Domestic architecture and the materiality of public-making in pre-Columbian Eastern Peru

Abstract

Understanding how publics were constituted in specific socio-historical settings is critical to understanding political practice in past societies. Yet the persistent use of terms such as “public space” and “public architecture” belies the influence of binary models of public and private life that still impact understandings of domestic life and residential architecture. I argue that the continued influence of these models results from the notion that publics in pre-industrial societies were produced primarily through large gatherings associated with standardized kinds of places such as plazas and monuments. This paper, in contrast, takes advantage of the exceptionally well-preserved site complex of Tambillo in Eastern Peru in order to explore how the material qualities of architecture, rather than its spatial layout, mediate the production of publics. I consider how three different modes of engagement with domestic architecture in particular—construction, discourse, and affiliation—generated multiple, diverse publics among the communities of Tambillo. This example demonstrates the variety of ways in which built environments create publics and underscores the need to acknowledge the role of domestic architecture within a broader ecology of the built environment as a whole.