Frank Meddens, Katie Willis, Colin McEwan and Nicholas Branch (eds), Inca Sacred Space: Landscape, Site and Symbol in the Andes, Archetype Publications, London, 2014, 310 pages, £65/$135, paperback. ISBN: 9781909492059.

See Sarah Radcliffe's most recent Society & Space contributions: Ethnicity, Patriarchy, and Incorporation into the Nation: Female Migrants as Domestic Servants in Peru, Culture and Development: Taking Culture Seriously in Development for Andean Indigenous People, and (Re)Mapping Mother Earth: A Geographical Perspective on Environmental Feminisms

This edited collection comprises the outcome of a sustained, multidisciplinary and multi-locale study of the sites known as ushnus, which broadly refer to (sometimes raised slightly, or stepped) surfaces in which physical features (drainage holes, fissures) or use referred to cosmological, political and religious practices of the Inca Empire, and whose echoes can be identified today in certain ethnographic contexts of the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes. Archaeologists, geographers, historians and ethno-historians, anthropologists and ethnomusicologists combine their detailed knowledge and original research in a volume that provides a wealth of new evidence and fascinating lines of interpretation. Linked to a UK-based research initiative and a British Museum conference, the volume provides a compelling and detailed account of a feature that arguably, on the basis of this contribution, is key to “understanding the central place of religion and ritual in Andean, particularly Inca, processes of state expansion” (page 269).

Ushnus represent human interactions with the Andean landscape, conceptually rooted in non-western ontologies and practices while historically enrolled into Inca political, religious and geographical relations of rule, such that networks of ushnus exist across the Andes from present-day Ecuador through to Bolivia. Well represented in several examples in Cuzco, the ceremonial and political heart of the Inca Empire, ushnus additionally were constructed in diverse forms on isolated mountain tops, while one has been found at a major pilgrimage site. Ushnus were mentioned by colonial chroniclers whose accounts offer invaluable insights into their social and symbolic resonances, even as recent scholarship now queries and re-situates these accounts in relation to decades of archaeological work, in-depth ethnographic engagement with Quechua-speaking villagers, as well as soil sample analysis, geographical information systems, and ice-core analysis.

Such work highlights not only the ubiquity of ushnu-like structures across the Andes (especially above 3,800 metres in puna ecosystems), and even in some cases into the Peruvian coastal areas, but also the diversity of their forms, orientation and meanings. According to Tom Zuidema’s early path-breaking work (which the author revisits in the volume’s first chapter), ushnus are thematically linked to the flow of water from a powerful figure into the earth, sometimes via a channel, and ontologically positioned as sites in which relations between the earth’s surface (humans, liquids, stones) were linked to the sky (lightning, upper world) and to below the earth (ancestors, water, pacha). These relations were coordinated, authorized and choreographed around political-religious authorities, primarily the Inca himself. Ushnus not only symbolized and performatively produced Inca political authority; many chapters in the volume powerfully describe how the practices occurring at and around ushnus were the produced socio-spatial dynamics through which territorial expansion happened and conquered places were incorporated into Inca politico-administrative hierarchies. One key component of these place-making processes was the movement of stone, soil and sediment between conquered areas and Cuzco for incorporation into the platforms' very materiality.

Individual chapters focus on one or another of these multiple facets. Zuidema’s chapter, for example, focuses on four ushnus in southern Peru and discusses how the ushnus' role as interface with the underworld is linked to the existence of graves and human bones under the platforms. McEwan provides a masterful overview of the ways in which ushnus formed an integral part of the nested hierarchies that underpinned Inca imperial power, and a means by which cognition was ordered, uniting origin myths with new territories. Ramirez discusses how military and judicial connotations are also evident in ushnus, not least in the pre-Inca sites in Peru’s northern coastal valleys. Meddens switches attention to Ayacucho in Peru’s central Andes where the large number of ushnus appears to indicate in part a role in marking the boundaries between ethnic groups, as well as ancient roads and vistas, while Vivanco examines Inca expansion into Chanka territory. Other archaeological chapters extend our understandings of the context, landscapes and astronomical-ritual significance of ushnus in northern and southern coastal Peru, and Cuzco. Recent ice-core work demonstrates that the expansion of the Inca Empire coincided with increasingly wetter conditions in the southern Peruvian altiplano.

Chapters also address ethnographic evidence. Allen draws on chronicles and contemporary ethnography to explore the libations and flows of liquid associated with ushnus and in contemporary Andean society. Human drunkenness and libations of chicha (maize beer), she argues, represent “sacramental efficacy, producing a state of transformation that brings different ontological categories into contact with each other”, earth forces with ancestors, political authority with cosmic energies. Also addressing a contemporary ethnographic context in rural Bolivia, Arnold explores how a village situated on an old tambo road carries out a ceremony for National Day in early August in ways that provide interesting insights into how ushnus may have been used in the past. Libations, connections to the dead, the verticality of the flag and flagpole, as well as the movement of objects, come together in this ceremony in which parents talk about how children at school re-appropriate energy from the ancestor bones buried under the school, and hence learn in ways that contribute to the community’s good. Ogburn, returning to archaeological enquiry, focuses on the movement of soil across and around the nested hierarchies and landscapes of the Inca Empire, suggesting how this movement—reliant upon huge expenditure of labour—was a visible demonstration of power. Escalante and Valderrama’s chapter examines rural Peruvians’ offerings to apus (mountain deities) and pachamama (living earth beings), suggesting similarities with ushnus’ historic role. They emphasize how such rituals, which occurred through the annual calendar and were based on reciprocity between humans and non-humans, build solidarity, ‘suyu’.

Branch et al’s chapter uses geo-archaeology, archaeobotany, and GIS to analyse the locations, construction and landscape-embeddedness of Ayacucho’s ushnus, many of which are found in prominent locations, while Ferreira’s brief chapter reports on PhD research regarding in-fill materials. Coben examines ushnus’ theatrical qualities and suggests they were used for varied performances, especially as their use may have changed over time and with the regions of Inca expansion. An ethnomusicologist, Stobart, explores the acoustic spaces of ushnus and suggests that, although used for outdoor performative events perhaps involving music and dance, ushnus did not necessarily permit the sounds of that performance to travel far. Joffré extends the interest in sonic qualities associated with ushnus by discussing the beliefs around lightning and thunder, major figures in late pre-Colombian pantheons. This theme is further developed by Staller, who draws out how these phenomena have qualities (liquid, light, sound) which link them with sky/astronomy, as well as vertical connections between sky-earth-underworld.

Tristan Platt’s afterword synthesizes the new information presented in the volume, while pointing out some lacunae and raising questions for further research. Two aspects of his review are perhaps of interest to geographers. First he notes how, by drawing on Viveiros de Castro and Descola, some chapters extend scholarly debates about analyzing the dynamic relations between nature and culture, and the blurred boundaries between humans and more-than-humans. He makes an interesting case for considering Andean ontologies on their own terms, while critically engaging with Viveiros de Castro’s Amazonian work. From the evidence presented in this volume, ushnu studies suggest that the Incas tapped into, exchanged and transformed the “animate materiality of their biosphere” in ways that engendered authority, power and reach. Second, Platt re-emphasizes the importance of context. Historicizing ushnus in Inca and contemporary periods, he reminds readers of the dislocations, violence and social transformations entrained by conquest, migration and modern statehood.

In December 2013, Bolivians offered libations to the pachamama before the launch of the country’s first telecommunications satellite. Such practices are constantly shifting in meaning, context and socio-spatial dynamics yet, as this fascinating and beautifully produced book attests, they link to places and landscapes with phenomenal historic depth and enduring relevance for the present.