Eyes of the Empire: The Influence of Visual Magnitude on Wari Site Placement in the Sondondo Valley, Peru

MARSH, ERIK J.

Santa Bárbara

Workshop; GIS Workgroup Annual Meeting; 2007

Workgroup interdisciplinario de GIS Arqueología y Antropología

The Wari Empire’s (AD 600–1000) consolidation of provinces relied on a range of strategies, conditioned by imperial goals and local conditions. In Wari’s province in the Sondondo Valley, imperial administrators made site placement decisions that considered imperial goals and local topography. For militaristic empires, places with large visual magnitudes (fields of view) have distinct advantages, including enhanced defensibility, ease of surveillance, and visual dominance. These advantages are especially relevant in places where empires invest labor and resources. Extensive investments characterize Wari’s consolidation of the Sondondo Valley, in the form of terraces, roads, and new sites. Viewshed analysis shows that five Wari sites had especially large fields of view, compared to a background of randomly placed sites. Overlap and Coverage Indices demonstrate that as a group, the Wari sites are especially well coordinated to visually monitor the surrounding landscape. These results are consistent at three progressively smaller spatial scales, which isolate other possible factors in site placement. Sites with high visual magnitudes served the empire’s goals, one of many tactics responsible for Wari’s effective 250-year occupation and consolidation of the Sondondo Valley, and other imperial provinces throughout in the southern Andes.