines, and mines. Sarah Abraham examines religious architecture and different forms of religious practices during the colonial era. She discusses novel forms of worship in the early colonial Andes of southern Peru as the introduction of Christianity became entangled with local ritual practices. Abraham examines the religious architecture of the La Quinta chapel, which was built between two prehispanic sunken courts at the site of Pukara in the Titicaca Basin of the Peruvian Puno region. She argues that this chapel has hybridized architectural forms and designs, which suggests that a new type of ritual space and architectural style was created by the inclusion of Andean and European elements. This mixed architectural form may have represented Christianity in a more traditional Andean environment, and it suggests that religious practices may have been intentionally hybridized during early colonial times. Abraham contrasts these early colonial religious architectural designs and practices with those that occurred following the rigid Toledan reforms. To this end, she compares La Quinta with the church of Santa Isabel in the same town. Abraham’s religious architectural analysis is an excellent example of the dynamic nature of traditional and European ritual practices in the Andes.

Axel Nielsen, Carlos Angiorama, and Florencia Ávila discuss the relationship between non-human agency and ritual practice. Using ethnographic, ethnohistorical, and archaeological data, they focus on the late pre-Hispanic shrines travelers left at mountain passes across the borders of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile. Based on the location and material content of offering pits and apachetas (cairns), they offer several interpretations of their ritual symbolism: the union of resources from different productive and cultural areas, places where travelers left gifts for non-human beings to secure safe travels, or places where travelers “fed” the mountains and earth to secure health and fertility. The authors conclude with an account of the genealogy of ritual practices from hunter-gatherer to current times and discuss the unique ways in which travelers ritually engaged with non-human agents at these high mountain passes.

Hendrik Van Gijseghem and Verity Whalen use ritual and linguistic data from the Ica Valley of southern Peru to argue that places where pre-Hispanic mining was performed were regarded as both ritually laden and dangerous. They suggest that these beliefs continued into the historical period, as evidenced in the maintenance of ancient place names or their translations in Spanish. As a mechanism for the transmission of social memory, toponyms can communicate information not only by the physical characteristics of certain spaces but also by the social consensus on particular attitudes toward such places.

In the final chapter, Jerry Moore offers a closing assessment of the different arguments presented by the individual contributors.

These chapters deal with theoretical and methodological concerns in anthropology and archaeology—including non-human and human agency, the development and maintenance of political and religious authority, ideology, cosmologies, and social memory—and their relationships with ritual action. By providing a diachronic and widely regional perspective on ritual in the Andes, this volume shows how ritual is both persistent and dynamic and also key in understanding many aspects of the formation, reproduction, and change of life in past Andean societies.