HIGHLAND PRECERAMIC SOCIETY/PALEO MAN/DEBATE OVER 'FIRST AMERICANS'

[** John W. Rick, "The Character and Context of Highland Preceramic Society"

Pp. 3-40 in Keatinge...]

Environment: Evidence of human occupation in Peru may be 20,000 years old

1) Snow and Periglacial Zone: very high altitude wasteland above 5,000 m. with permanent ice and snow, or is seasonally frozen or snow covered; limited range of resources, low biomass, rugged topography = of dubious value for human subsistence

2) Puna Zone (3,900 - 5000 m.) Highest area for human occupation; rolling grasslands spotted with flat lakeshore plains and crossed by a network of perennial streams ("fine-grained mosaic environment"). Scattered plant resources (berries, tubers, seeds) - ideal grassland for the grazing of wild camelids and deer; may have had waterfowl, aquatic plants, and amphibians at lake shores

-- Varies considerably between northern and southern Peru; in north the puna is largely lacking, due to heavy erosional dissection of the Andes; in central Peru, there is a large puna girdle at ca. 11 degree lat.: non-seasonal, varies more in precipitation than in temperature (Nov-April : rainy; May-Oct: dry).

Modern puna herders maintain their grazing animals the year round on the same pastures; southern Peru: higher snowline, greater contrast between wet and dry seasons: vicuñas also at home there, as they are in central Peru

[In Ecuador, this zone is known as the PARAMO; damper, not as conducive for camellid herds]

3) Highland Valley Macrozone (below 3,900 m.): strongly influenced by altitude and even more by rainfall; offers more productive but seasonal resources for hunter-gatherers; hard to reconstruct the [prehistoric?] resources of the highlands; modified by 2-3 million years of intensive agriculture; Many forests were removed by field clearing or firewood collection.

[** Claude Chauchat, "Early hunter-gatherers on the Peruvian coast" (pp. 41-66 in Keatinge, ed)]

Coriolis force: Tends to deviate any moving fluid at a right angle from its original direction = permanent, stationary high pressure zones near the center of the oceans

Near the Peruvian coast the South Pacific [coriolis?] moves away from the shore, where it is replaced by a deep, cold-water current

** The presence of superficial cold water along the coast of Peru and northern Chile "is of utmost importance for the ecology and even human economy of the region"

-- evaporated water is prevented from condensing as rain over the coastal plain by the presence of a stable temperature inversion layer located 300-500 m. above sea level

-- fog then forms and is blocked below the inversion layer

-- oases form that are dependent on this fog called lomas

-- as you move north in latitude this dissipates: vegetation appears on the plain ca. 8 degrees lat. and the desert is generally sunny w/ occasional summer rains

-- another consequence: nutrients are prevented from falling slowly to the ocean floor and are forced to remain in the immediate subsurface waters = "Peruvian ocean swarms with life" = importance of marine resources to the inhabitants of the coast

PREHISTORY

Most studies say Peru was mostly ice-free by 12,000-10,000 B.P.; no glaciers or climate changes of Pleistocene magnitude found after this period

C-14 dates for humans prior to 1,000 B.P. (or 9,000 B.C.) come from 3 sites: PIKIMACHAY (Ayacucho); PACHAMACHAY (Junín); GUITARRERO CAVE (Callejón de Huaylas) ; Also some undated remains from Uchu?machay Cave

DEBATE OVER 'FIRST AMERICANS'

[** Tom D. Dillehay, 1991, "The Great Debate on the First Americans" Anthropology Today 7(4):12-13, August]

see also: [Alan L. Bryan, "South America" pp. 137-146 IN: Early Man in the New World. Richard Shutler, ed. 1983. Sage]

see also: [Thomas F. Lynch, "Glacial Age Man in South America?: A Critical Review." American Antiquity 55(1):12-36, January 1990. Good bibliography]

1) That Clovis big-game hunters w/their fluted projectile points were the 1st

humans to arrive ca. 11,500-1,000 years ago; but presence of fluting in

Tierra del Fuego at this time presents a problem; also doesn't explain

the dearth of Clovis-like sites in Alaska [Lynch 1990 says only a hand-

ful of sites are pre-Clovis; pre-paleo sites of S.A. are reevaluated

"and found to present only week or negative indications of early occu-

pation". We lack an absolutely certain case to support glacial-age

occupation; need more interpretive caution: "Natural processes often

mimic cultural patterns"

2) That humans came earlier than this, bringing a different and less specialized pre-Clovis culture, and that fluted points spread later;

the problem with this is that there is no secure record of pre-Clovis

activity in North America [Bryan 1983 says this; he sees people in S.A.

before 20,000 years ago; he sees the Panama Isthmus as crucial for

revealing early S.A. prehistory; also sees fishtail point tradition

moving north from s. America--ca. 11,000 years ago--as fluted points

moved south; EL INGA is a fishtail point site]

[Lynch 1990 reviews some of these claims: in terms of skeletal remains, there are very few pre-Clovis bones, and a total lack of entrapments, fossilization, absence of teeth or charred human bones; nearly all of the claims of 15,000-70,000 years for various N.A. skeletal remains have been reevaluated and discarded; many of the S.A. bones are lost or dispersed

** Rivet 1926: proposed that there might have been an initial non-Beringian population that came from S.E. Asia or somewhere: indeed, one find from Brazil (Lagoa Santa) invites comparison with Solo Man (but the find has been lost); E.J. Dixon 1985 also suggests that man may have arrived first in S.A. and then moved upward

Otherwise, these [old finds] are considered Archaic or Late Paleoindian due to associated artifacts, mixed stratigraphy, and poorly-controlled excavations ("Otavalo Man" and Punín skulls from Chimborazo not as old as once thought (22,800-36,000 years ago); less than 3,000 years

cultural remains: no reason, in Lynch's view, to date any of these in N.A. much before Clovis times; only 2 of the 18 principal sites are left: Wilson Butte Cave and Meadowcraft; Pikimachay Cave data has many problems, as do the Ecuadorian materials

-- every decade since the 1940s has seen a challenge to the Clovis dogma; a long-standing, emotional debate

-- most recent conflict stems from sites excavated in late 1970s and early 1980s yielding dates older than 12,000 years ago and evidence of a generalized hunter-gatherer lifestyle (e.g., Bluefish Caves in the Canadian Yukon, Meadowcraft Rockshelter in S.E. Pennsylvania, Pedra Furada and other sites in n.e. Brazil, and Monte Verde in s. Chile)

* -- South American sites have caused the greatest debate; Clovis advocates claim that most pre-12,000 BP locations are just disturbed deposits with jumbled ecofactual and archaeological materials; pre-Clovis advocates say these guys are isolationists, chauvinists, etc.

-- Dillehay: This bickering has led us astray from other important issues: the emphasis on the fluted tradition and projectile point continuity as been at the expense of disc. and inv. of other traits

Major problem: the tendency to construct hemisphere-long cultural linkages and periods despite the paucity of data from many regions and poor understanding of non-projectile point traits.

Plus, the direct evidence of physical and genetic makeup of early Americans is missing; Not a single reliable human skeleton of Pleistocene age has been excavated in the New World

= North and South America are the only continents on the planet where the knowledge of human presence only comes through traces of artifacts

[** Keatinge 1988, Peruvian Prehistory]

-- uses chronological scheme of Uhle and Rowe (1960)

-- alternating Horizons (waves of stylistic influence going beyond regional

boundaries) and Periods (time; regional styles with less Pan-Andean

impact)

debate over 12,000? or pre 20,000? B.C.

Preceramic Period I ? - 9500 BC

Preceramic Period II 9500 - 8000 BC

Preceramic Period III 8000 - 6000 BC

Preceramic Period IV 6000 - 4200 BC

Preceramic Period V 4200 - 2500 BC

Preceramic Period VI 2500 - 1800 BC

Initial Period 1800 - 900 BC (1st villages)

Early Horizon 900 - 200 BC (Chavín)

Early Intermediate Period 200 B.C. - A.D. 600

Middle Horizon A.D. 600 - A.D. 1000 (raised fields; Wari, Tiwanaku)

Late Intermediate Period A.D. 1000 - 1476

Late Horizon A.D. 1476 - 1534

[** Chip Stanish's lecture at FLC:]

-- Preceramic: good sites in South America date from ca. 10,000 - 6,000 :

cave paintings, lithics; homogeneous culture type; hunting

and collecting; low density; highly mobile; no villages

(Archaic)

[John W. Rick in Keatinge]

Central Andean Preceramic Tradition (9000-1800 B.C.)

Starting ca. 9000 B.C. and blossoming 8,000 B.C. = major human occupation throughout the sierra of Peru; chipped-stone tool industries are relatively uniform.

domesticated plants: beans and peppers present 8500 B.C.; maize, fruits, grains, tubers, gourds etc. available ca. 3000 B.C.; absence of amost all domestic plants in the puna

animals: llama and guinea pig domestication not clearly identified; domestic alpacas may have been present in some parts of the Junín around 4,000 B.C.

architecture: rare; primarily in cave sites

most burials flexed; presence of rock art (mostly red-colored pictographs) found throughout Peru (usually animals occ. pursued by hunters, accompanied by geometric designs)

AMAZON

[** Ann Gibbons, 1990, "New View of Early Amazonia," Science 248:1488-1490]

-- tropical lowlands have always been thought to be an "unlikely cradle for any civilization"--but Europeans sailing up the Amazon in the 1540s saw glistening white cities, where tens of thousands of people were ruled by warrior chiefs; by 1700 these were gone completely, and work has concentrated on Peru, Colombia, and Mexico

-- Archaeologists' views are changing: Anna Roosevelt, Don Lathrap etc.: have

found evidence that "complex societies took root along the shores of the Amazon, growing in size and influence ove the centuries until their culture reached as far as the Andes. Some even were responsible for the earliest pottery found in the Americas, made 2,000 years before any ceramics are found in the highland cultures of the Andes and the coast areas of Peru and Ecuador"

-- Meggers and Evans: Julian Steward published 6-vol Handbook of South American Indians in 1946 by the Smithsonian in which he advanced the idea that the tropical environment was too harsh to support large societies and that the people who lived in the Amazon in pre-contact times were probably similar to those living there today, "shifting cultivators" who wee 1st studied extensively in the 1930s and 40s.

-- Meggers refined this framework: 1954 theory of environmental determinism: humans are constrained by their environments and complex cultures can only develop where people can obtain enough food, water, etc. to sustain large pops. Different environments were ranked on the basis of their potential for nurturing and supporting the devel. of complex societies.

-- this prejudiced the field against looking at complexity in the Amazon. But Meggers says she based her views on fieldwork, especially at Marajo (15,000 square foot island at mouth of Amazon in Brazil). Meggers and Evans started there in 1948, finding 400 dirt mounds (the largest has surface area of 50 acres) that were platforms for villages. They see Marajoans as an exeption to what generally occurs in the Amazon, and they see its origin as an import from elsewhere.

-- Donald Lathrap challenged this view 30 years ago, based on work in Pucallpa in the foothills of the Peruvian Andes. Lathrap found pottery there related to that of Marajo, but he concluded that the Marajo pottery was made first. He thus turned M/E's model on its head.

Huge feud; no students returned to Marajo to work for 30 years, although Lathrap and students worked in other parts of the Amazon.

[** Donald Collier, 1976, "Ecuadorian Roots." The University of Chicago Magazine LXIX(1):16-18, Autumn]

-- Ecuador - just thought to have had some interesting local developments;

However, Indians there were living in permanent villages, and were farming and making pottery 5,000 years ago during the Formative period. This was 1,000 years before similar developments were achieved in Peru and Mexico. Roosevelt's work at Marajo and now at Santarem have found elaborate pottery, enormous burial urns, large statues of chiefs (cultural development over 7000 years). Ron Weber found similarities between pottery at Pucallpa, and that of Marajo Island and along the Napo River). Raised fields in Llanos de Mojos (Erickson). Doing "comparable work to the pyramids in their earthworks).

5,000 b.c. - earliest intensive agric. in northern S. America

3,000 b.c. - early farmers well established on coast, from a complex

that had spread east across the mountains; coastal dwellers

were growing corn, squash, gourds, and manioc and living in

villages of 2,000 = VALDIVIA PERIOD

[** Jonathan Damp, 1988, "La primera ocupación Valdivia de Real Alto: Patrones economicos, arquitectonicos, e ideologicos." Guayaquil: ESPOL]

-- went with Lathrap to excavate in 1974-75

VALDIVIA: 3500 BC - ca. 2300 B.C.

-- Initial Period: next 3,000 years: pan-New World phenomenon (6,000 - 3,000 B.C.): agricultural experimentation; Andean crops: potatoes, huanaco, vicuña, semi-sedentery base camps;

-- 3,000 - 2,000 B.C.: sufficient quantities of surplus to settle villages of

25-30 people; acephalous; no real govt.; grow cotton, hot peppers;

dependent on marine resources

MACHALILLA: 2300 B.C. - 1000 B.C.

-- exciting period: Early Horizon (900-200 B.C.)

settled villages with corporate architecture (pyramids, elite residences; temples, platform mounds)

sites: Chavín de Huantar (modeled and cut stone; almost tropical forest;

jaguar heads)

Sechín Alta (coast)

dozens of sites: evidence of elite, political centrality; iconography

of militarism; intense competition; elite chopping up elite, not

the poor; pan-Andean process of militarism; temples and develop-

ment of Andean symbols of power: Viracocha (staff god); were-

jaguar; agricultural intensification (terraces); modern maize;

urban centers (1/2 square km)

CHORRERA: 1000 - 300 B.C.

[** Richard L. Burger, 1988. "Unity and heterogeneity within the Chavín Horizon," Pp. 99-144 in Keatinge]

** questions of debate over whether Chavín is a developmental stage of Andean culture history, an archaeological period, a religious ideology, or an empire

-- decisive change in Central Andean prehistory occurred during the early Horizon (900- 200 B.C.) when distinctive local/regional cultures in central and northern Peru coalesced into the pan-Andean horizon, also known as the Chavín horizon.

-- yet this "unprecedented unification" did not lead to "total cultural homogenization" - the societies constituting Chavín civilization were still characterized by profound ideological, sociopolitical, and economic differences inherited from the Initial Period

--Like the Inca horizon, this was a significant but short-lived phenomenon, "only partially successful in bringing about the radical restructuring of early regional Andean culture"

CHAVIN CULT: long-standing consensus that the Chavín horizon style "is the symbolic expression of a religious ideology and that the Chavín horizon is the result of the diffusion of what may be referred to as the C. cult"

Burger compares them to regional cults of the type you would see in Africa:

-- non-congruent with political and ethnic boundaries; Hodder says that the distribution of material culture traits and maintenance of group identity do not necessarily correlate; pottery styles transmit social and personal identity and can be manipulated to reinforce boundaries

-- ideologies and rituals foster universalism and openness

-- e.g., PACHACAMAC (late pre-Hispanic ritual cult) oracle, pilgrims,

protector against disease) at time of Spanish conquest, Pacha-

camac had a network of shrines spanning the range of productive

zones--may be a viable model for C. cult, but there is a dearth

of investigation into Early Horizon ceremonial centers

-- existence of towns: 2-3,000 population

-- "peer polity interaction" facilitated by shared religious ideology

-- stylistic designs: 1) kenning 2) approximate bilateral symmetry

3) anatropic organization (composition can be inverted yet still present

upright images) 4) reversible org (can be rotated 90 or 270 degrees

on its side and still contain upright images) 5) double-profile com-

position

-- importance of cayman: yet its representation in art is rare and usually as a split or "flayed pelt" convention

-- unlike Olmec art, does not portray historical personages -- scenes of conquest and submission, or confirmation of royal authority by supernaturals

innovation: more important than style; Krober in 1947 said that Chavin art was the "pinnacle of South American art" -- the work of full-time specialists who tried to convey the "wholly other"

TEXTILES: use of camellid hair in cotton textiles; textile painting; supplemental discontinuous warps, including various types of tapestry; dying of camellid hair; warp wrapping; negative or 'resist' painting (tie dye, batik); replacement of finger __________ by heddle loom

METALLURGY: large objects of hammered gold w/complex Chavin style motifs emerge with no antecedents; 3 dimensional forms of pre-shaped metal sheet appears for the 1st time: gold may be tied to the cult

Early Intermediate (800 years later): vigorous local development with loss

of pan-Andean features; continuation of quasi-urban patterns, high

population densities; very little work done in this period

Middle Horizon (200 B.C. - 1200 A.D.): pan-Andean iconography:

1. Wari: Ayacucho Valley (2500 m.) - collapsed 800 A.D.

2. Tiwanaku: Lake Titicaca Basin; influence extended almost from Cusco,

Chile, n.w. Argentina, most of Bolivia; collapsed 1200 A.D.

-- both began about the same time; Wari seems to have developed first

-- two very different systems: Wari is more commercial--controlling strategic

trade: copper, obsidian, precious stones; controlling small pockets in

hostile areas

-- Tiwanaku: Empire in Roman sense: restructured local populations; created

Empire that lasted almost 1000 years longer (than Wari?); extensive

raised fields around Lake Titicaca Basin

raised fields: highly productive: 3 to 7 times the productivity of traditional

agriculture it is said (Stanish is skeptical); the empire was based on

this: massive land reclamation, intensive agricultural production

Late Intermediate; sort of like the Dark Ages; rise of very small hilltop

fortified sites; small populations, crummy pottery; devolution or collapse of political centralization; post-Imperial; petty states and

substates; agriculture in Titicaca Basin; goes to extensive rainfall/

terrace agriculture; tremendous focus on camellids

Late Horizon: Inka controlled land from Quito to Santiago (more like Tiwanaku

than Wari); 3000 kms. longer than the Roman empire; controlled lowlands

(yungas); restructured local political systems; huge breadbasket areas:

1000s of workers and slaves

** John V. Murra, 1984, "Andean Societies," Annual Review of Anthropology 13: 119-41.

-- Andean "exceptionalism"

-- "isolated, sui generis quality of Andean societies" best exemplified via productive systems, cultigens, and domesticated animals

-- = autochthonous, unique complex

3 steps in the growth of Andean societies (agronomic, climatological, socioeconomic):

1. high productivity of a "bleak" (to Euro. eyes) environment

-- cultivation at 3200, 3500, 400m requires good knowledge of calendars,

soils, cultigens + adaptation to 250 nights of frost a year

-- deliberate experimentation to create additional, resistant, varieties

-- much of this knowledge was lost or destroyed

-- can't use chemical fertilizers; too short a fallowing cycle; neglect

of ritual offerings that protect and feed soil

-- pre-columbian interest in pushing productive tiers higher (tubers

lupines)

-- development of sophisticated irrigation and massive terracing

-- yet catastrophes were rare (unlike Mesoamerica)-- infrequent famines

-- According to Mauricio Mamani (Aymara ethnologist), "indicators exist that would predict severe or unusual frosts, so straw and tinder were gathered to fight them; planting dates were deliberately spaced within the same community and crop; distinct maturing patterns within the same cultigen were intercropped; each household and each hamlet owned dispersed, faraway, if frequently tiny parcels of land to allow for variations within the threat. All this antifrost and antifamine filigree is frequently ignored." (p. 121)

-- llama and alpaca resources--thousands and thousands = greatest wealth

"European observers were stunned by the omnipresence of the beasts on the altiplano."

-- large-scale ethnic and state herding of burden bearers and wool growers was astounding

2. use and domestication of the cold

-- not just a matter of endurance and survival, but of using the frosts

productively; discovered "secret" of freeze-drying

-- exposure to 24 hours of frost in equatorial sunshine in rapid

succession = freeze-drying (chuñu, ch'arki) and other types that

could be stored for years without rotting at both the peasant

household and state levels

-- storage facilities enabled Europeans to "discover" 1000s of km. of

back country quickly because of records of services (to feed the

conquerors); as late as 1547, 15 years after the invasion, Polo

de Ondegardo was "still able to feed an army of 2000 European

soldiers for seven weeks withou what they found stored in the

warehouses at Xauxa."

-- system collapsed in the 1st century of conquest; "with it went the

possibility of maintaining a macrostructure in the Andes, inde-

pendent of the silver and other export-oriented mines"

3. economic, political, and administrative institutions

-- multiethnic societies grew into rather large polities on coast and

highlands

-- Wari and Tiwanaku before 1000 a.d. -- fell apart eventually

-- Inka state (Tawantinsuyu) (reached over 1000s of miles)

-- All of these states had certain organizational features:

a. all had dispersed territoriality: all tried to diversify

their holdings ("vertical archipelagos") in environ-

ments "radically different from their native homes"

b. all highland polities tried to maintain permanent outliers

of their own people in a maximum number of tiers to

control the territories producing goods their nuclei did

not (mitimae) (ECOLOGICAL COMPLEMENTARITY)

c. missing necessities wer not handled via commerce, but by

establishing colonies

= knowledge of very different, non-overlapping productive zones that exists today

** ODYSSEY: THE INCAS (appended, hand-written notes)

** D.S. DEARBORN AND R.E. WHITE [of the Steward Observatory, Univ. of Arizona]

"ARCHAEOASTRONOMY AT MACHU PICCHU" [published in the Urton/Aveni collection... NYAS pp. 249-259

-- results of an Earthwatch-sponsored expedition to study "the old Inca citadel at Machu Picchu for sites of astronomical observation" - summer of 1980; 2 groups of volunteers went with Dearborn and White

-- Citadel chosen because it was relatively unmolested; Spaniards never occupied MP, and did not have the opportunity to destroy it; also, it was voluntarily abandoned by its inhabitants, so original structures were not pulled down to make way for modern bldgs.

-- Looking for "two pinciple types of artifact" 1) structures or monuments designed for making precise astronomical observations assoc. w/ an astron. significant event (solstice, equinox, lunar excursion, etc. or a cultural event); 2) sites used "for crude astronomical observations in conjunction with ceremonies

-- post-Conquest chroniclers (of course they didn't talk about MP):

Garcilaso de la Vega: describes preparations etc. for June solstice

-- have found at MP a structure well designed for solstitial use

-- MP has different terrain from Cuzco; thus does not use system

of horizon-markers discussed by Aveni and Zuidema:

*** "The flexibility of the Inca astronomers in adapting their observing techniques to the local environment suggests that they were interested in the astronomical event and not simply in making a ritual observation"

* In this paper they are reporting on structures that Bingham called the Torreon and the Intihuatana Stone.

-- they believe the Torreon was useful for observation of the June solstice, the solar zenith passage, and possibly constellations

-- the Intihuatana stone itself "does not seem to have been designed as an astronomical instrument...but its site may have been of great importance"

(artificial structures on nearby ridge may have been used in calendric observations.)

THE TORREON

"watch tower"-- a temple structure that sits on rock promontory with a clear view of the eastern horizon. Bingham noted similarities between the Torreon and the Temple of the Sun in Cuzco (fine masonry, curved 'semicircular' wall, and existence of nearby flowing water.

Two windows in curved wall: one faces northeast, the other southeast

interior is dominated by a large carved rock ("altar") that supports the Torreon itself

The rock is cut flat on top except for a small raised section; one edge of this section runs along the center of the altar and points out the northeast window; found to lie within 2 plus/minus 5' of the direction of the rising point of the sun on the June solstice (= very precise sighting device for naked eye astronomy).

Terrain at MP is much more vertical than at Cuzco, making the eastern horizon more distant and less accessible; technique of using pillars wouldn't work, but a shadow-casting method using the solstice-pointing edge of the raised section of the altar would be quite practicable.

Garcilaso: Inca observance of the solstice required 3-day fast, so it had to be predicted, not just observed, using plumb-bob shadow

-- The other window seems, together with the other window, to observe a system of constellations (the sun, moon, and planets would never be observed to rise directly in the window)

Strip of sky: contains a large segment of the Milky Way and several Inca constellations. "Collca" (involves tail of Scorpio) found to lie just above the horizon at sunset on the day of the June solstice; modern Q-speakers observe the tail of Scorpio along with the Pleiades to signal the time of the solstice (Urton)-- the Pleiades rise in the window facing northeast, just before sunrise as the solstice approaches....

Window jambs: (used to define a position on the horizon and make astron. observations at Casa Grande and Chichen Itza)... In the Torreon there is only a 5-6 day period on either side of the zenith passage date when light will enter both windows at sunrise)--Thus may have been used to define the period of time in which zenith passage occurs and more precise time det. elswewhere

THE INTIHUATANA STONE

One of the highest points of the citadel; it sits atop a terraced pyramid on the western edge of the plaza; altitude would allow for eastern and western views of the horizon, but a wall prevents the eastern view, and the western h. is too distant and is unsuitable for contructing pillars

Stone does not seem to have any use as an observing instrument, but the site itself may havve been important; someone standing on the stone would have an unobstructed view of the ridge of San Miguel, one of the only sigments of horizon near enough to the citadel to construct pillars to mark a horizon position

Seem to be 2 artificial pillars that stuck up above the jungle; also a natural rock outcrip w/ a window through it, seen especially clearly at sunset

the pillars and 2 mounds between them might be part of an old Huaca; there is an old, unmaintained trail up there (lots of poisonous snakes).

Window: Sun shines through it on 2 dates (May 11 and Aug. 2) that have no astronomical significance, but the Aug. date starts the beginning of the Herranza period that signals the start of planting season. Other dates associated with the pillars seem to correspond with Fiesta of Santa Cruz (May 1-3) and again are assoc. w/ harvest season

Conclusions: The Temple of the Moon could use additional work; perhaps was used to observe solar zenith passage