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 3 Traditional architecture as
peopled practice at Monte
Viudo, Chachapoyas, Peru
Anna Guengerich

Introduction
Domestic architecture demonstrates an extraordinary variety of forms across
the world and throughout history: houses are raised on stilts, cut into caves, large
enough to house whole communities, reserved for a nuclear family, crafted to
last only for a nights rest, or built to house a family for generations. This vari-
ation suggests that house form is a function of many factors beyond the cross-
culturally relevant purpose of sheltering household activities of production,
reproduction, consumption, and transmission.
What forces shape the material characteristics of buildings created accord-
ing to traditional styles and how can they be recognized in archaeological
contexts? This chapter addresses these questions through a case study of the
motivations, practices, and physical and social constraints that intertwined in
the creation of houses at Monte Viudo, a village in the Chachapoyas region of
northeastern Peru that was occupied between 12501450 CE. Although Monte
Viudos houses shared certain basic features in other words, they all belonged
to the genre of the traditional Chachapoya house their variations in detail
argue that the moral force of tradition alone cannot fully account for their
production. Instead, in order to understand their creation it is necessary to not
only identify the factors that shaped traditional house form in an aggregate
manner, but also to disentangle how these factors intertwined differentially in
the production of individual buildings.
Before continuing, it is important to clarify the terminology used here, given
the differences of use among contributors to this volume. This chapter focuses
specifically on domestic architecture, which I define as buildings in which
intimate social groups carry out activities of material and ideological reproduc-
tion on an everyday basis. In many cases, including Monte Viudo, this term is
interchangeable with houses, where co-resident household groups actually
reside, and in particular, eat and sleep (as opposed to domestic shrines or stor-
age structures).The term traditional refers to buildings whose form, materials,
or construction techniques are derived primarily from existing architectural
standards in a social community, while vernacular architecture refers to build-
ings whose design and construction heavily involves those who use them and

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 48 Anna Guengerich
the communities to which they belong. Domestic architecture, in this usage,
therefore constitutes a subset of vernacular architecture indeed, an especially
important one, since it makes up the bulk of this category in non-industrial
societies like those represented in this volume. In the pre-Hispanic Andes, tra-
ditional, vernacular, and domestic refer in most cases to the same set of
architecture, and the choice of adjective essentially reflects the analytical frame-
work in which they are interpreted.

Explanations of form in domestic architecture

The question of why traditional architecture takes given forms, or why people
live in houses at all, represents a common subject of inquiry in both the Western
tradition (Rykwert 1972) and in origin narratives worldwide. Prior to the 21st
century, many scholars posited that vernacular architecture is the product of a
cultural genius on the part of (primitive) social groups whose intuitive com-
munion with nature is reflected in an aesthetic sensibility shared by members
of that group (Hubka 1979; Upton 1990; e.g. Rudofsky 1964). Modern schol-
ars have argued that vernacular architecture, after centuries of in situ trial and
error, is supremely adapted to the climate, resources, and economic modes of
a given environmental region (e.g. Fitch and Branch 1960). Such functional-
ist explanations of domestic architecture fell out of favor since the publication
of Rapoports House Form and Culture (1969), which pointed out that cultural
values and ideologies are at least as influential as environmental factors. Yet it
would be absurd to deny that the environment does set certain constraints on
building form, and recently some works (e.g. Asquith and Vellinga 2006) have
turned to vernacular architecture for insights on sustainable building practices
in a world of increasingly strained resources.
Anthropologists have looked primarily to social organization and ideology to
explain house form. Morgans Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines
(1965 [1881]), for example, was a seminal early work, which posited that social
structure determined the spatial organization of house form. More recent per-
mutations of this thesis have likewise been influential. For example, Kent (1990)
argues that the degree of spatial segmentation in a societys built environment
correlates with its degree of socio-political complexity as evaluated in terms of
attributes such as gender, hierarchy, and division of labor. Similarly, Bill Hilliers
theory of spatial syntax (e.g. Hillier and Hanson 1984) posits that the layout and
the number of discrete spaces that constitute an architectural unit both reflect
and reinforce the qualities of social integration and of hierarchy.
Structuralist interpretations of house form, and particularly of spatial layout,
brought the study of domestic architecture to an apogee in anthropology in
the late 1960s to early 1980s. These works locate the primary determinants
of house form in deeply held cultural templates, which are also manifested in
other cultural forms such as social organization and ontology (e.g. Bourdieu
1973; Glassie 1975). Other scholars have perceived house form as a reflection
of ethnicity, and archaeologists in particular have used it to infer the ethnic

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 Traditional architecture at Monte Viudo, Peru 49
identity of communities in the past (e.g. Aldenderfer and Stanish 1993). Perhaps
the most influential framework used to interpret house form in contemporary
anthropological scholarship is Bourdieus (1977) concept of habitus, which
posits that cultural structures are reproduced through subjects embodied prac-
tices, which are in turn shaped at a non-discursive level by existing cultural
structures (e.g. Donley-Reid 1990; Pader 1988). Bourdieu pays particularly
close attention to the built environment in his work, and by pinpointing the
house as the primary mechanism for the inculcation of habitus (1977:89), he all
but ensured that scholars of domestic architecture would embrace this model
as especially useful.
These interpretive frameworks provide significant insight into variation that
occurs across different cultural traditions. Yet they account less successfully for
variation within them. Explanations rooted in social complexity, the environ-
ment, or structuralist models are formulated at the scale of the group or com-
munity, and describe factors that impact all group members equally. Both of the
two major ways in which vernacular architecture has typically been defined
either by its juxtaposition to architecture built by trained professionals, or
by its intimate relationship to culturally specific lifeways (Upton 1990) are
premised on a categorical rather than an individual subject. For instance, to
analyze Monticello as an example of vernacular architecture would require it to
be framed as a Neoclassical American home rather than as the materialization
of a philosophical program conceived by a learned individual,Thomas Jefferson.
What is key to fully understanding vernacular architecture, and what is miss-
ing in the aforementioned frameworks, is a practice-based approach that recog-
nizes individual buildings as the products of actions by human beings who are
uniquely positioned in specific social and political structures (e.g. Carter and
Crumley 2005:1315; Colloredo-Mansfeld 1994;Wilk 1990). Habitus moves in
this direction, but allows only limited agency on the part of individual build-
ers. Moreover, habitus is fundamentally diachronic rather than synchronic in its
scope, and does not offer a comprehensive model for the production of vari-
ation among members of a contemporaneous community. Status, however, is
one framework that has managed to highlight the existence of intra-cultural
differences in architectural form. Archaeologists have had success in identifying
features that are often correlated with relatively higher status, such as greater
floor area, more labor-intensive or durable construction materials, internal sub-
divisions, and elaborate decorative elements (e.g. Blanton 1994; Carmean et al.
2011; DeMarrais 2001; Hirth 1993).
In other words, the study of house form requires identifying the historically
specific processes that culminate in its creation, while at the same time situating
them in relationship to similar forms that together make up a broader building
tradition. This is not a new concept; in fact, it has always been part and parcel
of archaeological agendas in the case of monumental architecture. Stonehenge,
for example, belongs to a long tradition of Neolithic henge complexes, but its
particularly large and enduring form requires it to be examined on its own
terms, too, as something distinctive (Bradley 1998). In the context of domestic

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 50 Anna Guengerich
architecture, this approach requires us to first recognize that houses were the
creation of architects. By this I do not mean a class of formally trained profes-
sionals (cf. Upton 1990); rather, I refer simply to the fact that all buildings,
even the most ordinary, are produced by individuals who have to make choices
about what their creations will look like, where they will stand, how to allocate
resources, who will carry out which construction tasks, and so on. The fact
that houses were typically the most massive forms of material culture among
many pre-industrial societies, and therefore required an especially high input
of resources, means that such decisions were probably not undertaken lightly
(Carter and Crumley 2005:1415; Wilk 1990). This chapter could therefore be
understood as a bid to recognize agency in a realm of material culture where
archaeologists have not traditionally studied it (e.g. Guengerich 2014a; Pauketat
and Alt 2005). Alternately, it could be summarized more pithily as an attempt
to recognize houses with faces, in a nod to Tringhams (1991) concept of
households with faces, by which she sought to restore actors to reconstruc-
tions of domestic practice.
Efforts to restore agency and individual decision-making to the production
of vernacular buildings represent one of the major points of intervention in
recent scholarship of traditional architecture. In contrast to older definitions
of traditional architecture as something that is passively received and passed
down, many scholars, including archaeologists, now acknowledge that it is
only through agentive actions that traditions are perpetuated, as people cite
familiar and desired iterations of a form (e.g. Dobres and Robb 2000; Pauke-
tat 2001; Van Dyke 2009). Speaking of contemporary Indonesia, Marcel Vel-
linga (2006:89) characterizes traditional architecture as a continuous creative
process through which people, as active agents, negotiate, interpret and adapt
knowledge and experiences gained in the past within the context of the chal-
lenges, wishes and requirements of the present. In this light, reproduction and
continuity of traditional forms pose objects of analysis, rather than simply a
backdrop against which changes need to be explained.

How to see faces

A number of recent works, especially among ethnographers, put faces in domes-
tic architecture by tracing how the goals, resources, aesthetic dispositions, and
subject positions of different individuals intertwine in the reproduction and
innovation of traditional styles. These studies demonstrate that traditional archi-
tecture is not static, but evolves through minor and major changes introduced
by builders to suit their needs (Bronner 2006; Oliver 1986; Upton 1993; Vel-
linga 2006). Sometimes these changes are introduced by local, respected special-
ists with more extensive building experience or creative talent (e.g. Marchand
2006). At other times, builders may take advantage of newly available economic
or material resources for social or ideological purposes (e.g. Colloredo-Mansfeld
1994; Fletcher 1997; Thomas 1998). Builders may alter vernacular traditions in
response to external pressures or expectations (e.g. Lyons 1996; Stasch 2011).

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 Traditional architecture at Monte Viudo, Peru 51
The agency of builders, though, may also be evident when individuals explicitly
choose to reproduce or adapt familiar forms under changing social circum-
stances (e.g. Andreoli and DAndrea 2014; Kohn 2010). Even in cases when peo-
ple reflect minimally or not at all on the use of traditional forms or construction
techniques, they exercise agency in decisions of how to mobilize labor, how to
allocate or acquire resources, and how to adapt familiar forms to the construc-
tion site in question (e.g. Wilk 1990).
Studies of contemporary societies, where the researcher can engage the indi-
viduals who produce domestic architecture face-to-face, render these efforts
much less complicated. But how is it possible to discern houses with faces in
archaeological contexts, where not only the faces but even the houses themselves
have often disappeared? In the case study of Monte Viudo, I make use of three
strategies that may aid in this effort. First, researchers should reduce the scale
of their analyses in order to be able to perceive variability in vernacular archi-
tecture within communities (e.g. Hodder and Cessford 2004; Pauketat and Alt
2005; van Gijseghem 2001). Differences in the form of material culture are one
way to discern agency, even intention, archaeologically (Hegmon and Kulow
2005), yet in the case of vernacular traditions, it may take a fine eye to discern
them (Figure 3.1). For the communities that built and experienced domestic
buildings in the past, even minor flourishes or innovations were perceived and
meaningfully interpreted through culturally specific frameworks (Hubka 1979).

Figure 3.1 A unique pattern in the otherwise coursed masonry of Structure 208.

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 52 Anna Guengerich
A second strategy is to consider the events and practices of the construc-
tion process, from the identification of the construction site and negotiation
of natural resources to the raising of the roof (Guengerich 2014a; Love 2013;
Stevanovic 1997). It is impossible, even in an archaeological context, to recon-
struct the steps of the building process without envisioning the individuals who
planned them, directed them, carried them out, profited from them, or collec-
tively remembered them. Although shared moral values, kinship principles, and
aesthetic sensibilities influence house design and construction, the creation of
each house reflects the unique social and material circumstances of its builders.
A final strategy is simply to reorient our theoretical expectations about what
domestic architecture is and does. By critically examining what tradition
constitutes in the realm of domestic architecture, the researcher acknowledges
the possibility that human subjects often have discursively articulated reasons
for realizing their residences in particular forms, whether this entails perpetuat-
ing familiar styles and techniques, introducing small variations, or reconfiguring
them in new ways.

Chachapoya houses
Between 1250 and 1450 CE, some one to two thousand people lived at what is
now the archaeological site of Monte Viudo, located in the Chachapoyas area
of northeastern Peru (Guengerich 2014a, 2014b). Chachapoyas is a region of
high-altitude, tropical cloud forest (ceja de selva), sandwiched on the east face
of the Andes between the high cordillera to the west and the Amazon Basin to
the east.This strategic location enabled its inhabitants to play important roles in
mediating far-flung networks of trade and interaction (Church and von Hagen
2008). During the Chachapoya period (10001450 CE) during which Monte
Viudo was inhabited, settlement organization in this region consisted of dense,
nucleated villages, each of which probably possessed its own sense of commu-
nity identity and political autonomy (Church and von Hagen 2008; Schjellerup
1997). These settlements were built on mountaintops that spatially separated
them from each other, and their built environments consisted almost entirely of
circular stone structures (Figure 3.2), which ranged from several dozen to sev-
eral hundred in number. The majority of these were residences, although some
served as ritual or communal structures.
Monumental corporate architecture, public spaces, and centralized planning
were not present at most sites, and instead houses which were large, impres-
sive constructions played important roles in the social and political dynam-
ics of communities (Guengerich 2014a). Although Chachapoya houses shared
basic attributes with many areas of the Andean highlands during this time,
including their circular form, stone construction, and cellular layout, they stood
out for their relatively large size and for features described later in this chapter,
such as platform-bases and friezes that were unique to this region.
The research on which this chapter is based took place from 2010 to 2012 as
part of PAPCHA (Proyecto Arqueolgico Pueblo Chachapoya), a project that aimed
to characterize the spatial layout and architectural features of this site and to

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 Traditional architecture at Monte Viudo, Peru 53

Figure 3.2 A partially reconstructed Chachapoya house at the site of Kuelap.

identify the practices associated with ritual, domestic, communal, and other kinds
of settings. This was achieved through mapping, excavations in domestic, ritual,
and multi-purpose contexts, and laboratory analysis of ceramics, lithics, and soil
chemistry, and of botanical, faunal, and human remains (Guengerich 2014b).

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 54 Anna Guengerich

Figure 3.3 Structure 190, one of the best-preserved buildings at Monte Viudo.

The dense vegetation covering much of Monte Viudo has led to extraordi-
nary conditions of preservation (Figure 3.3), which enabled recording of all
293 structures at the site approximately 289 of which were houses through
photographs, measurements, and scale drawings of selected buildings. These for-
tunate circumstances make possible a much richer interpretation of the role of
domestic architecture than is normally possible in archaeological circumstances,
in particular, by considering material as well as spatial attributes.

Designing houses
This and the following section consider two different aspects of the creation
of houses at Monte Viudo: their design and their construction. Both of these
processes enable examination of the social contexts in which traditional forms
were reproduced and modified.
The factor in house design that is most clearly evidenced at Monte Viudo is
status. An examination of different attributes of houses, however, demonstrates
that status was materialized or achieved through a variety of semiotic modes.
As others have noted, it is important not merely to recognize the existence of
the relationship between status and domestic architectural form, but also that
this relationship is culturally variable (Colloredo-Mansfeld 1994; Johnson 1990;
Wilk 1983). Both minimalist, ultra-modern penthouses and McMansions
with turrets and four-car garages signify status among different populations of
contemporary America, but through very different material constructions.

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 Traditional architecture at Monte Viudo, Peru 55
Most archaeologists, when seeking to explain how architecture features such
as house size or construction materials signify status, have adapted Abramss
(1989) theory of energetics, which was originally formulated in the context
of monumental architecture. Abrams posits that larger structures that use more
labor-intensive methods for their construction index greater control over
human labor on the part of those who commission them. At Monte Viudo, too,
houses with the greatest interior areas tend to be characterized by more labor-
intensive masonry of regular, bricklike, coursed stones, whereas the smallest
houses were built of minimally modified cobbles that could more rapidly be
assembled using mortar, which produced walls with irregular faces (Figure 3.4).
Greater house size and the use of more labor-intensive masonry types were
correlated in a statistically significant manner (ANOVA value for F = 5.735,
df = 5, p < 0.001, Guengerich 2014a:9).The largest houses with the most labor-
intensive masonry cluster together in Upper Sector West, adjacent to the sites
central ritual sector, and many are characterized by special features that will be
described shortly; the co-occurrence of all these features argues strongly that
buildings in this area were occupied by high-status households.
The greater size and more labor-intensive masonry of some houses sug-
gest that household status at Monte Viudo was in part constituted through
social capital, which was indexed in the extent of social networks a household
could call upon during construction (e.g. Bronner 2006:3336; Guengerich
2014a). In its equation of social power with materialized labor, this interpreta-
tion resembles Abramss model, yet the lack of evidence for institutionalized
hierarchy in this community would have made construction a fundamentally

Figure 3.4 Masonry variation at Monte Viudo. (Clockwise from upper left) Structure 63,
Structure 97, Structure 219, Structure 251.

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 56 Anna Guengerich
different endeavor. Labor pools probably comprised individuals to whom the
household was socially or ritually tied, or whom they otherwise persuaded
to join in. Because house size and masonry quality vary gradually at Monte
Viudo, rather than falling into sharply demarcated categories, this suggests that
these features varied with a households social and economic resources, rather
than being linked to discursively differentiated identity categories (Guengerich
2014a).
A much different material relation to status is evidenced by friezes and mesadas.
The term frieze refers in Chachapoya studies to a horizontal band of mosaic-like
stones that form geometric motifs of rhombuses, zigzags, volutes, or checker-
boards (Figure 3.5). Friezes encircle buildings either on the platform-base or
above the entrance (Church and von Hagen 2008:914). Mesadas (i.e. table-like
features) are rectilinear stone structures approximately a meter wide, half a meter
high, and half a meter deep, which abut the back wall of houses (Figure 3.6).
Their function is uncertain, but some evidence suggests that they served as
temporary places of interment for deceased household members (Guengerich
2014b:192193). To date, mesadas have only been identified at Monte Viudo.
Along with friezes, they are located exclusively in the large houses with labor-
intensive masonry of Upper Sector West, the probable high-status neighborhood
(Guengerich 2014b) (Figure 3.7).This suggests that the use of these features was
restricted to high-status households. In the case of friezes, households may have
had to contract artisans for their creation, since they required a high level of
technical expertise that, given their limited presence at the site, was probably
not common knowledge.
Friezes and mesadas functioned as symbols of high status whose meaning was
discursively fixed, or symbolic, whereas house size and masonry type signified

Figure 3.5 A zigzag-motif frieze on the platform-base of Structure 194.

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 Figure 3.6 Guidmar Chvez Llatance and Emanuel Vega Llatance excavate the floor in front
of a mesada feature in Structure 275 (photo by Sally Lynch).

Figure 3.7 Plan of Monte Viudo. Gray shading indicates houses with friezes; diagonal lines
indicate buildings with niches; diagonal gray stripes indicate houses with mesadas.
Structures mentioned in the text are indicated with numbers.

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 58 Anna Guengerich
status in an indexical manner, using Peirces (2011) terminology. Whereas the
realization of larger houses with finer masonry was conditioned by the labor
resources available to a household, the use of friezes and mesadas was probably
governed by sumptuary principles that did not afford low-status households the
choice to incorporate them into their residences. Concomitantly, the size and
masonry style of a house probably required a more complex series of decision-
making on the part of builders than did friezes and mesadas, which simply
presented an either-or option. But mesadas may have produced or reinforced
status in non-semiotic ways as well, since domestic burials worldwide constitute
a source of social or ontological power through the co-presence of living and
deceased household members dwelling in the same space (McAnany 2011).
A second value that motivated decisions about house form at Monte Viudo
can be glossed as tradition or moral propriety, which was manifested in
attempts to reproduce normatively valued architectural features.This is best seen
in the case of niches (Figure 3.8). Niches are rectilinear to slightly trapezoidal
in form, and were built into the interior walls of houses and ritual structures
alike. They occur in houses across the site (see Figure 3.7), of all masonry types.
Unlike friezes, their presence is not correlated to house size in a statistically
significant manner (Guengerich 2014a:10). Niches were executed in a variety
of styles that, like masonry, probably resulted from the labor and construction
expertise to which a household had access. These data suggest that niches were
a morally valorized feature that households across Monte Viudo, regardless of
status, both sought and were sanctioned to use in their residences.
Another attribute that was clearly guided by a desire to reproduce norma-
tive forms was the circular shape of houses. All houses at Monte Viudo repeat
the basic template of a freestanding circular structure lacking internal divisions
or annexed chambers. Indeed, the repetition of the circular house across the
entire Chachapoyas region is so invariable (e.g. Koschmieder 2012; Narvez
2013; Schjellerup 1997) as to suggest that innovation in house form would
have violated basic understandings of what constituted the domestic space, or
even the ontological relationship of the house, society, and cosmos.Yet, despite
this consistency, it is precisely here that faces appear with surprising clarity:
at Monte Viudo as well as other sites, the many less-than-perfect ovoid and
sub-rectangular houses demonstrate the solutions of builders who sought to

Figure 3.8 Niche styles at Monte Viudo. (Left to right) Structure 61, Structure 192, Structure 251.

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 Traditional architecture at Monte Viudo, Peru 59
recreate a traditional form by modifying it ad hoc in steep and rocky terrains that
challenged its precise replication.
In contrast to features related to either status or tradition, variation in doorway
form is idiosyncratic in nature. Due to Monte Viudos relatively remote location
and the density of vegetation present, a considerable number of buildings still
retain their doorframes, in some cases even with lintels intact (Figure 3.9). The
majority of doorframes were made of headers and stretchers (see Figure 3.9,
left). A variation of this style characterizes Structure 199, a high-status residence
that originally had a frieze above the lintel. Its doorway is framed by vertical
slabs that alternate with the horizontally placed stretchers to form a clever pat-
tern (see Figure 3.9, right). An entirely different style characterizes Structure 61,
which probably belonged to a lower-status household. Its entrance is framed by
two monolithic pillars approximately 40 cm square, which required substantial
effort to transport and emplace (see Figure 3.9, center). Again, most lintels at
Monte Viudo were mostly long and slab-like, but the entrance of at least one
building, Structure 195, is characterized by a thicker, more robust lintel that
echoes the distinctively large and squarish stones of the platform-base.
As far as it is possible to determine given the vagaries of preservation, the
doorway styles of Structures 199 and 61 and the lintel of Structure 195 were
either wholly unique or at least rare at Monte Viudo. This scarcity suggests that
they were not legible within any site-wide system of architectural semiotics,
but rather their distinctiveness itself was their most salient quality. I suggest that
they comprised acts of artistic invention on the part of the houses inhabitants
or builders. A households familiarity with aesthetic genres may have been a
sign of status (sensu Bourdieu 1984); alternately, these innovations may have
enhanced the prestige of the artisans who executed them. Ethnographic lit-
erature, in fact, describes many vernacular building traditions in which certain
individuals are regarded as master artists, whose innovations in small details and
mastery of traditional compositional canons are esteemed by their communities
(e.g. Marchand 2006). This kind of creative activity need not be perceived as

Figure 3.9 Doorway styles at Monte Viudo. (Left to right) Structure 177, Structure 61, and
Structure 199.

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 60 Anna Guengerich
evidence of a Western-style sense of individual self-expression; instead, it might
as readily be understood as a delight in the play of form and material on the
part of individuals knowledgeable in a given medium.
The creation of most architectural features, however, was probably not moti-
vated by any single impetus as straightforward as status, tradition, or innovation.
Instead, their production and their impact was the outcome of the interplay
between different possibilities, values, decisions, and new ideas. For example,
the doorway styles that builders settled on may have been contextualized in
broader ontological understandings of doorways as powerful, liminal spaces, as
commonly observed worldwide. Particular stones may have been selected not
only for their nearby location or their technical properties, but also because
they were understood as animate entities endowed with potentials or person-
alities (e.g. Dean 2010). Platform-bases, a distinctively Chachapoya architectural
feature, demonstrate especially well the multiplex forces at work in the design
process. Sometimes confused with lower stories, they were in fact filled with
soil or rocks, elevating the doorways of buildings above the ground surface (see
Figures 3.2, 3.3). At Monte Viudo, platform-bases varied in height from less
than 1 m to nearly 4 m. In one sense, they served a basic engineering purpose:
Chachapoya sites are typically located on steep and rocky terrain (Church and
von Hagen 2008; Schjellerup 1997), and platform-bases made it possible to
construct freestanding structures without building larger terraces to level the
terrain. This was necessary in many parts of Monte Viudo, particularly Sector
Northwest, where it is difficult to even traverse this area on foot. Platform-bases
therefore represented an innovation that enabled the community to expand to
parts of the terrain that would otherwise have been uninhabitable.
Platforms were not created for exclusively functional purposes, however, as
indicated by their common presence in areas of relatively flat terrain, such as
Sector West at Monte Viudo or at the regional center of Kuelap, a site that
consists of an artificially flattened platform that is easily traversable (Narvez
2013). Their presence in these cases might be understood as another instan-
tiation of a traditional or aesthetic norm, or, conversely, of the status-linked
conspicuous consumption of labor. Moreover, platform-bases were often far
taller than required by the terrain. In Sector West, several houses are elevated
on platform-bases 3 m high, nearly as tall as those in much steeper areas of the
site. The houses with platform-bases in Sector West have only restricted areas
of open space in front, which requires passersby to crane their necks sharply
upward in order to view them and, originally, their occupants. These houses
bodily inculcated a sense of their superiority among those who viewed them,
thereby offering yet another material means through which high-status mem-
bers of this community reinforced this identity in the eyes or, more accurately,
the bodies of others.

Building houses
Regardless of what architects had in mind for a houses form, the final product
was an outcome of how those plans and decisions intersected with the actions

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 Traditional architecture at Monte Viudo, Peru 61
of the other human and non-human actors involved in the building process.
Above all, building a house as large as those at Monte Viudo was not simply a
question of builders rearranging inert matter as they saw fit, but a project that
entailed negotiation of working through and with the material and social
worlds in which builders were embedded (Ingold 2010).
The physical qualities of building materials set basic conditions on how
people used them. They facilitated or resisted certain kinds of practices, and
encouraged certain forms of social engagements to accommodate them. Above
all, a tremendous mobilization of human resources was necessary to build a
house in limestone, topped with the peaked, conical thatched roof that was
characteristic of Chachapoya circular buildings (Davis 1996). An average-sized
house with a 5 m diameter excluding the platform-base contained approxi-
mately 30 metric tons of limestone and 25 logs, each 5 m long, for the roof
(Guengerich 2014a:10). Wood was procured in distant forests and transported
up the mountain on which Monte Viudo is located; roofs were periodically re-
thatched due to rot in the rainy climate; and wood was felled and stone quar-
ried with the use of stone tools.
Like many cultures around the world where large, durable residential build-
ings require extensive inputs of labor, house builders at Monte Viudo undoubt-
edly relied on the contributions of an extensive social network (e.g. Bronner
2006:3336; Mayer 1977; Thomas 1998). Individuals may have been obligated
to fulfill particular construction roles based on their kin relationship to mem-
bers of the builder household wifes brother, patrilateral females, compadres,
and so on (e.g. Arnold 1998; Mayer 1977). Other participants might have par-
ticipated in order to return comparable labor previously rendered to them,
perhaps similar to the generalized Andean concept of ayni, or huasheo in mod-
ern Chachapoyas (Brush 1977). Neighbors with no special connection to the
household may have volunteered because house construction was a festive and
entertaining event, accompanied by generous provisions of food and especially
drink, as is true throughout the modern Andes (e.g. Leinaweaver 2009). Other
participants were probably needed, and perhaps compensated, for individual
technical expertise in domains such as engineering, artistry, or geomancy (e.g.
Marchand 2006).
With this many people involved in construction, the final outcome of a
building was the result of negotiations made at every step of the way. The first
of these likely occurred when a new household made the decision to build
its own residence. Evidence suggests that Monte Viudos inhabitants followed
a neolocal residential pattern, since houses were freestanding and regularly
spaced (Guengerich 2014b:180). By contrast, domestic buildings distributed in
agglutinative clusters or patio groups usually indicate extended family house-
holds in which adult childrens families remain in the natal household. New
couples, therefore, probably first had to consult with parents or in-laws to
determine the appropriate time to establish a new space for their household
(e.g. Weismantel 1989). From here, a second round of negotiations between
kin and neighbors probably accompanied the decision of where to build the
new house. Spatial politics were undoubtedly fraught at Monte Viudo, which

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 62 Anna Guengerich
is located on a mountaintop with scarce open space; houses were packed so
closely together as to not even permit open patio areas between them. Once
construction and preparation was underway, many of the parties involved
older kin, neighbors, women, men, hired specialists, community elders may
have proffered input on house design, perhaps in a helpful spirit prompted
by their own experience of building or living in houses, or perhaps for more
political reasons motivated by concerns with how the new house would reflect
on their own.
A major constraint on house form were the resources both social and
material possessed by the new household. Attributes such as masonry style
and house size depended on the available pool of labor: for young households
embarking on a construction project, only those who were either socially well
connected or else possessed great charisma could build the largest and most
impressive houses. More extensive kin networks probably implied greater pro-
ductive potential too, so young households with greater social capital probably
also had greater access to the foodstuffs that would be turned into the dishes,
brews, and pouches of coca served to those who joined the construction effort.
Across the modern Andean highlands, house and roof construction are not
only profoundly ritual events (e.g. Arnold 1998), but are also wildly festive in
essence, raucous parties filled with alcohol, music, joking, and dance, in which it
is a matter of prestige for hosts to generously provide for participants (e.g. Brush
1977; Leinaweaver 2009; Mayer 1977). It is likely, then, that at Monte Viudo
the ability to create an ideal house characterized by all the traditionally and
socially desirable features was conditioned by the economic and social resources
that the household possessed at a formative point early in the domestic cycle.
In effect, the relationship between social status and access to the labor needed
to construct a large and exemplary house did not consist simply of an energetic
calculus, but instead was tightly bound up with affect, intimacy, and embodied
sensory experience.
The stakes of all these decisions and interactions were furthermore raised by
aesthetic or ideological factors that discouraged future modification of houses.
Excavations revealed virtually no examples of renovations, the creation of new
annex buildings, or major changes in spatial organization over time (Guenger-
ich 2014b:165). Maintaining the original material and spatial form of a house
may have been a form of respect directed both to the structure itself and to the
households lineage or founding ancestors. It demanded, though, that builders
anticipate in advance the kind of attributes that would serve, and suit, those
who lived in the house in the future. The complex articulation of a set of fixed
features on at least one house floor (Structure 251) demonstrates this kind of
advanced planning (Guengerich 2014b:146). This architectural conservatism
may have had the effect of enhancing the force of tradition, as these relatively
immutable stone structures endured in the village landscape. A massive struc-
ture experienced on an everyday basis would have possessed a quite different
authority than long-perished, ancestral houses remembered only by commu-
nity elders.

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 Traditional architecture at Monte Viudo, Peru 63
Discussion: tradition in practice
What faces appear in Monte Viudos houses? What led members of this com-
munity to continue to create traditional forms over the course of the 200 years
that this site was occupied? Answering this question requires examination of
the circumstances through which familiar building techniques and architec-
tural forms were reproduced, altered, or eschewed. It also requires determining
whether any concept of tradition was indeed meaningful to Monte Viudos
builders. Evidence suggests that this was indeed the case. Several architectural
elements were governed by strong prescriptive rules from which deviation was
either not acceptable or not conceivable.The best example of this is the circular
form of houses, which was approximated as far as possible even in difficult ter-
rain. Another good example is niches, which households in all parts of the site
incorporated in their residences. These attempts to maintain normative forms
despite varying access to labor, expertise, or resources demonstrate that builders
adhered to some conception of traditional architecture in that they sought to
reproduce valued and morally appropriate familiar features.
This basic architectural template, however, accommodated a good deal of
flexibility. Houses varied in their internal area, the height of platform bases, the
use of friezes, the style of masonry, and even in the details gracing their door-
ways.The presence of each feature and the manner in which it was realized had
to be decided upon through agreement between multiple parties. In some cases,
the inclusion of particular features was likely strategic, undertaken with particu-
lar social effects in mind. But architectural form was also the result of factors as
diverse as the physical qualities of the building site, the household groups access
to natural resources, their position within social networks, their own aspirations
and abilities and those of the other individuals participating in construction,
and of course, non-negotiable components of a culturally acceptable, traditional
house. Broad forces such as habitus or status were instantiated in human-scale,
situated practices: builders had to calculate how to maintain a circular plan on
a circumscribed tract of land, or how to create a platform-base tall enough to
adequately capture the present or aspired-to status of the household, given the
hands and axes available for hauling and cutting stone.
Multiple factors were at work within the same house, and even the same
architectural feature. Structure 61, located on a slope in Sector Northwest so
steep that it is difficult to reach while walking upright (Figure 3.10), provides
an illustrative example. The household that built this structure probably held a
relatively low status and had relatively limited access to labor, given the undesir-
able location in which it was built and the rough masonry of the walls.The pos-
sibility that they were obliged to build here due to social constraints rather than
a diminishing availability of space in the village is reinforced by the fact that
Structure 61 was built early during the occupation of Monte Viudo (Guenger-
ich 2014a:7).The major consideration that probably confronted its builders was
likely the inhospitable location. Their solution to this challenge was to erect an
unusually tall platform-base, 3.6 m high, and turn the undesirable aspects of the

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 64 Anna Guengerich

Figure 3.10 Structure 61 viewed from Sector Northeast.

construction site to their advantage by using easily accessible limestone from

the rock outcrops nearby.This enabled builders to circumvent a major expendi-
ture of labor transportation of construction materials thereby stretching
their human resources as far as possible. Yet it also had the secondary effect of
producing a visually impressive building.
Finally, even though the household was not part of a high-status iden-
tity group sanctioned to use friezes, nor did they count on the services of
expert artisans, they nevertheless incorporated several distinctive flourishes that
enhanced the aesthetic qualities of the building. On the interior, architects
placed a niche albeit a small, rough one (see Figure 3.8, left) and incorpo-
rated a distinctive black stone into the masonry of the north wall. They also
created an imposing entrance out of monolithic slabs (see Figure 3.9, center).
The latter two features, in fact, were entirely unique to this building. Alto-
gether, these construction decisions their social and experiential effects in
part planned, in part by-products of more immediate challenges, in part entirely
unanticipated resulted in the creation of a monumental structure that domi-
nates the east face of Sector Northwest.
The example of Structure 61 is especially notable in demonstrating that
house construction at Monte Viudo was an arena of socially meaningful material
practice in which all community members participated, even those of relatively
lower status. Traditional architecture was not an either-or scenario in which
houses were built following one design for elites and another for everyone

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 Traditional architecture at Monte Viudo, Peru 65
else. Instead, the creation of each house was unique in its particular intersec-
tions of material and social factors. For all households, the stakes that tempered
their decisions were high. Houses not only presented enormous expenditures of
social capital, effort, material resources, and time, but due to their stone walls and
high engineering quality they also would endure on the landscape indefinitely.
In sum, traditional house form at Monte Viudo possessed a marked moral
valence, but it also constituted a template for variation. It did not function as
a rigid blueprint for builders who were only capable of replicating tried-and-
true techniques learned from their predecessors, nor did it materialize onto-
logical structures buried too deeply in peoples minds or habitus to be tinkered
with or even questioned. Creating a traditional house required a great deal of
deliberation, both on the part of household members who envisioned it in
advance, as well as during the process of interaction between the many parties
whose actions brought it into being.

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