Pachacamac: a navigational landmark in the late 18th and early 19th centuries

Abstract

The Pachacamac sanctuary was home to one of the main deities of pre-Hispanic Peru; its power was expressed in the call to dozens of pilgrims who came to this sacred space to make their supplications. Its strategic location was reaffirmed in the last period of pre-Hispanic occupation, when with the arrival of the Incas and the construction of the Temple of the Sun, in addition to its essential religious functions, this building transformed the coastal marine landscape for economic and political purposes. In the imagination of the 20th and 21st centuries, Pachacamac represents a set of sacred constructions in the coastal desert. With the intention of understanding the relationships that existed between the sanctuary and its surrounding territory, we analyzed the archaeological record, pre-Hispanic representations in various media, colonial chronicles, nautical charts from the 18th and 19th centuries and references from scientific-travelers of the 20th century. XIX, which suggest that the meaning of Pachacamac did not lie solely in the buildings and temples built by pre-Hispanic societies over a thousand years, but that the sanctuary extended over a continuous space, which involved, from its earliest times, aquatic ecosystems, coastal wetlands, the Lurín River and its valley, the coastline and the adjacent islands, as elements and symbols of its prestige and sacredness as an expression of our Andean cultural identity.