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Mapping the Political Landscape: Toward a GIS Analysis of Environmental and Social Difference

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Abstract

This paper employs geographic information systems (GIS) to analyze the relationship between environmental context and social inequality. Using recent archaeological data from the political center of the Inka Empire (Cuzco, Peru), it investigates how material and spatial boundaries embed social differences within the environment at both local and regional scales. In doing so, the paper moves beyond conventional archaeological GIS approaches that treat the environment as a unitary phenomenon. It develops a methodological and theoretical framework for the examination of a political landscape—the distinct spaces and materials that differentially shape people’s social experience and perception of their environment.

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Notes

  1. Some GIS researchers have improved upon this approach and its strict econometric logic. They have generated novel multi-criteria cost surface analyses that consider how cultural choices, such as predilections toward avoiding landscape features like mortuary monuments, influence people’s movement through and experience of the environment (Bell and Lock 2000; Howey 2007; Llobera 2000).

  2. We conduct a regional, synchronic study of architectural and environmental variation in the Ollantaytmbo area at the apex of Inka power (ca. 1400–1532 ad). Currently, we lack the chronological precision to study diachronic processes that may have occurred during the Cuzco region Inka period. Yet excavations, regional surveys, and radiocarbon dates suggest that many Inka sites were continually occupied throughout Inka rule (e.g., Bauer 2004; Covey 2006; Dwyer 1971; Kendall 1985, 1996; Kosiba 2010; McEwan et al. 2002). In this light, our study considers an accreted Inka landscape—the settlement patterns, monumental enclosures, and grandiose elite estates that defined the Cuzco area on the eve of the Spanish invasion.

  3. Although there are certainly local variations and styles (see Morris and Thompson 1985), Inka buildings are typically rectangular, stone, hip-roofed, stand-alone, one-room structures with a single door opening onto a patio space (see examples in Gasparini and Margolies 1980; Kendall 1976; Niles 1987). Residential buildings often exhibit only slight variations on this form. Elite residential structures are simply larger and stylistically embellished versions of archetypical commoner houses. The elite residential structures do not usually contain any additional internal spatial divisions, like interior rooms, hallways or receiving areas.

  4. It is possible that some R1 buildings in MPT were demolished or eroded. However, the general regional and intra-site patterns observed throughout the study clearly indicate that R2 and R3 were constructed in and near such landsMPT.

  5. Fieldworkers walked transects (spaced, 5–10 m apart) within different sectors (e.g., residential, mortuary, ceremonial, agricultural, and colluvial deposit) of these sites. They collected all surface-level material (undecorated sherds, body sherds, diagnostics, lithics, etc.) within approximately 1 m of their transect lines. Using natural breaks (jenks) in the data, the surface collection percentages were reclassified into low, low-medium, high-medium and high categories. The chi-square results for Inka polychrome high/low categories relative to the two architectural categories (R1 and R2–R3) are: (χ 2 = 16.8; df = 1; sig at 0.001 alpha level), again showing that such materials and spaces are more commonly associated with more elaborate spaces.

  6. The WAP survey initially classified Pacpayoq as two sites located upon the upper and lower portions of a hillside (W-135 and W-137). In this intra-site analysis, the hillside is treated as a single settlement.

  7. We conducted viewshed analyses using both the TIN and DEM and found that the results were very much alike. Similar overall viewsheds were generated. The different surfaces revealed the visibility of the same environmental features. We used the DEM in this analysis since it yields a smoother surface for visual analysis and presentation. Since the viewshed analyis largely considers visibility of specific environmental features, there is no reason to assume that one of these topographic surfaces is more accurate than another.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Adam Smith, Alan Kolata, Kathleen Morrison, Royal Ghazal, Maureen Marshall, Alan Greene, Michelle Lelièvre, Rebecca Graff, and Meredith McGuire for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. We also appreciate the insightful comments of three anonymous reviewers. Brian Bauer, Alan Covey, Luis Cuba Peña, Vicentina Galiano Blanco, and Graham Hannegan provided invaluable advice throughout the Wat’a Archaeological Project. The Paqpayoq map was drawn in part by Axel Aráoz Silva, with important corrections provided by Yeshica Amado Galiano. A Fulbright-Hays fellowship and a National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant provided funding for the Wat’a Archaeological Project. The University of Chicago’s Committee on Southern Asian Studies and the Department of Anthropology provided travel support for the delivery of an early version of this paper at the Society for American Archaeology’s 71st annual meeting. The ASTER data used in this study are a product of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI).

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Kosiba, S., Bauer, A.M. Mapping the Political Landscape: Toward a GIS Analysis of Environmental and Social Difference. J Archaeol Method Theory 20, 61–101 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-011-9126-z

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