Article
Moche ceremonial
architecture as
thirdspace: The politics
of place-making in the
ancient Andes
Journal of Social Archaeology
12(1) 3–28
! The Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/1469605311426548
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Edward Swenson
Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, Canada
Abstract
Ceremonial architecture at the site of Huaca Colorada in the Jequetepeque Valley, Peru,
is analyzed as a ritually charged thirdspace, an interpretive move that illuminates both
the creative power of place and the cultural particulars of Moche identity politics and
ideological struggles. This perspective permits interpretation of how Moche monumental architecture was directly complicit in the construction of personhood, community, and
power specific to the Jequetepeque Valley during the Late Moche Period (AD 600–850).
Ultimately, the article demonstrates how the application of place-sensitive heuristics can
improve archaeological investigations of the role of ritual performance in the creation of
political subjectivities.
Keywords
architecture, heterotopia, Moche, place-making, political subjectivities, ritual, thirdspace
Why is it that time has tended to be treated as richness, fecundity, life, dialectic, while
in contrast space has been typically seen as the dead, the fixed, the undialetical, the
immobile. (Foucault, 1984: 70, cited in Soja, 1996: 15)
Corresponding author:
Edward Swenson, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, 19 Russell Street, Toronto, ON M5S
2S2, Canada
Email: [email protected]
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Journal of Social Archaeology 12(1)
Introduction
Inspired by practice theory and phenomenological perspectives, archaeologists
have made valuable contributions interpreting architecture as a powerful instrument of socialization (Moore, 2005; Tilley, 1994). Nevertheless, the politics of place
are rarely analyzed beyond questions of social reproduction, and the agency of the
built environment is often equated with the hegemonic naturalization of political
ideologies and regimes of practice. Therefore, semiotic interpretations of architecture, wherein space is understood as both constituting and reflecting underlying
social values, remain the usual starting point for the investigation of past
landscapes. To be sure, the constraints of the material record would seem to
preclude an archaeological analysis of past places as agents of personal and
social transformation or as arenas for the creation of novel meanings. I argue,
however, that archaeologists can overcome the limitations of perceiving architecture as an exclusively conservative political force by considering the ritual
construction of place within the framework of thirdspace theory as developed by
the humanist geographer Edward Soja (Blake, 2002; Soja, 1996). In fact, much
of the recent archaeological literature on landscape, memory, and place-making
has drawn inspiration from thirdspace models, and these approaches have laid
the ground work for a fruitful revaluation of the politics of space (Bowser
and Zedeño, 2009; Mills and Walker, 2008; Robin, 2002; Smith, 2003; Van
Dyke and Alcock, 2003). The application of thirdspace theory to the site
of Huaca Colorada in the Jequetepeque Valley reveals how Moche monumental
architecture played a creative role in the construction of personhood, community,
and power specific to the Jequetepeque Valley during the Late Moche Period
(AD 600–850).
Thirdspace theory and rituals of place-making
Following the humanist-Marxist geographer Henri Lefebvre, Soja dissects social
space into the three interconnected constructs of first, second, and thirdspace,
equivalent to Lefebvre’s breakdown of space as perceived, conceived, and lived
(Lefebvre, 1991; Soja, 1996). Conceived space, equated with Lefevbre’s concept
of the ‘representation of space’, refers to the built environment as planned,
engineered, idealized, and imposed, the purview of architects, city-planners,
politicians, and developers. In truth, archaeologists have been traditionally
concerned with Lefebvre’s ‘representations of space’, paying less attention to
the two other dimensions of his spatial trilectics. Perceived firstspace designates
the built world as embodied, modified, and experienced in practice, while
lived space refers to a critical understanding of place as engendered
through such perceptions and experiences (Casey, 1997, 1998; Cresswell, 2004:
38–9; Lefebvre, 1991; Massey, 1991: 28; Shields, 1999; Soja, 1996). It deserves
mention that Soja’s firstspace has been the subject of recent and insightful
investigations, especially among proponents of phenomenological approaches in
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Swenson
5
Great Britain (Barrett, 1993; Thomas, 2001; Tilley, 1994; see also Moore, 1996,
2005). However, in most instances, interpretations of how built environments prescribed movement, dictated inter-personal communication, induced affective
responses, and enhanced sensory perception affirm the authority of those who
built the monument – where an isomorphism between spaces as conceived and
perceived is often uncritically presumed (see critique by Brück, 2001, and M.
Johnson, 2006).
In the end, the third term of the spatial calculus, Lefebvre’s lived space, reformulated as thirdspace by Soja, demands archaeological consideration, an approach
that has the potential to significantly improve analysis of the politics of placemaking as a culturally varied phenomenon (Blake, 2002; Meskell, 2003; Robin
and Rothschild, 2002). Making sense of thirdspace in archaeological contexts
has the added value of enabling a transcendence of binary etiologies that pitch
the material (embodied) and ideational in dichotomized opposition (see Blake,
2002: 141; Robin, 2002: 249; Robin and Rothschild, 2002: 162). It thus provides
an opportunity to reconcile constructivist and phenomenological theoretical
frameworks. Although its definition varies according to the theorist in question,
lived space broadly refers to the critical consciousness of place through praxis, the
spaces where place-making is realized and subjectivity negotiated. In this formulation, place retains its definition as an historically contingent and meaningfully
constituted locale (Ashmore and Knapp, 1999; Basso, 1996; Cresswell, 1996: 157;
Staller, 2008; Van Dyke, 2003: 180; Zedeño and Bowser, 2009: 5–6). The creation
of thirdspace further implies the simultaneous refashioning of political subjects
(Casey, 1997, 1998; Merrifield, 1993; Smith, 2003; Swenson, 2011). Lived space,
then, refers to a place of intense introspection or embodiment, where space is
at once perceived and conceived, material and imagined (Soja, 1996: 34). It
is in such thirdspaces that cultural categories of place, time, and identity come
into sharp focus – where they are literally felt and consciously deconstructed
(Casey, 1998; Foucault, 1986; Hetherington, 1997; Lefebvre, 1991; Soja, 1996).
Lefebvre equated ‘lived space’ with what he called ‘spaces of representation’,
which he contrasted with the conceived ‘representations of space’ that constitute
the purview of most archaeological reconstructions. The former refers to how
experiences in space actually create and transform representations of place–
where new and possibly conflicting meanings, memories, and outlooks are
generated within particular spatial encounters. Therefore, in such exceptional
places, semiosis does not simply entail the imposition of a priori conceptual
schemes onto an inert built environment (see Lefebvre, 1991; Shields, 1999; Soja,
1996).
Indeed, thirdspaces are places of becoming and self-awareness, sites where
identities are forged and contested. Although most often analyzed as places of
resistance in critiques of capitalism and the post-colonial condition (shantytowns,
prisons, ruins, public spaces of protest; Dawdy, 2010; Shields, 1999; Soja, 1996),
the thirdspace analytic is also of heuristic value in understanding pre-modern
spatial politics (Lumsden, 2004; Meskell, 2003; Robin, 2002). In fact,
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Journal of Social Archaeology 12(1)
the literature on Lefebvrian thirdspace strikingly parallels studies on the intensely
political nature of ritual space, a correspondence that has remained largely undertheorized (but see Hetherington, 1997; Kapferer, 2004; Köpping, 1997; Shields,
1990). Similar to Soja’s thirdspace, symbolically charged ceremonial loci are
commonly interpreted as conflating the imaginative and real, the past and present,
the intimately personal and explicitly social. Of course, as a potentially liminal
nexus of metamorphosis, ambivalence, and heightened consciousness, ritually
constructed places constitute the ultimate thirdspaces, where subjects are
bodily and mentally reconfigured in ways that potentially alter both everyday
perceptions of space and the officially conceived ideological places of the presiding
social order (Smith, 1987; Turner, 1967). To be sure, the heightened aesthetics
and theatrics of ritual performance render it a powerful instrument of placemaking, communication, and efficacious transformation (Zedeño and Bowser,
2009: 8). It is within the sensual and inherently spatialized field of ceremonial
pageantry that social orders are reified in place, misrepresented, or even
transformed (Bell, 1997; Inomata and Coben, 2006; Köpping, 1997; Swenson,
2008a, 2011; Tilley and Bennett, 2001). Theorists emphasizing the prediscursive
and performative aspects of ritual experience have demonstrated that the political
significance of such acts is often plural and contested. Meaning is not simply a
priori and mechanically reproduced in ritual but is variably generated in the flow
of rite (Handelman and Lindquist, 2004; Humphrey and Laidlaw, 1994).
Therefore, ritualized acts often imbue place with thirdspace qualities, for
they demarcate performative arenas of intense, alternative experience, the meaning
of which is potentially fluid and variable. Although ceremonial architecture is generally interpreted as representing ‘controlled environments’ in the extreme (Smith,
1987), it is in precisely such places where identity, personhood, and one’s place
in the world fall under intensified scrutiny. As Humphrey and Laidlaw note (1994:
5), ‘the peculiar fascination of ritual lies in the fact that here, as in few other
human activities, the actors both are, and are not, the authors of their acts.’ The
same can be said for ceremonial spaces, which at once tightly prescribe behaviour
while promoting reflection on social conventions. Bell’s (1997: 81) interpretation
of the ritualization of practice as a form of ‘redemptive hegemony’, a construal
of reality that ‘enables actors some advantageous way of acting’, further emphasizes ritual’s fundamental role in articulating political subjectivities, especially in
promoting a particular attachment to place (Joyce et al., 2009; see also Cresswell,
2004: 39).
An examination of ritualized architectural renovation at the Late Moche site of
Huaca Colorada demonstrates that spatial practices did more than simply reflect
cultural values; they in fact played a critical role in inculcating Moche conceptions
of personhood, identity, cosmology, and temporality. Interpreting ritually killed
and rededicated ceremonial architecture as thirdspaces provides a more nuanced
understanding of how Moche subjectivity (self-identification and self-awareness as
Moche) was variably negotiated through architectural construction and the politics
of place-making.
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Huaca Colorada: A Late Moche center in the Jequetepeque
Valley
Moche designates a political and religious ideology propagated throughout the
desert north coast of Peru during the Andean Early Intermediate and Middle
Horizon Periods (AD 100–800) (Bawden, 1996; Quilter and Castillo, 2010;
Shimada, 1994; Uceda and Mujica, 1994, 2003). Archaeologists have argued that
Moche society was defined by unprecedented social stratification and formed one
of the earliest state polities in the Americas (Bawden, 1996; Billman, 2002;
Shimada, 1994). However, recent investigations have questioned the existence of
territorial Moche state(s), and it seems increasingly apparent that Moche political
organization varied considerably from region to region (Castillo and Donnan,
1994; Quilter, 2002; Quilter and Castillo, 2010). In fact, it most likely never constituted a politically integrated social phenomenon (for a recent summary of
Moche archaeology see Quilter and Castillo, 2010).
The Moche presence in the Jequetepeque Valley diverged notably from valleys
to the north and south, and political decentralization and internecine conflict
characterized the region in the Late Moche Period (AD 650–850) (Castillo, 2010;
Dillehay, 2001; Dillehay et al., 2009; Swenson, 2007). Unlike the Moche
and Lambayeque Valleys, a significant number of large ceremonial centers proliferated in Jequetepeque, including the famous priestess center of San José de
Moro (Castillo, 2001, 2010; Castillo and Donnan, 1994; Dillehay et al., 2009)
(Figure 1). Huaca Colorada, the subject of this article, is the largest Late
Moche site recorded in the southern extreme of the valley (Swenson et al., 2010,
2011). Rural population also increased significantly in Jequetepeque during
the Late Moche Period, and numerous sites with ceremonial architecture
were built throughout the region (Castillo, 2010; Dillehay, 2001, Dillehay et al.,
2009; Swenson, 2006, 2008b). Many of the Late Moche settlements were
fortified, but Huaca Colorada and San José de Moro are anomalous for
their open location and lack of fortifications (Castillo, 2001, 2010;
Swenson et al., 2010). The sheer variety of settlement types points to political devolution and internal conflict. However, it does not necessarily indicate rigid
balkanization; rather, there seems to have been a social value placed on seasonal
transhumance and transient settlement between different sites (Swenson et al.,
2011).
The ceremonial center of Huaca Colorada is situated in a stretch of dunes on the
Pampa de Mojucape on the southern bank of the Jequetepeque River (Figure 1).
This site was occupied during the Late Moche Period (AD 600–850), as confirmed
by ceramic and radiometric analysis (Swenson et al., 2010, 2011). Huaca Colorada
occupies an area of approximately 24 hectares and is dominated by an elongated
platform built on a modified hill of dune sand. This central construction measures
390 m by 140 m and rises 20 m at its central highest point (Figure 2). This ample
elevation is differentiated into three principal sectors which delimit Huaca
Colorada’s principal ceremonial and manufacturing/residential areas (Figure 2).
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Journal of Social Archaeology 12(1)
Figure 1. Map of the Jequetepeque Valley illustrating the location of Huaca Colorada.
Recent excavations of the central summit of the principal huaca (Sector B) have
exposed a network of superimposed walls delineating chambers, corridors, plugged
doorways, and production locales that formed part of a high-status residence and
ritual arena (see Swenson et al., 2010, 2011) (Figure 2). The excavations revealed
that the highest landing of the site was associated with elite authority figures who
embraced Moche religious and political values, as exemplified by murals, ritual
platforms, and ceramic iconography, including the discovery of Moche V and
Cajamarca fineline vessels. These elaborate constructions witnessed intense occupation and multiple phases of renovation, some of which led to the complete
reconfiguration of living quarters and ceremonial space. The notable permanence
and deep stratigraphy of the monumental residence contrast with both the site’s
lower domestic sectors and the numerous agricultural hamlets spread throughout
the valley (Dillehay et al., 2009).
The high-status association of the multi-functional constructions on the summit
of the huaca seems beyond doubt. More fineline pottery and copper items were
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Swenson
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Figure 2. Topographic map of Huaca Colorada. The location of the main ceremonial chamber
within the monumental core of Sector B is indicated along with the lower domestic and
copper production zones of Sectors A and C.
recovered from Huaca Colorada than all the excavations combined of rural Moche
sites with ceremonial architecture in the region (Swenson et al., 2010) (Figure 3).
The high concentration of decorated feasting jars, redolent with Moche religious
and political symbolism, reveals that Huaca Colorada affiliates trafficked in
the common currency of religious representation and social interchange defining
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Journal of Social Archaeology 12(1)
Figure 3. Moche V fineline ceramics and feasting jars excavated from the ceremonial nucleus
of Sector B at Huaca Colorada, and highland-derived Cajamarca plates (lower two rows)
recovered from a midden adjacent to the main ceremonial precinct of the site.
the Late Moche Period (Figure 3). The ceramic database demonstrates that feasting
formed an important component of the community’s political economy and was a
prime vehicle of ritual intercession and social reproduction. As suggested by Moche
iconographic depictions, the five altar-like platforms excavated in Sector B appear
to have functioned as stages for the presentation and consumption of comestibles
including corn beer (Wiersema, 2010).
It deserves mention that the lower sectors of the mound, to the north (Sector A)
and south (Sector C) of the principal ceremonial complex, consisted of expansive
residential areas where copper objects were smelted from prills (droplets of metal
lodged in vitrified slag) and fashioned into finished metal implements (Figure 2).
Our preliminary excavations in Sectors A and C have shown that occupation
was relatively short-lived, episodic, and associated with non-elite populations.
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In contrast to the monumental constructions in Sector B, no more than three to
four floors were found in this area. Postholes, hearths, copper pins, spindle whorls,
and figurines were recovered from house foundations in this residential zone. It
remains unclear whether metallurgical production was centralized and under the
supervision of the Huaca Colorada elite. Our preliminary evidence suggests that it
may have been embedded within household contexts; family units appear to have
exercised control over their means of production but possibly offered tribute of
finished copper products to the presiding lords residing in the elevated sector of the
site. Perhaps this exchange was mediated by feasting ceremonies and other rituals.
In fact, it is likely that communities congregated at the huaca during certain periods of the year in order to fulfill tribute obligations and partake in religious festivals. Peripatetic and seasonal occupation would account for the shifting and
overlapping floor constructions identified throughout the site’s expansive domestic
zones.
The creation of place through the sacrifice of space at Huaca
Colorada
Early in the use-history of the site, the ceremonial focus of the huaca was comprised of a 9 m by 11.9 m chamber located in the central-western zone of the monumental nucleus of Sector B (Figures 2 and 4) (Swenson et al., 2011). This chamber
is dominated by an extraordinarily preserved platform located in the south-central
quadrant of the precinct (Figures 4 and 5). In fact, this type of dais is frequently
portrayed in Moche ceramic iconography (Figure 5). The stucco columns no doubt
supported a gabled roof in association with the three aligned posts identified in
front of the platform to the north. This architectural construction is commonly
associated with a number of key ritual practices in Moche iconography, including
the presentation of captives, the sacrifice of warriors, and the presentation of the
goblet to the Warrior Priest (see Wiersema, 2010: 175–82). Daises of this kind also
staged feasting events involving the presentation of ceramic vessels (Figure 5). The
focal point of the open ceremonial chamber is unquestionably the thrice-renovated
platform. A worn step was discovered aligned with the central axis of this dais more
than 4 m to the south, and individuals clearly followed prescribed routes of movement within the chamber, as indicated by foot-wear on the thresholds of doorways
leading into the precinct from the west (Figures 4 and 6). The human and animal
offerings discovered in front of the platform corroborate the ritual and sacrificial
significance of the platform, while the access patterns indicate that movement
revolved around this central dais (Swenson et al., 2011).
Our excavations reveal that Sector B did not serve as a communal burial ground,
nor was it ever converted into an elite tomb. Rather, the chamber was continually
maintained to orchestrate elaborate rites centered on presentation, procession,
feasting, and sacrifice (Swenson et al., 2011). The discovery of an extensive
midden immediately west of the ceremonial chamber also indicates that exclusive
and elaborate feasts were staged in the precinct. A high quantity of kaolin
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Journal of Social Archaeology 12(1)
Figure 4. Plan of the main ceremonial precinct at Huaca Colorada illustrating the location of
the columned platform, ritual offerings, central step (Feature 30), worn floor thresholds, and
blocked doorways.
Cajamarca plates was recovered from this midden, more than from any other
context at the site, and rare shellfish and bones of the best cuts of llama meat
were also dumped here in large concentrations (Figure 3). Unlike the surrounding
domestic zones, the highland Cajamarca vessels procured from the midden greatly
outnumbered Moche fineline ceramics. Therefore, it is evident that diacritical
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Figure 5. (a) Photographs of the adobe platform with columns dominating the main ceremonial chamber at Huaca Colorada. The lower picture demonstrates the remarkable preservation
of the stucco columns, eventually removed for curation by the excavation team. The Moche
fineline depiction of a roofed dais closely resembles the excavated platform in terms of form,
scale, and post emplacements (redrawn from Donnan, 1978: Fig. 104). (b) The first of two
human offerings excavated north of the platform of the ceremonial chamber which were discovered in association with a dog offering and a cache of copper prills.
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Journal of Social Archaeology 12(1)
Figure 6. Sacrificial victim thrown into the construction fill of the ceremonial chamber; worn
central step and floor thresholds within the same precinct (left-hand column); and examples of
ritually terminated platforms discovered outside this principal chamber (right-hand column).
feasts, showcasing elite privilege, were orchestrated within the confines of the ceremonial precinct, while more inclusive patron-client festivals relied on traditional
Moche face-jars and fineline vessels (which were more common in the lower domestic areas).
One of the most remarkable discoveries of our recent excavations is the systematic renovation of the chamber and surrounding ritual structures. Our analysis
demonstrates that renovation was conceived as an inherently religious act.
The ‘curatorial’ and even ‘offertory’ nature of reconstruction is exemplified by
the fastidious interment of the main platform of the chamber in tons of sand,
resulting in the remarkable preservation of its stucco columns that survived to
more than 1 m in height (Figure 5). Aligned burn marks fronting the platform
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Swenson
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and the emplacement of human and animal offerings were also associated with the
ritual termination and rededication of this ceremonial space (Figure 5).
Comparable architectural practices have been documented at other centers including Huacas de Moche (Uceda, 2001; Uceda and Mujica, 1994, 2003), and the
sacrificial killing of space appears to have been widespread in the Moche world
as it was elsewhere in the Americas (see Mock, 1998). In fact, four additional
platforms were discovered surrounding the main chamber, and they were constructed after the interment of the larger precinct. The daises in question were
also ritually decommissioned and painstakingly sealed under hard floors or
buried under thick deposits of sand fill (Figure 6).
The ritual sacrifice and renovation of ceremonial architecture at Huaca
Colorada affirm basic principles of Moche religious cosmology, a worldview
grounded in a particular sacrificial ontology and dialectical conception of cosmic
process and social order (see Swenson, 2003). As has been well documented, Moche
political theology was defined by cycles of warfare, prisoner capture, and human
sacrifice that likely conformed to poorly understood cosmogonic myths and ideologies of legitimate religious authority and social reproduction (Alva and Donnan,
1993; Bourget, 2006; Donnan, 1978, 2001; Swenson, 2003). Adherents of Moche
religious ideology perceived death as a prerequisite of life and regeneration, if not
of the overall movement of time. Ritually encapsulated destruction reciprocally
enabled creation and was thus generative of life, cosmos, time, authority, and
ultimately place itself. This sacrificial ontology was grounded in a dialectical understanding of life (process) propelled by consumptive-reproductive acts (analogous to
alimentary consumption integral to nourishment and growth) (see Sillar, 2004,
2009; Swenson, 2003; Weismantel, 2004). Thus, death was not understood as an
end but as the ultimate nexus of transformation and becoming.
It is of particular significance that the history of architectural renovation and
human sacrifice at Huaca Colorada directly paralleled and symbolically reinforced
two of the most important activities defining the site’s political economy – commensal rites and copper artisanry. In fact, Huaca Colorada appears to have been
the largest metallurgical center in the Jequetepeque Valley (Swenson et al., 2010,
2011). Symbolic associations are commonly made between technological transformation of objects and the liminal metamorphosis of people engineered in rites of
passage and violent ritual alterations. The mining of ore, the smelting of copper,
the crushing of prills, the re-melting of the finer metal and its subsequent annealing
constitute a technical sequence directly analogous to the ritual re-formation of
initiates, celebrants, and even sacrificial victims. In many cultures, metallurgy is
closely associated with magic, fertility, sexual reproduction, and political power,
given its association with destructive re-creation (Brück, 2006; Blakely, 2006;
Herbert, 1993). Maize was also harvested (sacrificed), milled, and fermented at
Huaca Colorada to produce chicha (corn beer), the traditional catalyst of power
relations and social integration in the ancient Andes. Ritualized architectural renovation at Huaca Colorada thus mirrored both the destructive-recreation of ore
into metal and the transubstantiation of maize into corn beer. Ceremonial precincts
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Journal of Social Archaeology 12(1)
and their platforms were carefully decommissioned and buried as a prerequisite to
the construction (‘creation’, ‘birth’, etc.) of new platform-complexes and associated
features (Figures 5 and 6). Indeed, stratigraphic analysis indicates that no more
than one or possibly two platforms were in use at any given occupation phase
(Swenson et al., 2011). At the same time, the renovations directly parallel the sacrifice of human victims, whose death likely served to ensure rebirth and the continuation of life. In fact, the burials of two adolescent women, one with the remains
of a rope tied around her neck, coincided directly with the ritual termination of the
main platform of the principal ceremonial precinct (Figures 4 and 5). The lower
step of the pillared dais was carefully buried under the plaster flooring that capped
the burials of the two sacrifices. Offerings of a guinea pig and a dog were also
deposited on the surface of this same termination floor (Figure 5). A cache of
copper prills, placed several meters to the east of the sacrifices, may have been
envisioned as an analogous (homologous) offering (Figures 4 and 5). Both the
young women and the prills could have been perceived as occupying a similar
stage in the life cycle – not yet initiated into full adulthood or initiated into a
final metal implement. It deserves mention that a later dais, constructed to the
south of the main chamber after its ritual closure, was also associated with three
human offerings (Swenson et al., 2010). Moreover, additional female sacrifices were
discovered incorporated in construction fill associated with earlier reductions of the
main chamber prior to its termination (Figure 6). Perhaps major junctures in the
production and festive cycle coincided with the literal sacrifice and renovation
(rebirth) of sacred space at Huaca Colorada, just as a new harvest of maize was
processed into beer for fermentation. Indeed, the built environment was probably
imbued with agency and personhood in the same manner as humans, copper, and
other artifacts (Brück, 2006; Swenson and Warner, 2010).
In considering the striking sacrificial logic underlying a diverse suite of social
practices at Huaca Colorada, it is worth noting that a relational as opposed to
Cartesian ontology underwrote the perceptions and worldviews of many PreColumbian South American cultures (Alberti and Bray, 2009; Viveiros de
Castro, 2004). In such cultural schemas, conceptions of personhood and agency
were not predicated on the belief in finite, inviolable individuals or in absolute
distinctions between objectified matter and rationally privileged human subjects.
Rather, a continuum of relational interdependencies inextricably linked humans
with an animated and empowered material world (Bray, 2009; Taylor, 1974–6;
Weismantel, 2004). Indeed, interpreting Huaca Colorada as a distinctive thirdspace
specific to the Moche world must take into account this underlying relational and
sacrificial ontology; imbued with agency and even personhood, sacred space
demanded incorporation into the sacrificial cycle.
Interpreting Huaca Colorada as thirdspace
In light of the above discussion, it would appear that the sacrifice and re-consecration of architectural space could simply be read as reflecting the underlying values
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Swenson
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of Moche religious culture (if not ontology). In other words, interpretations of
Moche ‘representations of space’ (secondspace) as isomorphic with its perception
(firstspace) would fully account for the symbolism and experience of the architectural complex. However, re-examining the ceremonial nucleus of the huaca within
the framework of thirdspace theory brings into sharp relief how the architecture
itself actively inscribed subjectivities and social differences specific to Moche culture in the Jequetepeque Valley. That is to say, the creation of place, as consummated through ritual performance and repeated architectural renovation, was
tantamount to the creation and re-creation of subjectivities. Indeed, the sacrifice
of space rendered physically real the abstract, dialectical understandings of time,
life, society, and even personhood peculiar to the Moche. It could even be argued
that for many of the artisans, part-time residents, and even elites of Huaca
Colorada, a critical consciousness of such conceptions was only fully realized
through embodied acts of place-making.
Huaca Colorada’s monumental core was a literally enlivened thirdspace, a place
both real and imagined, and one that no doubt induced heightened awareness of
what it meant to be Moche or at least engage with a locale defined by Moche
religious values and political ideals (see Dawdy, 2010: 773). Just as Huaca
Colorada’s built environment was in a state of constant flux and becoming, individuals moving through its precincts or involved in ritual rebuilding were no doubt
transformed in mind and body by the kinetic power of the space in question. In
light of the discussion of the relational ontology of Moche culture, the dialectical
interdependence of space and people should be conceived not solely as an etic
theoretical problem but as inherent to Moche ideologies of place and architecture.
Similar to the religious objectives of human sacrifice, ritualized architectural construction appears to have been envisioned as a tool of social engineering, an attempt
to control people, their lifecycles, and the unfolding of time itself. Indeed, time and
society were given a concrete spatial form in the cyclical reconstructions of the site’s
monumental nucleus.
As a direct materialization of Moche conceptions of temporality (Ingold, 2000),
the multiple rebuilding phases also encapsulated the metamorphic and liminal
power of Huaca Colorada’s ceremonial architecture. As intimated above, the reification of liminal space-time likely resonated with the transformative magic of
copper production and with the cyclical round of religious feasts (perhaps centered
on initiation ceremonies) that cemented inter-subjective social dependencies. It also
reinforced social constructions of Moche personhood as fluidly integrated with
animated objects and landscapes. In this light, the phenomenological power of
the huaca to reshape identity and personhood comes into clearer focus.
Peregrinations to the desert site, enduring the heat of the furnace and the toxicity
of its smoke, and becoming skilled in the art of melting, annealing, and other
techniques may have been experienced as a ritual of bodily transformation paralleling the trajectory of architectural renovation and the copper production process
itself. A place where ore was transubstantiated into finished metal implements, the
liminal efficacy of the huaca was further reinforced as a space of becoming where
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Journal of Social Archaeology 12(1)
bodies, buildings, objects, and political subjectivities were jointly deconstructed
and recreated. Participation in ritual events and copper production possibly
forged a sense of community identity among a diverse number of itinerant artisans
and rural pilgrims, fostering a spirit of inclusion in the cosmological processes that
sustained life and society in the Moche world.
In fact, it seems significant that artistically enhanced spaces and offeratory
caches were confined to liminal spaces of movement and transition at
Huaca Colorada, most notably doorways and corridors (Swenson et al., 2011)
(Figure 7). For instance, the skull of a sea lion was discovered under the ramp
of a platform constructed east of the main ceremonial precinct. Etchings of warrior
figures, litter bearers, and other figures on all five of the plugged doorways (i.e.
liminal thresholds) of the main chamber provide further examples of the symbolic
elaboration of transitional spaces at the site (Figure 7). The placement of sacrifices
in front of the principal platform and in the chamber’s construction fill may have
conveyed similar meanings (Figures 4 and 6). Therefore, the peculiar offertory and
aesthetic nexus, apparently celebrating the liminal, suggests that rituals of joint
architectural and subject (bodily) re-formation united the varied political and religious rites orchestrated at Huaca Colorada.
Of course, differential access to certain sectors of the huaca could have served to
communicate ‘one’s place’ in the social hierarchy of the site, further attesting to
the structure’s complicity in articulating status distinctions and political identities
(Moore, 1996; Smith, 1987). However, Lefebvrian conceptions of lived space
Figure 7. (a) Graffiti and informal paintings depicting litter bearers and warriors exposed on
door plugs and corridors at Huaca Colorada. The lower photograph is of a sea lion skull
buried below a ramp of a later platform located east of the main ceremonial chamber. (b)
Graffiti of a bird, running figures, maritime creatures and architectural and landscape scenes
etched on walls of Sector B.
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Swenson
19
(spaces of representation) stress that new meanings and often unorthodox perceptions of the socio-spatial order can be engendered in charged thirdspaces such as
Huaca Colorada’s living monumental core. It is intriguing, for instance, that the
pronounced foot-wear on the thresholds of the main doorways into the ceremonial
precinct suggests that a considerable number of individuals walked into and
through the imposing chamber (Figure 6). Certainly, the concentration of fine
Cajamarca sherds in the midden adjacent to the main precinct would indicate
that the ritual nucleus of the site was an exclusive space (Swenson et al., 2011).
However, it cannot be discounted that various artisans and other community members who resided in the lower domestic zones were periodically permitted access to
the chamber, perhaps to be entertained by high-status officials or religious
specialists.
In fact, the numerous graffiti and informal murals adorning the walls of the
main chamber and neighboring rooms demonstrate that the monumental sector
was at times remarkably open and accessible. Most of the instances of graffiti
appear to have been executed during the final use-phases of the ceremonial chamber. They may even have been drawn as part of the decommissioning rite prior to
the ritual closure of this precinct dominated by the pillared platform. The depictions consist of crudely rendered warriors, multiple litter bearers carrying decapitated heads, birds, lizards, landscapes, fishing and maritime scenes, boats, and
running figures (Figure 7). Many of the representations resonate with Moche religious themes centered on warfare and death, and the ritual context of their execution seems probable, as has been documented in other Pre-Columbian ceremonial
sites, including most notably, Tikal (see Haviland and Haviland, 1995). Therefore,
the informal sketchings depart from contemporary connotations of graffiti as irreverent, subversive, or transgressive. Nevertheless, the elites of Huaca Colorada
clearly did not commission the artwork as integral to the overall architectural
design and aesthetic plan of the monument, and the representations are haphazardly applied on the walls and blocked entrances of the main complex. Instead,
individuals appear to have informally commemorated ritual activities (such as
decommissioning rites) staged within the ample ceremonial chamber. The figures
express movement and transience, while their hurried applications are equally
expressive of the momentary passage of the artists themselves, possibly analogous
to religious tourists wishing to forever memorialize their fleeting encounters with
the edifice. The etchings are all the more remarkable, for they demonstrate that the
huaca continued to be viewed (felt) as a charged and possibly contested thirdspace;
the buildings appear to have evoked strong but likely conflicting memories, emotions, and political stances. Indeed, it is difficult to reconcile the staging of formal
feasting events showcasing exclusive serving-ware as having occurred in tandem
with the crude etchings of the graffiti. To be sure, the stratigraphic deposition of the
rich middens discovered adjacent to the temple indicates that the chamber served as
a space of exclusive commensal exchanges prior to its reduction and desecration
(re-consecration?) with graffiti. The actual engraving of roofs, structures, and other
architectural elements identified on the northern and eastern walls of the main
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Journal of Social Archaeology 12(1)
precinct confirms beyond a doubt that the huaca stimulated a critical consciousness
of place – a quintessential thirdspace of becoming and introspection enabled by the
intimate experience of the ceremonial chamber (Figure 7). The vicissitudes of place
at Huaca Colorada are thus remarkably palpable in the stratigraphy of the site’s
monumental core; as mentioned, the graffiti were etched on the final plasterings of
late walls and door-plugs built to sacrificially decommission the larger ceremonial
space. This diachronic shift points to possible contradictions between ideologically
mandated ‘representations of space’ (conceived space) and lived spatial practices
and perceptions. The complex thirdspace qualities of Huaca Colorada are thus
further demonstrated by changing rituals of place-making at the site, rites that
may have subverted the original political authority of the settlement.
Discussion
The interpretation of Huaca Colorada as thirdspace raises important theoretical
issues for the archaeological analysis of landscape in general and ceremonial architecture in particular. The analysis affirms that place-sensitive heuristics are better
suited to illuminate the historical particulars of identity politics and power relations
than taken-for-granted, ‘metahistorical’ models, including most notably chiefdom
and state (Smith, 2003; see also Casey, 1997; Pauketat, 2007; Pauketat and Alt,
2005). In other words, analyzing Huaca Colorada as exhibiting thirdspace qualities
intends to historicize and humanize past societies in a manner that abstract institutional generalizations fail to accomplish. The aforementioned tropes of state and
chiefdom have wrought interpretive violence on archaeological cultures precisely
given their reductive placelessness and elision of the diversity of past political formations as mediated by culturally specific regimes of spatial production (see Smith,
2003; Pauketat, 2007).
One might still object that little is gained in employing the thirdspace heuristic as
more conventional constructs, such as ceremonial or exemplary center, convey
similar meanings. Indeed, useful terms paralleling the thirdspace analytic have
been proposed by archaeologists, including Smith’s evocative space, Bender’s contested landscapes, Harris and Sørensen’s affective field, and various applications of
Benjamin’s dialectical images or Foucault’s notion of heterotopia (see Bender,
2001; Dawdy, 2010; Harris and Sørensen, 2010; Joyce et al., 2009; Samuels,
2010; Smith, 2003: 73, 165–9). These approaches have attempted to reconcile
phenomenological perspectives emphasizing subjective experience in space with
constructivist and critical Marxist frameworks which recognize that power is
exercised through historically contingent acts of place-making (Samuels, 2010:
70). Nevertheless, when narrowly defined or inattentive to the particularities of
context, ‘place-sensitive’ heuristics can also lead one astray. For instance,
Foucault’s heterotopia was incompletely sketched in short lectures, and it is an
interpretive category not without problems and internal contradictions (see P.
Johnson, 2006; Samuels, 2010; Soja, 1996). Commonly defined as places removed
from the normative spatial and temporal rhythms of daily life, heterotopias have
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Swenson
21
also been interpreted as condensing, reflecting, or refracting many of the other
places constituting a larger community (Foucault, 1986). Huaca Colorada best
fits Foucault’s subcategory of a ‘crisis heterotopia’, a quintessential place of
otherness (alterity) as defined by its association with rites of initiation and religious
transformation, and, for Foucault, the temple represented an exemplar of this type.
As Samuels notes, ‘Temples make appealing heterotopia. . . delineating sacred from
profane space to act as foci around which the social and spiritual world is ordered,
‘‘a place in which things were juxtaposed in such a way as to prompt reflection on
the nature of other places’’ Owens (2002: 304)’ (Samuels, 2010: 67). On the other
hand, Huaca Colorada obviously departs from the ‘de-centered anti-sites’ of prisons, brothels, or asylums, the other places of marginalization and deviance, which
at once reaffirm but inevitably distort and disrupt the utopian norms of modernist
societies. Heterotopic spaces have been identified by historical archaeologists as
just such places of profound alterity (Lippert, 2006; Samuels, 2010), while others
have stressed heterotopias as ‘a combination of different places as though they were
one’ (Kahn, 1995: 324), a conflation of often incommensurate and contradictory
places and times. These two different but related conceptualizations do not adequately characterize Huaca Colorada’s sacred geography. If the many agricultural
hamlets scattered throughout the valley are accepted as the Jequetepeque place of
the normative, then perhaps Huaca Colorada was conceived as fundamentally
other or different. However, such a viewpoint likely betrays ethnocentric bias, as
does the assumption that temples universally juxtapose the sacred and profane.
Ultimately, Huaca Colorada is more effectively analyzed as heterotopic strictly
in the sense of bringing into high relief the spaces and times of the Moche world, an
exceptional place ‘generating new kinds of meaning rather than foreclosing them’
(Samuels, 2010: 68). This definition returns us to the heuristically safer framework
of thirdspace theory, one that has clear advantages over traditional exemplary
center models or phenomenological approaches which narrowly focus on the
conceived and perceived dimensions of space – as if they were one and the same.
Indeed, just as ritual experience has been described as providing a space and time
for ‘meta social-commentary’, heterotopias represent materializations of the potentially utopic or dystopic, whereby individuals become raptly and critically attuned
to the spatial, temporal, and material realities of social existence. Joyce and
colleagues (2009: 70) relate this understanding of heterotopia to Margaret
Rodman’s notion of ‘multilocality’. This perspective privileges the cultural
embeddedness of power relations as realized in spatial production while recognizing that perceptions of place would have varied according to the subjective stance
and political sympathies of particular individuals. For the elites or full-time
artisans of Huaca Colorada, the site may very well have been perceived as a
cosmic-political center, while for rural pilgrims, its potency was perhaps felt in
terms of its peripheral location, a sacred place of personal and spiritual metamorphosis situated in the desert margins far from their centered world of agricultural
fields and hamlets. Indeed, as a liminal space of becoming and ‘deconstructive
reconstruction’, Huaca Colorada was a nexus of fundamental reordering – and
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Journal of Social Archaeology 12(1)
liminal space or times powerfully engender transformation through the juxtaposition and reconciliation of contradictory entities, including different people and
their associated places (Hetherington, 1997). The structural changes in the monument through time, as exemplified by the haphazard application of graffiti,
demonstrate that Huaca Colorada was an extraordinary and changing political
space of heightened imagination and creative remembering, a place generating
intense meanings and probably diverse social identities. The conversion of the
ritual chamber from an exclusive feasting hall into an apparently open and accessible space of ritual tourism and artistic self-expression reveals that the huaca
persistently evoked reflection on self, identity, cosmos, and perhaps what it
meant to be Moche in Middle Horizon Jequetepeque.
The point of this essay, then, was not to discover some essentialized thirdspace
in the Moche past. Rather, the playing off of such models of space against the hard
constraints of the material record (Shanks and Tilley, 1982) was intended to
approximate the realities of life, society, and ritual experience at Huaca
Colorada. To reiterate, heuristics grounded in the historical vagaries of place
and thus sensitive to cultural differences offer a much more powerful and compelling basis for generalization and comparison than do more popular categories
predicated on ‘metahistorical’ criteria (Smith, 2003). Although a problematic
term, even the concept of heterotopia ‘opens up productive questions and lines
of inquiry for archaeological research’ of past landscapes (Samuels, 2010: 63). In
the end, considering the peculiar thirdspace qualities of Huaca Colorada reveals the
danger of reducing the meaning and functions of the settlement to a mere ‘center’,
(as a symbolic proxy of a chieftaincy, for instance). Huaca Colorada may very well
have served as the hub of a political and religious community, but its spatial
configuration, practices, and institutions seem to have diverged remarkably from
other ‘centers’ in the valley (Castillo, 2010). As mentioned earlier, peripatetic movement of people appears to have underwritten the regional economy and fluid community structures of the region. Indeed, the polycentric settlement system does not
suggest a clear-cut hierarchy of sites and political institutions but points to alternative ‘constructions’ of place and politics specific to Moche Jequetepeque
(Swenson, 2006, 2007, 2008b).
Conclusion
To conclude, examining Huaca Colorada in the framework of thirdspace theory
permits a more nuanced appreciation of how architectural spaces were implicated
in the reproduction and transformation of structures of practice specific to Moche
communities in the Jequetepeque Valley. The analysis further attempted to demonstrate how archaeologists might be in a position to interpret the complex agency
of built environments beyond one-sided arguments positing their instrumental role
in legitimating dominant ideologies or in colonizing bodies and minds. Indeed,
thirdspace theory recognizes the inherently dialectical interchange of peoples
and places; the experience of extraordinary places such as Huaca Colorada
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Swenson
23
had the potential to inculcate, reify, and even transform taken-for-granted cultural
schemas and political relationships. That is to say, thirdspaces such as Huaca
Colorada were prime sites where both subjection (domination, exploitation) was
most likely realized and subjectivities (self-knowledge and self-asserted identities)
articulated and contested, thus encompassing Foucault’s famed double meaning of
the word ‘subject’ (Foucault, 1982; Smith, 2004).
Finally, an important objective of the article is to encourage archaeologists to
scrutinize the spatial specificity of ritual performance. In truth, the efficacy of ritual
rests in its creation of special places (thirdspaces), and ceremonial events are devoid
of meaning if divorced from their spatial and material contexts (Inomata and
Coben, 2006; Moore, 2005; Swenson, 2008a; Van Dyke, 2003). In fact, anthropologists increasingly interpret ritual performance as not just ideology legitimizing
structure but as fundamental to the dynamics of structuration itself (Bell, 1997;
Kapferer, 2004: 50; Swenson, 2010, 2011; Turner, 1967), an appropriate metaphor
in deciphering the intersection of place-making and ritual performance. In other
words, ritual does much more than communicate underlying social relations; it is
instrumental to their production. Indeed, archaeologists must be sensitive to how
ritual as a transformative and embodied experience actively shaped political dispositions, a process actualized most forcefully through the construction and experience of cultural landscapes.
Acknowledgements
I wish to express my sincere thanks to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
of Canada, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, and the University of Toronto for
their generous financial support of my research at Huaca Colorada. I also would like to
thank my co-directors John Warner and Jorge Chiguala for their many years of support.
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Author Biography
Edward Swenson is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of
Toronto. He is currently conducting archaeological field work at the Moche center
of Huaca Colorada in northern Peru. Swenson’s theoretical interests include the
pre-industrial city, violence and subject formation, the archaeology of ritual, and
the politics of landscape and social memory.
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