Cosmology, ancestors and mortuary monuments: Principles of political authority in the Rapayán and Tantamayo region of the upper Marañón in the central Andes of Peru during the Late Intermediate Period (1000-1450 CE)

Abstract

This paper addresses the cosmological foundations of political authority in the Rapayán-Tantamayo region of the highlands of Peru during the Late Intermediate Period (1000–1450 CE). The people of this region organized their residential settlements around large and elaborate multi-storied tombs where mummified founding ancestors dwelled. The evidence presented reveals that selected families at each settlement built their houses at the foot of these above-ground tombs. By doing so, they controlled the access to the communities’ founding ancestors who were thought to hold cosmological vitalizing energy necessary for the reproduction of the collectivity. Using ethnohistorical analogy, I argue that the heads of such households, through privileged interactions with potent deceased, acted as intermediaries between the life-giving force of primordial ancestors and the well-being of their community. The manifestations of political authority built around the relationship of specific individuals with powerful ancestors represent one of the main contributions of this investigation as the relational agency among these protagonists has proven difficult to identify in the archaeological record elsewhere in the Andean highlands. The results of our investigation therefore contrast with interpretations emphasizing the collective agency of “ancestors” in the legitimization processes of depersonalized cooperate political authority.