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The foundations of the church at Cochabamba
are reassembled Inka stonework. U-shaped grooves perhaps evidence the Inka technique of
bonding masonry by pouring molten copper into channels passing from stone to stone.
Between A.D. 800 and the second half of the fifteenth
century, the era of the Inka invasion, the Chachapoya cleared and terraced hillsides and
built their characteristic stone citadels throughout the region. The scale,
distribution, and defensibility of Chachapoya settlements suggests that they were
relatively indepenent polities--a confederate of ayllu (clan groupings) engaged
in shifting alliances and internecine conflict rather than components of a persistent
monolithic state.... |
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