Building on the Ancestors: Mortuary Structures and Extended Agency in the Late Prehispanic Colca Valley, Peru

Abstract

Theoretical approaches to the agency of inanimate objects have gained traction in bioarchaeological conceptualizations of the dead body and its capacity to shape human action and emotion. In the late prehispanic Andes (ad 1000–1532), new forms of burial involving above-ground funerary structures emplaced ancestral bodies on the landscape and facilitated their incorporation into the unfolding affairs of political and social life. Architectural data from the funerary complex of Yuraq Qaqa in the central Colca Valley suggest that the sequential construction of funerary chambers played a vital role in the elaboration of ancestral agency and its extension into past and future time. Applying a morphogenetic approach to the long-term development of the site, this study demonstrates how the agency of the dead body emerges in relation to other forms of materiality and operates across multiple temporal scales inclusive of, but not limited to, the interval of human–corpse interaction.