Before the rise of the Incas, a civilization known as Tiwakanu ruled the Andes, and archaeologists have uncovered a massive temple left behind by this enigmatic society.
Named Palaspata by local Indigenous farmers, the ruined temple is perched on a Bolivian hilltop 215 km (about 134 miles) southeast of the center of the Tiwanaku archaeological site.
The team behind the discovery, led by Jose Capriles from Penn State University, suspects the newly described temple was an important strategic site for the Tiwanaku people, as it’s located at the nexus of three main trade routes that connected the society to important ecosystem resources.
There’s debate around what brought this civilization’s downfall, but we know it was a complex culture built on cosmological religion, politics, and an agropastoral economy that emerged around 110 CE.
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“Their society collapsed sometime around 1000 CE and was a ruin by the time the Incas conquered the Andes in the 15th century,” Capriles says.
“Remnants of architectural monuments like pyramids, terraced temples, and monoliths [are mostly] distributed in sites around Lake Titicaca and, while we know Tiwanaku’s control and influence extended much further, scholars debate how much actual control over distant places it had.”
With drone images and photogrammetry, the team built a detailed 3D rendering of the temple’s structure and topography.
“Because the features are very faint, we blended various satellite images together,” Capriles says.
What remains of the temple indicates a complex measuring 125 by 145 meters (410 by 475 feet), with 15 enclosed areas arranged around a central inner courtyard.
This design is typical of Tiwanaku culture, which left behind many other temple ruins featuring sunken courts surrounded by rectangular rooms and stone-lined terrace platforms, mostly around the southern end of Lake Titicaca.
“The modules range in size between 358 and 595 m2 [3,853–6,405 ft²] and could have contained additional rooms and divisions,” Capriles and team report.
“The main entrance of the temple faces west in alignment with the solar equinox. Currently, a local trail crosses the building, intersecting its western and northern walls.”
The temple is littered with fragments of its inhabitants’ lives, including pieces of ceramic keru cups, flared bowls, jars, and incense burners.
“[Objects] with Tiwanaku iconography are common, but some sherds of Yampara, Tupuraya, Mojocoya, and other decorative styles are also present and suggest interaction with the inter-Andean valleys,” the team writes.
They also found a few fragments of black-on-red Carangas pottery, pieces of camel bone, and some fragments of turquoise stone along with an Oliva peruviana seashell – evidence of connections to the Atacama Desert and the Pacific Ocean.
Religion played an important role in the politics and economics of Tiwanaku society, and in the Andes, sites like this were often built not only for spiritual practice, but also as a means of expanding societies and exerting control over the surrounding resources.
As one of the only terraced platform sites found beyond the lake basin, and one of the farthest from it, Palaspata would have connected Tiwanaku with the Central Altiplano and the inter-Andean valleys of Cochabamba.
“Most economic and political transactions had to be mediated through divinity, because that would be a common language that would facilitate various individuals cooperating,” says Capriles.
“With more insight into the past of this ancient site, we get a window into how people managed cooperation, and how we can materially see evidence of political and economic control.”
This research was published in Antiquity.
