ANTH574 Ideology, Ritual, And Pilgrimage in Archaeology

IDEOLOGY, RITUAL, AND PILGRIMAGE IN ARCHAEOLOGY

James A. DavenportANTH574: The History and Theory of Archaeology

December 14th, 2011

DO NOT CITE IN ANY CONTEXT WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR

James A. Davenport, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131 ([email protected])

Ideology is elusive. It is elusive to archaeologists, especially those that study societies

that do not have developed writing systems. While physical remains of things like craft

production and architecture are often readily available, the belief systems that peoples of the past

held and lived by remain far more difficult to detect. Nonetheless, it can often be one of the most

important facets of prehistoric societies, and in many cases can be the cause for why a ceramic is

decorated in a certain manner, or why a structure is laid out the way it is. Even through today

ideology remains an important part of society as a “basis for intense solidarities, interwoven

with, and often fundamental to, national and ethnic identities” (Edwards 2005:110), and it cannot

remain unaddressed in archaeological investigations. Indeed, religion is “implicated in and

intimately connected with some of the most pressing issues that confront the world” (Whitley

and Hays-Gilpin 2008:12), both presently and in the past. To ignore ideology in research is to

deny oneself a more complete picture of a society, and though it is often abstruse in the

archaeological record, the fact remains that it was both extant and important to prehistoric

peoples.

One interesting facet of ideology is pilgrimage. Pilgrimage touches upon matters of

ideology, population movement, and long-distance exchange. Because of its multi-faceted nature

and its presence in many societies at varying time periods around the world, pilgrimage has

become a topic of interest among archaeologists studying ideology. This paper will examine the

theoretical background used in addressing the topic of ideology, and more specifically,

pilgrimage, in archaeological research, paying particular attention to Andean South America,

where there has been a considerable amount of research and discussion of these topics.

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ADDRESSING IDEOLOGY IN ARCHAEOLOGY

Many archaeologists are reluctant to address ideology. Its transient and unverifiable

nature make it hard to address within the realm of processual or scientific approaches. John E.

Robb (1998) is quick to point out though that processualists do not avoid symbols, but rather

view symbols as “representing social realities, while postprocessualists and other structuralism-

influenced archaeologists generally view symbols as constituting social realities” (Robb 1998:

332). Christopher Hawkes (1954) devised a four-tiered system of archaeological inference that

was held in high regard in the field for a long time due to its logical nature, and came to be

known as the “ladder of inference” (Robb 1998:330). Hawkes believes that archaeological

phenomena can be ranked in order of easiest to infer to most obscure: 1) techniques for the

production of archaeological phenomena; 2) the subsistence economics of human groups; social

and political institutions of groups; and 4) religious institutions and spiritual life of groups

(Hawkes 1954:161-162). While Hawkes recognizes that religious institutions and spiritual life

exist in the archaeological record, he deems the identification of these phenomena too difficult to

be discussed with any certainty and should not be attempted (Hawkes 1954:162). Hawkes’s

“ladder of inference” ultimately sets the framework for verifiable scientific approaches to

archaeology, and he laments about archaeological phenomena: “the more human, the less

intelligible” (Hawkes 1954:162).

John Robb (1998) has more recently addressed Hawkes’s “ladder of inference” and the

study of symbols in archaeology. He has criticized the reduction of signs or symbols as purely

material and the forced dichotomy between “a visible, tangible material world and invisible ideas

and feelings, between ‘hard’ scientific approaches and ‘soft humanistic approaches, and between

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‘objective’ knowledge and ‘subjective’ opinion” (Robb 1998:330). He believes that there is a

double standard present between symbolic and economic archaeologies. The division of

archaeology into categories of material and symbolic is detrimental to the understanding of

prehistoric society, and denies that economy can be fundamentally cultural, and that ideas are

embodied in material practices (Robb 1998:331). Indeed, ideology can be seen as a “central

element of a cultural system” and “a source of social power” (DeMarrais et. al. 1996:15). Robb

further gives an example of this double standard to further illustrate his point:

If we understand how a prehistoric rock carving was made technologically without

knowing why it was made culturally, the effort is considered a failure and symbolic

archaeology is pronounced impossible. But if we understand how prehistoric people

produced their food technologically without knowing the cultural reasons why they

produced what and how much they did in the way they did, the effort is considered a

successful demonstration of economic archaeology; never mind that we have reduced a

complex, value-laden set of social relations to a simple faunal inference [Robb

1998:331].

In this reevaluation of the role of symbols in archaeology, symbols become inseparable from

economic and material use, and symbols should not be seen as irrational or ethereal but as

rationalized and concrete (Robb 1998:331). It should be noted that Hawkes never intended his

“ladder of inference” to be a blanket statement for all of archaeology. Rather, it was intended to

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apply only to contexts where there were no relevant historical or ethnohistorical sources (Fogelin

2008:129).

In his defense of the necessity of symbolic archaeology, Robb outlines three main views

for the consideration of symbols in archaeology: “symbols as tokens,” “symbols as girders,” and

“symbols as tesserae” (Robb 1998:332). In the “symbols as tokens,” or information transmission

view, the main purpose of symbols is to serve as instruments of communication. Binford (1962)

argued that a symbol in material form may indicate predictable economies of representation. In

this model, an exotic artifact can indicate long-distance exchange, a monumental structure can

show the ability to command labor, different (and elaborate) clothing can indicate special societal

status (Robb 1998:332). In a sense, all symbols are created with the purpose of conveying a

message to those that look upon them. This model of symbols has proved useful in evaluating

strategies of political leadership (DeMarrais et. al. 1996) and prestige goods exchange (Saitta

2000).

In the “symbols as girders,” or the mental reality approach, is a structuralist approach into

how symbols “constituted and structured the mental and social world of ancient people” (Robb

1998:334-335). This has sometimes been called cognitive archaeology, and focuses on symbols

as mental structures for framing the cultural world and structuring thought process (Robb

1998:335). The most important component of this model is that humans will think and act

through “learned, culturally specific structures that recur wherever they organize themselves and

their material productions” (Robb 1998:335). Thus, in this model, through symbols we can

begin to understand the framework in which all decisions of a society are (consciously or

subconsciously) made.

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Robb’s final model for the archaeological interpretation of symbols, “symbols as

tesserae” or the poststructuralist critique, rejects the notion in both approaches that symbols are

imbued with meaning. Meaning resides neither in artifacts nor people, but rather it resides in the

moment of interaction between both of them (Thomas 1996:97), and the meanings of symbols do

not exist outside of this moment. This ethereal nature of the meaning of symbols means that

there is a constant variation in the interpretation of important symbols through time. This view

rejects structuralist interpretations of symbols as essentializing or totalizing (Robb 1998:338),

and archaeologists are required to carry out close contextual analysis with regard to symbols, as

their meanings can and do change.

This discussion of symbols is important in the archaeological investigation of ideology.

With the exception of societies with written records or societies that made contact with other

literate people, symbols are one of the few avenues of evidence available for understanding

ideology. Fogelin (2008:130, emphasis in original) argues that religions are systems of symbols

and not unconstrained, free-floating units, an idea originally proposed by Geertz (1966). Geertz

argues that this system of symbols acts to establish “powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods

in motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence, and clothing

these conceptions with such an order of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely

realistic” (Geertz 1966:4). Furthermore, even in those societies with written records, there

remains the strong possibility for bias from the observer, especially in the case of those societies

who were observed by Spanish missionaries, whose main objective was to convert the

indigenous population to Christianity and regarded the extant faiths as paganism or idolatry (de

Landa 1978 [1566]).

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In a separate analysis of Hawke’s treatise, Fogelin (2008) argues that the archaeological

study of religion is conceptually simple. Arguing that religions are systems of deliberate,

connected symbols, he suggests that the study of ideology can begin with the aspects of a past

religion that are the most obvious or manifested clearly materially, and the easiest to identify.

From there, one can move onto the next easiest repeatedly. Though this systematic analysis,

“key symbols” might be identified that can orient and constrain large portions of a religious

system (Fogelin 2008:130-131). Ultimately, he concludes that the archaeology of religion is “as

easy or as difficult as any other branch of archaeological research and should proceed in pretty

much the same way” (Fogelin 2008:131). Critics of the archaeology of religion have focused on

the aspects that are most unknowable, and as a result have applied “unreasonable standards for

its acceptance” (Fogelin 2008:132). This focus on the abstract relates back to Robb’s (1998)

argument of a double standard present between symbolic and material archaeologies. While

there are certainly aspects of religion that cannot be understood archaeology, the same is true

about economies and other more common focuses for research.

While there are many theoretical perspectives in which to view, discuss, and consider

religion, an important part of this study, particularly for religions of past peoples, is

archaeological evidence for religious or ritual activities. Through materialization--the

“transformation of ideas, values, stories, myths, and the like, into a physical reality” (DeMarrais

et. al. 1996:16)--we are able to see and discern aspects of religion or ideology that otherwise

would only be extant in people’s minds. These manifestations can take almost innumerable

forms, though can be most often seen in ceremonial events, symbolic objects, public monuments,

and written systems (DeMarrais et. al. 1996:17).

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Timothy Insoll (2004:68) argues that a human fascination with death and the generally

good preservation of tombs and other funerary remains has caused here to be much more study

of funerary remains in relation to other archaeological areas that too could be useful in revealing

evidence for ideology. He argues that “death is not the sum total of religion” (2004:69), and

notes that ethnographic analyses have shown a diverse spectrum on which religions view the

importance of death, from not being concerned at all and viewing death and burial as a purely

secular matter to being a structuring agent for the treatment of the dead (Insoll 2004:72). He

argues that other factors, such as animal remains and diet, should be given more importance

when dealing with the study of religion.

Insoll argues that a post-processual approach provides the most useful framework for

analyzing religion in archaeology (2004:79). However, while it is often criticized as stressing

the symbolic aspects of human action at the expense of the practical, it has paid relatively little

attention to religion. Still, this is probably a result of the practitioners rather than any limitations

in the framework itself. The phenomenological perspective fits within a post-processual

archaeology, and has been recently utilized in reconstructing past landscapes, including sacred

ones (Insoll 2004:89). Still, there is difficulty in “attempting to ‘experience’ or ‘reconstruct’

similar meanings for past landscapes” (Insoll 2004:89), however the basic tenets of a post-

processual framework seem to ultimately be conducive and permissive for discussing religion,

and is something that should be explored further.

While processual approaches avoided discussing religion as “uninvestigatable,” the

development of cognitive processualism holds a definite place for the study of religion (Insoll

2004:94-95). While maintaining that there exists a true and objective past, Renfrew’s

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“framework of inference” allows “one to make warranted statements about the past, in this case

about past cult practice and religious belief, on the basis of archaeological evidence” (Renfrew

1985:11). Ultimately, cognitive processualism suffers from the same problems as processualism,

namely, “the assumption of ‘same’ between past and present, the essential human condition

across time and space as a given, the existence of rules or guidelines which somehow structure

past belief and action, and the suppression of the individual” (Insoll 2004:95).

RITUAL IN IDEOLOGY

One important aspect of ideology is ritual. While a modern Western view holds that one

can be religious without regularly participating in ritual, for most societies religion “has largely

been about down-to-earth matters such as getting the rain to fall, the crops to grow, the animals

to increase, the sick to recover, the enemies to become weak, and the souls of the deceased to

leave the village and get to the land of the dead” (Winzeler 2008:145). The term “ritual” is often

closely related to “ceremony” (Renfrew 2007:9), and it seems that in nonwestern societies, this

separation is not as clear-cut. Ritual itself is a “synthesis of several levels of social reality: the

symbolic and the social, the individual and the collective” (Malone et. al. 2007), and can be

identified and studied in many various ways, including the use of ethnographic and ethnohistoric

analogy and the examination of non-utilitarian artifacts (McGregor 1943). Ritual is

distinguished from “the conceptual aspects of religion, such as beliefs, symbols, and

myths” (Bell 1992:19). Ritual can be then, in a sense the manifestation of ideology, and has

“produced immense activity that must have left almost as many traces in the archaeological

record as any of the basic human activities that are concerned with satisfying hunger,

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constructing shelter, or providing defense against enemies” (Merrifield 1987:1). Ritual can be

categorized as described or customary behavior that is 1) religious, if the intention of the ritual is

to placate supernatural beings; 2) magical, if the intention is to control supernatural beings; or 3)

social, if the intention is to facilitate social interaction or organization (Merrifield 1987:6).

The idea of ritual as a formal term of analysis has its roots in the 19th century, describing

what was then thought to be a “universal category of human experience” (Bell 1992:14). Ritual

then began to be used as a tool to describe “religion,” though later theorists examined it to study

“society” (Bell 1992:14). In the early study of ritual, three major styles of interpretation

emerged: evolutionary, sociological, and psychological (Bell 1997:3). Edward Tylor, in

responding to the idea that Greek myths had their origins in poetical statements about nature that

had since been misunderstood by later generations, believed that myths should be interpreted as a

“deliberate philosophical attempt to explain and understand the world” (Bell 1997:4), that,

although patently wrong, should not be dismissed as created through error or accident. He

argued that these myths represented primitive ways of reasoning, and used them to support an

evolutionary view of social development, beginning with “savages” who were childlike in their

reasoning and ending with modern “civilized man” (Bell 1997:4). Out of Tylor’s model, William

Robertson Smith argued that religion arose not from myths but from rituals that “essentially

worshiped divine representations of the social order itself” (Bell 1997:4), and was more

concerned with the preservation and welfare of society than the salvation of souls. Robertson

Smith’s work provided a basis for three schools of the interpretation of religion: 1) that, in order

to understand a myth, one must understand the ritual associated it, also known as the “myth and

ritual school;” 2) that religion is a social creation that exists for the preservation and welfare of

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society; and 3) the psychological perspective that behavior is rooted in irrational impulses and

not simply reasoning, sometimes referred to as the “anti-intellectualist approach” (Bell 1997:5).

The “myth and ritual school” has its roots in the work of James Frazer. Frazer was

determined to document the “evolution of human thought from savagery to civilization” (Frazer

1955[1911]) and worked documenting the customs of contemporary “primitives,” studying

French peasants and Pacific Islanders. Building upon some of Roberson Smith’s ideas of ritual

sacrifice and totemic animals, Frazer concluded that “the universally diffused pattern underlying

all ritual is an enactment of the death and resurrection of a god or divine king who symbolized

and secured the fertility of the land and the well-being of the people” (Bell 1997:5). Further

development in this school dealt with the perpetuation of myths. Jane Ellen Harrison viewed

ritual as the source of myth, and argued that if or when a myth lost its connection to a ritual it

could still be perpetuated through an attachment to specific historical figures and events or

adopted as an explanation of phenomena (Bell 1997:5). A critique of this view from Clyde

Kluckhohn (1942) states that while some myths likely are rooted in ritual, it is foolish to consider

this as a universal constant. Nonetheless, ritual still remains important in the study of religion

and ideology in society, and has been central to the development of social functionalism in

anthropology (Bell 1997:8).

Another line of thinking is the phenomenology of religion, which itself places more

emphasis on myths that rituals, and employs systematic comparison as a tool in understanding

religion (Bell 1997:9). This idea arose out of a negative reaction to Tylor and Robertson Smith’s

view of religion as a form of primitive explanation, calling it reductionism, rejecting Tylor’s

conclusion that religious explanations are nothing more than “subjective delusions and mistaken

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logical inferences” (Bell 1997:9). Otto (1968[1911]) suggested religious experiences were real

and irreducible phenomena. Phenomenologists rejected an evolutionary framework to explain

differences among religions and were reluctant to postulate as to the origins of religion. They

claimed that “the historicity of a religious experience does not tell us what a religious experience

ultimately is” (Eliade 1969:53). In an attempt to make this approach more systematic, two

formal components of religion were adopted: 1) the phenomenological dimension, or the

structural elements common to all religious experiences; and 2) the historical dimension, or

particular forms in which these structures are manifested (Bell 1997:9). In this way, the

phenomenology of religion differentiates itself from an evolutionary approach to religion by

viewing religion as a more complex set of ahistorical universals, though this sometimes required

an abandonment of a historical framework (Bell 1997:10). While this approach minimized the

importance of ritual, it did not eliminate it entirely, and treated rituals as more of a secondary

reworking of mythic symbols, holding that a ritual cannot reveal what a symbol can (Eliade

1969). Therefore, in the phenomenology of religion, there is more stability in myth than in

ritual, an opposing approach to the myth and ritual school.

A final approach to ritual is rooted in psychoanalysis. Much of this approach is rooted in

the work of Sigmund Freud, who drew comparisons between obsessive activities of neurotics

and the actions through which religious people show faith and devotion (Bell 1997:13). He drew

a conclusion that neurosis represents individual religiosity and that religion was a sort of

universal neurosis (Bell 1997:13). Upon this framework, Freud deduced that taboo is what fuels

religion amongst people, and that taboos are inseparable from ritual, as ritual is the

institutionalized undertaking of something that would otherwise normally not be allowed, such

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as the killing of a totemic animal (Bell 1997:14). Indeed, in Freud’s model, rituals require taboo

to exist. This view was applied more anthropologically by Theodor Reik, who suggested that

while myth may predate ritual, the psychoanalytic analysis of ritual or religious rites allows for

the understanding of myths, drawing parallels between the study of obsessive behaviors in

mental patients to understand their dreams, obsessional ideas, and compulsive acts (Bell

1997:14-15).

Though these theories differ in their approach to the relationship between ritual and the

larger concept of myth or religion, it is clear that they are interconnected. Furthermore, in

archaeological investigation, the lack of a written record often precludes myths from being

sources for interpretation, and leaves only the systematic study of ritual activity as a means for

understanding past notions of ideology. Clifford Geertz (1966) expressed a desire to move

beyond functional or mechanistic analyses of human activity. For Geertz, a distinction between

“ethos” and “worldview” were essential, with ethos being the moral and aesthetic aspects of a

culture, while worldview refers to the cognitive, existential aspects of a culture (Bell 1992:26).

Geertz correlates religious ritual with ethos and religious belief with worldview, constituting a

structuralist view of ritual as activity rather than belief. Still, Geetz argues for an

interconnectedness of these two ideas (1966), and while ritual is strictly an activity, it serves to

connect the real world with a society’s worldview and system of beliefs. Thus, through

investigation of ritual, archaeologists are afforded a “window” which to view the worldview of a

culture.

PILGRIMAGE IN ARCHAEOLOGY

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One key aspect of ritual and ideology which appears in many societies throughout the

world is that of pilgrimage. Pilgrimages are “important institutions that structure social,

economic, and political relations and often lead individuals outside local communities to ritually

significant places on the landscape where pilgrims from different regions gather

periodically” (Wells and Nelson 2007:138). As ideology is often one of the most important tools

used by empires in administration of subject polities and populations, pilgrimage centers are

ideal opportunities for the expression of state ideologies, and is a classic example of a hegemonic

ideology materialized (Bauer and Stanish 2001:18; DeMarrais et. al 1996) In general, there have

been two classes of theory for understanding pilgrimage and pilgrimage centers. The first,

founded in the work of Emile Durkheim (1965 [1912]), is sometimes given a marxist slant, and

discusses religion and ideology as not sacred products of the human mind, but rather institutions

created for the maintenance of societal institutions that legitimize domination and oppression

(Bauer and Stanish 2001:19). An opposing view is that of Turner, which postulated that religious

constructions such as pilgrimages serve to subvert and undermine the established social order

(Turner and Turner 1960).

Emile Durkheim (1965 [1912]) postulates that cults and rites are integral to the

establishment and maintenance of society and, therefore, to the legitimization of dominance and

an established hierarchy. In Durkheim’s model, religion is a hegemonic vehicle used to reinforce

societal status and authority. State-sponsored and state-controlled pilgrimage centers are

constructions by the elite to perpetuate “class distinction, political authority, ideological

legitimacy, and divine sanction of the existing order” (Bauer and Stanish 2001:19). There are

many historical precedents for this model, such as Constantine’s establishment of Christian

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pilgrimage centers in the Roman Empire after the adaption of Christianity as the state religion of

Rome, or the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain and its spread of anti-

Islamic ideology and a Christian Spanish nationalist agenda (Bauer and Stanish 2001:20).

A Turnerian approach, in contrast, takes almost the opposite view, postulating pilgrimage

centers to be counterhegomic institutions. In this model, shrines “challenged the authority of the

state by setting up alternative and competing religious icons that conformed to religious

orthodoxy but did not need to be controlled by a hierarchy” (Bauer and Stanish 2001:20). There

are many examples of these types of shrines, including in Medieval European Christianity, where

many shrines were created “outside of, and in many cases antithetical to, the interests of the

Church” (Bauer and Stanish 2001:20).

IDEOLOGY AND PILGRIMAGE IN ANDEAN SOUTH AMERICA

Pilgrimage shrines appear to have been a common institution in the Andes. Cobo (1990

[1653]:48) writes, “these temples and shrines, including those of Cuzco as well as those from

other parts of the kingdom, were located in numerous places. Some were in towns, others in the

countryside, in rugged woodlands and sierras, some along roads, and others in the punas and

deserts and anywhere at all.” The most important appeared to be the Coriconcha (Quechua for

“house of gold”), or Temple of the Sun, in the Inka capital city of Cuzco. This temple was the

center of a network of shrines throughout the Cuzco area, and appears to have attracted pilgrims

from all corners of Tawantinsuyu (Cobo 1990 [1653]).

The Coriconcha was deliberately built by the Inka and appears very much to reflect a

Durkheimian approach regarding the institutionalization of pilgrimage. It was a structure of

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great monumental importance and technological skill. Cobo describes its stonework as the best

found in the Western Hemisphere, and it was elaborately decorated with silver and gold (as

indicated by its name) (Cobo 1990 [1653]:49). Still, being situated in Cuzco, the Coriconcha

was not readily accessible to most subjects, and for many it held little ideological significance.

The Inka empire was broad and diverse, representing one of the largest geographical empires

ever assembled, and at its apogee controlling over 12 million subjects and over eighty polities

(D’Altroy and Bishop 1990).

Shrines and pilgrimages, as an institution, do not originate with the Inka. Indeed, there

are a number of shrines that have a long tradition of use before Inka times. One such area is a

shrine complex in the southern Lake Titicaca basin, excavated and discussed at great length by

Brian Bauer and Chip Stanish (Bauer and Stanish 2001; Stanish and Bauer 2007). This complex

was famous as the center of long-distance pilgrimage predating the Inka, and was the subject of

Inka control and administration after conquest. Thus, utilizing a Durkheimian model, it can be

suggested that the Inka controlled this shrine to exert dominance and control over those who held

it as a sacred place; they made efforts to establish themselves as the legitimate owners of the

shrine and thus at the commanding end of the religious institutions associated with it, sending a

powerful message of cultural dominance and legitimate succession (Bauer and Stanish 2001).

Another such shrine is the site of Pachacamac, in the Lurin Valley on the central coast of

Perú. Pachacamachad had pan-regional importance that extended as far back as the Early

Intermediate Period (900 BC - AD 200). The central coast experienced a strong Inka presence

that was demonstrated by population movement, control of craft production, and the construction

of both sacred and secular state facilities (Marcone 2010). Pachacamac experienced a stronger

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presence than elsewhere in the region. In addition to other measures of control, Inka

administration at Pachacamac involved the renovation of many old buildings and the

construction of several new structures, including the Temple of the Sun (Uhle 1991 [1903]),

which was built adjacent to the pre-Inka Temple of Pachacamac. Cobo writes that Temple of the

Sun at Pachacamac was second only to the Sun Temple in Cuzco, the Inka capital (1990 [1653]).

He also notes that during Inka control at Pachacamac, the Temple of the Sun was the site of

feasts and many sacrifices, as well as the home to a resident population of priests and attendants.

The Inka decision to build the Temple of the Sun represents a deliberate, political

demonstration of control over Pachacamac. In a Durkheimian model, just as in the Lake Titicaca

basin, Inka occupation of an important ritual site like Pachacamac and the construction of new

Inka facilities in the presence of existing ritual structures sent a powerful message of cultural

dominance or legitimate succession (Bauer and Stanish 2001). Inka imperial strategies are also

expressed in material culture, and architecture and artifacts following the styles of Cuzco, the

imperial capital, can be seen in many subjugated areas. Cuzco styles are both distinctive and

standardized, and many of these objects (including fine clothing and serving vessels used at

state-sponsored feasts) would have been highly visible. By providing these objects in imperial

styles, the Inka conveyed a clear, repeated message that imperial rulers were the providers of

food, drink, and hospitality (Morris 1991). Inka style objects were manufactured in state

workshops and production enclaves located at or near provincial centers (like Pachacamac)

where local or hybrid style objects may have been made as well (Hayashida 1998, D’Altroy and

Bishop 1990). Given its importance, it is also possible that Inka-style pottery could have been

imported from Cuzco or other Inka centers to Pachacamac.

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Though these three large pilgrimage centers can best be explained through the

Durkheimian model, it is not the case that this model should be applied uniformly throughout all

of pre-Hispanic Andean society. Bauer and Stanish note that there are a number of local

pilgrimage destinations and shrines around the Andes that fit a Turnerian model. These shrines

could be interpreted as “popular expressions of resistance by the local peoples against political

forces beyond their immediate control or, at the very least, as local shrines controlled by non-

elite populations” (Bauer and Stanish 2001:21). These shrines were located not just in this

region but all over the Andes, and pilgrimage seems to have been an important tradition to

Andean people.

One such shrine is the site of Choque Ispana, on the coast of the Huaura Valley, Peru.

This shrine is described by Felipe de Medina (1920 [1650]) as an important regional ritual center.

Though this shrine was important to at least several valleys in the North Central Coast, and

though the Huaura Valley came under Inka administration, initial explorations at the site have not

identified any significant Inka component (Ruiz Estrada 2006). Further exploration is needed to

determine how this shrine was used in Inka times, as well as Inka administration in this valley in

general.

CONCLUSIONS

While this paper has discussed the many different theoretical constructs of dealing with

ideology, ritual, and pilgrimage in archaeology, the fact remains that these concepts are still

elusive, and will probably always be elusive. Still, just as today, they remain an important part

of society. It is quite possible that many, if not most decisions made by prehistoric peoples were

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influenced by their ideologies or world views. To examine aspects such as economy and

production without discussing why these phenomena were done the way that they were is to do a

disservice to oneself and to intentionally ignore a more complete understanding of a society.

While it is not easy to make these inferences, it is nonetheless a necessary part of the discipline

that should no longer be ignored as “undecipherable.”

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