A platform for the Incas
After all the excitement of the Poetry Festival, am now off to a series of gatherings of a very different sort: a conference at the British Museum on Peruvian ushnus, the raised platform structures often found in the centre of Inca plazas or on hill tops.
This may seem a slightly esoteric subject, but the ushnus are both at the centre of the Inca world and yet surprisingly little understood. As one of the speakers plaintively noted, the Spanish chroniclers of the time did little to describe them.
.
One thing is immediately apparent: Andeanists, like poets and indeed like Incas, tend to celebrate their gatherings with many libations – at a party held by the Peruvian ambassador, the pisco sours were flowing freely and only copious amounts of black coffee provided by the British Museum allowed attendees to focus on the complex astronomical siting of the ushnus, which at sites like Huánaco Pampa are aligned to solstice and equinox risings of the sun.
My own interest comes from work we have carried out at Llactapata, with on-site help from Tom Zuidema (the keynote speaker at this conference), which has buildings which are similarly aligned to the sunrises of both solstices – see The full report on the expedition. There is also a large ushnu-style raised platform structure measuring some 60 feet by 40 feet, enclosed by a five feet high retaining wall – which like almost everything else to do with ushnus needs more investigation, but is the only known ushnu from which Machu Picchu is clearly visible. With an alignment of 110 degrees, the platform is orientated almost dead on the December solstice line for the rising sun. …