Building the Americas Before and Beyond Contact: Eight Traditions from Teotihuacan to El Alto

The earliest known examples of this sloped base with a vertical panel above it date to about 200 BC at Tlalancaleca in the Tlaxcala-Puebla region. Teotihuacan then used it throughout its monumental architecture, and cities such as Tikal, Cholula, Monte Alban, Xochicalco and Kaminaljuyu adopted it, which archaeologists read as a sign of connection to Teotihuacan or a wish to share its prestige.

Chenes buildings of Campeche and the Rio Bec region turn the doorway itself into the open mouth of a giant zoomorphic mask, possibly a sky or mountain deity sometimes identified with Chac. Facades are usually a single story on low foundations and use few columns, with examples at Hochob, Dzibilnocac, Chicanna and Edzna.

Puuc builders of the Yucatan hill country set carefully cut veneer stones over a concrete core, leaving the lower wall plain and carving the upper facade in stone mosaic, including long-nosed masks tied to the rain god Chaac. The corbelled vaults stay sound even where the decoration has fallen, and the style is best known at Uxmal, Kabah, Sayil, Labna and Xlapak.

On the northern coast of Peru the Moche built in sun-dried adobe from about 100 to 800 AD. The Huaca del Sol is described as the largest pre-Columbian structure in Peru, while the Huaca de la Luna keeps painted interior walls, and sunken steps and ramps shaped the ritual processions between sections of each complex.

The highland Wari, whose capital lay eleven kilometers northeast of present day Ayacucho, built administrative centers of rough fieldstone coated in white plaster, as windowless rectangular enclosures with few entrances and no central ritual space, unlike the more open layouts of Tiwanaku. Pikillacta near Cusco shows the plan at provincial scale, and their terraced fields were later adopted by the Inca.

After the Moche, the Chimu state of Chimor built Chan Chan near present-day Trujillo, whose ten ciudadelas were royal compounds behind adobe walls up to nine meters high, holding U-shaped rooms with raised floors and courtyards. Chimor ran for roughly a thousand kilometers of coast until the Inca conquest around 1470.

Taino settlements, the yucayeques, gathered circular bohio houses of wooden poles, woven straw and palm leaves around a central plaza used for games, festivals and rituals. The cacique lived in a rectangular caney, and furnishings such as the hamaca, the carved duho seat and woven mats show how the whole household was designed around light, perishable materials.

In El Alto, Bolivia, Freddy Mamani completed his first Neo-Andean building in 2005, and the cholets that followed carry facades drawn from Tiwanaku forms and Aymara textile colors. Straight lines are said to stand for the masculine and curves for the feminine, and most were built after 2006 during a period of rising Aymara cultural pride.