Archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, and religion scholars agree that the senses shape religious experiences. Worshipping ultimately constitutes the sensorial and thus corporeal engagement with the sacred. The role that the senses played within religious performances seems to have been something that the Inca knew and manipulated to create specific responses among participants. As noted by Constance Classen, Inca religious performances were characterized by their sensory richness; this sensorial exuberance seems to have followed a period of preparation in which participants underwent sensory deprivation. State-sponsored performances featured an abundance of sensory stimuli that appealed to participants’ sense of smell, hearing, seeing, and tasting. These triggers included, among others, the beating of drums, singing, spoken recitations, resplendent metal furnishings, colorful textiles, the smell of burning fires, and the flavors of the fine foods and copious maize beer that were consumed during these ceremonies.
The study of Indigenous religion in the ancient Andes and the role the senses played within these ritual performances has traditionally been the domain of historians and religion scholars who rely on colonial-period ethnohistoric sources for their research. Unfortunately, the contemporary material and architectural evidence that hold promise for insights into sensorial experiences in the past have for the most part gone understudied in this context. Fortunately, archaeologists in collaboration with acousticians and ethnomusicologists have begun to address this oversight by examining the acoustics of Inca places. Building upon this research, I have adopted an interdisciplinary methodology that allows me to examine the sensorial dimensions of the Coricancha, the most important religious center in the Inca Empire, located in Cuzco, present-day Peru. My goal in this inquiry is to situate Inca religious and sensorial experiences in place. By attending to the extant architectural evidence at the Coricancha, the objects recovered through archaeological excavation from the site, documentary sources, and acoustic analysis, I have examined Inca religion as it was embodied and sensorially experienced at this particular site. Through this research, I have elucidated how the Coricancha behaved sonically, determining how clear and from where participants could have heard the religious performance staged therein. The identification of specific foodstuffs and drinks that were consumed during ceremonies, and wood species that were burnt at the religious center within sacrificial fires has allowed me to shed light on the gustatory and olfactory profiles of the rituals enacted at the Coricancha. Finally, by studying how the sunlight hits the various structures found within the Coricancha, I have reconstructed some of the visual effects that were created within the space. While some structures within the Coricancha are permanently in shade, others are illuminated directly at sunrise or sunset, perhaps directing participants’ attention towards them. The presence of metal furnishings on the structures during imperial Inca times would have resulted in brightnesses that blinded those who attempted to look at said structures. Altogether, this paper offers an avenue to address the materiality and intangibility of Indigenous religious experiences in the past.
Bibliography
Classen, Constance. 1993. Inca Cosmology and the Human Body. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1993.
Hamilakis, Yannis. 2013. Archaeology and the Senses: Human Experience, Memory and Affect. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kolar, Miriam A., R. Alan Covey, and José Luis Cruzado Coronel. 2018. “The Huánuco Pampa Acoustical Field Survey: An Efficient, Comparative Archaeoacoustical Method for Studying Sonic Communication Dynamics.” Heritage Science 6: 1–25.
Mendoza, Zoila. 2015. “Exploring the Andean Sensory Model: Knowledge, Memory, and the Experience of Pilgrimage.” In Ritual, Performance and the Senses, eds. Michael Bull and John P. Mitchell: 137–152. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Stobart, Henry. 2013. “Staging Sound: Acoustic Reflections on Inca Music, Architecture and Performance Senses.” In Flower World: Music Archaeology of the Americas, eds. Matthias Stöckli & Arnd Adje Both: 11–35. Berlin: Ekho Verlag.
State-sponsored religious performances in the Inca Empire featured an abundance of sensory stimuli. While scholarly efforts have predominantly focused on studying the role that the senses played within Inca religion through documentary evidence, lesser attention has been paid to Inca religious experiences in place. To spatially contextualize and thus better understand the sensorial dimensions of Inca sacredness, I will examine Inca religious performance as it was embodied in the most significant sacred center in the Andes at the time: the Coricancha. Specifically, I will explore how the center functioned as a site in which participants could engage with the sacred through the interplay of sound, sight, smell, and taste. To do this, I will combine ethnohistoric sources with archaeological materials, architectural evidence, and acoustic analysis. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this paper offers an avenue to address the materiality and intangibility of Indigenous religious experiences in the past.