CAA'2010 Fusion of Cultures

Francisco Contreras & Fco. Javier Melero (Editors)

Recreating Cusco in Three Dimensions

A. Vranich1, J. Cothren2,3, A. Barnes2

1
Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California Los Angeles
2
Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies, University of Arkansas
3
Geosciences Department, University of Arkansas
avranich@gmail.com, {abarnes, jcothren}@uark.edu

Abstract
Cultural heritage embedded in a continuously occupied urban environment presents a series of challenges for both
management and research. The case example for this contribution, the historic core of Cusco, Peru, is an architectural
amalgamation of pre-Columbian, European Colonial and modern. Through a combination of traditional field survey-
ing and GIS technologies, the objective of this project is to accurately build a digital three-dimensional model of the
prehistoric topography as well as the urban layout of pre-Columbian Cusco. The resulting visual database is the basis
to (a) model experiential and visual aspects (b) incorporate previous architectural information from various and often
incompatible media, and (c) create an inclusive and recursive system for common use between various academic fields
and civil servants entrusted with the management of the historic city.

Keywords: 3D, mapping, modeling, survey, heritage

scholars recognize that architectural evidence recorded

1. Introduction
The recognition that non-Western cities were purpose-
ful constructions designed according to cosmological
and ritual principles provided scholars with a model to
overcome early bias against indigenous society (MOR-
GAN 1877) and also to explain the form and meaning of
these constructions (CARRASCO 1981). The city was
designed with a divine plan in mind - to be observed and
appreciated by the gods from above; the experience on
the ground was a secondary consideration in design
compared to the need to properly replicate the orderly
form of the heavens on earth. One of the unintended
consequences of influential publications by scholars
such as Wheatley (1971) and Tuan (1977) is the wide-
spread assumption that South Asian ideals of urbanism
were applicable to the entire pre-industrial world. This
type of assumption ultimately drew accusations that ge-
neric models of ritual space were being applied without
sufficient archaeological evidence, a tendency that Barry
Kemp terms the trap of “inductive cosmology”
(2000:336). This perspective, combined with the fact
that archaeological sites are usually a mere outline of
their former selves, created a reliance on the two-
dimensional plan view as the manner to analyze and
present the information.
1.1. Spatial Analysis
While the two dimensional plan can be and has been
the basis for rewarding spatial analysis (MOORE 1990),
in two-dimensional form is not capable of conveying the
conceptual form of a city and the experiences of the
people who lived there. This quandary is of special con-
cern in the pre-Columbian Americas where research
from various fields indicates that basic cannons of set-
tlement design were radically different from the grid
tradition of later colonizing European powers. In general
terms, the indigenous pre-Columbian American city, in
particular those in the Andes, were designed to structure
both the experience and interpretation of the surround-
ing landscape, such as sacred mountains and astronomi-
cal phenomenon, and the social relations between the
various participants and actors in the elaborate and near-
ly continuous political-ritual pageantry in the public and
private spaces (ZUIDEMA 1964, URTON 1981, BAU-
ER AND DEARBORN 1995, AVENI 1981, DEAR-
BORN, SCHREIBER et al. 1987; DEARBORN, SED-
DON et al. 1998; COBO 1996 [1659]). A more appro-
priate modern analog for the pre-Columbian city would
be that of “festival architecture”: settings designed
where avenues, open spaces and facades structures the
timely and organized movement of people across vari-
ous settings to create a desired experience and interpre-
tation (BONNAMAISON and MACY 1990).
This project is an attempt to accurately and visually
recreate a moment in the history of the indigenous im-
perial and ceremonial city of Cusco, Peru before it was
forever transformed into a European-style colonial pro-
vincial village. On a broader theoretical level, this re-
search relates to the way we conceptualize this most

Proceedings of the 38th Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology
Granada, Spain, April 2010
important pre-Columbian city of the South American
continent. Methodologically, the project is a feasibility
study for the best method to create a recursive and inclu-
sive database that can incorporate past and future data
from various fields such as architecture, archaeology,
conservation and ethnography, and take advantage of the
extensive resources and detailed information collected
by various city agencies not directly interested in histor-
ic remains.
2. Methodology
Cuzco is like other continuously occupied cities such
as Rome and Jerusalem where we can walk along well
preserved avenues and imagine what it would have been
like in the past (FIGURE 1).
Figure 1. A street in Cusco with Spanish colonial
building built on Inca foundations.
The unfortunate reality is that the pre-Columbian archi-
tecture and topography of ancient Cusco has been com-
pletely altered. Transformations to the original design of
the Inca capital began soon after the imperial city was
sacked and burned in the late 1530s during the struggle
between the Spanish Conquistadors and the Incas. Regal
and religious buildings were torn down to provide ma-
terial for new construction projects and streets and plaza
spaces were modified to fit European ideas of urban
space.
There are several interesting, though often contradic-
tory descriptions of the city during the first decades of
colonial rule. Soon after emancipation from Spain in the
late 1800s, a series of learned travelers and scholars left
us with drawings, photographs and accurate city wide
maps that highlighted visible Inca remains. Notable
documents include extensive photography from the
1930s and a detailed city wide survey realized after a
strong earthquake in 1950 destroyed many of the coloni-
al buildings and revealed additional solid Inca wall
foundations. Archaeological excavations and well in-
tended but often misleading reconstructions formed part
of a concerted effort to transform Cusco from a small
Proceedings of the 38th Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology
Granada, Spain, April 2010
quiet backwater into a major tourist destination. New
remains were and continue to be uncovered on a regular
basis as tourist infrastructure and efforts to modernize
the city churned results in deep excavations below the
modern surface. Unfortunately, most of this information
remains unpublished or buried in dense and often inac-
cessible government reports. The original Inca city sur-
vives as discontinuous fragments of masonry incorpo-
rated in exterior and interior walls of inhabited build-
ings, often “floating” or buried when the original ter-
raced and stepped surface was graded to accommodate
wheeled traffic and draft animals.
2.1. Existing Maps
This project had the goal of mapping only the pre-
Columbian remains of Cusco. These remains included
the discontinuous Inca wall foundations, portions or
evidence of terraces, and substantial ritual structures
such as the temple of the sun (the Coricancha) and the
monumental Saqsaywaman complex perched over the
northwest portion of the city. A number of traditional
surveys exist for the city of Cusco (e.g. SQUIER 1877)
and often also included conventional topographic lines
to reference elevation throughout the urban core and the
immediate environs. Most surveys focused on highlight-
ing the existing Inca walls (BAUER 2006). One survey
in particular (ARGUTO 1980), informed by terrace re-
mains scattered throughout the city and its immediate
environs, incorporated topographic lines intended to
estimate the form of the ancient landscape. This last
survey is the most detailed and thus was as the main
reference material when beginning the mapping process.
2.2. Field and Lab Work
All existing surveys were in the form of paper maps or
books and were first made digital using the best avail-
able scanners at a resolution of 1200 dots per inch. In
order to georeference the maps, a team of students col-
lected nearly 100 control points throughout the city.
Control points were collected at modern street corners
and other sites identifiable on the survey maps. Roughly
half of the control points collected were used in the geo-
referencing process, while the other half were used as
check points to assess the accuracy (FIGURE 2).
 All metadata was entered into an excel spreadsheet.
Each wall or terrace segment found in the field was
matched to the unique identifier within the GIS. With
the one-to-one relationship between features in the GIS
and features in the Excel spreadsheet, the databases
were easily joined to create a powerful new GIS layer
full of attributes (FIGURE 4). Photos taken of the walls
were also "hyperlinked" to the GIS layer, enabling a
user to click on a wall and quickly view the photo(s) for
that wall or terrace segment.

Figure 2. City map with topographic lines of present

and hypothetical terrain georeferenced with GPS
points.
Each wall and terrace feature on the map was digitized
to create a GIS vector layer, with each mapped feature
containing a unique identifying number (ID) but no at-
tributes. The survey containing topographic lines repre-
sentative of the ancient landscape was also digitized and
used to create a model of both the modern and Inca sur-
face.
Field work began with the team dividing the city into
sections, one for each team, and walking their respective Figure 4. Map of modern day Cuzco with highlighted
area. Each team had the goal of verifying the existence Inca remains draped over the elevation model.
of wall sections indicated by previous surveys. When
wall or terrace sections were located, GPS points were 2.3. Visualization
collected and metadata about the walls condition and
construction were documented through hand-written With the newly acquired and newly digitized survey
notes and photography (FIGURE 3). information we could begin to visualize a number of
things we could not have before. The surface model of
the ancient landscape could be viewed using a 3D
viewer (e.g. ArcGIS's ArcScene) with both the terraced
landscape and wall segments in three dimensions (FIG-
URE 5). It was also now possible to bring this informa-
tion into CAD or other modelling software and build
upon the pieces, creating endless scenarios of what the
ancient city may have looked and felt like.

Figure 3. Recording pre-Columbian remains embed-

ded in the modern urban fabric.
While many walls were located on the exterior of
modern buildings, many were also located within exist-
ing structures. Team members spoke to the owners of
these buildings, and more often than not gaining access
inside homes, schools and restaurants to verify walls
indicated (and sometimes not indicated) on the existing
surveys.

Figure 5. Inca architecture located over recon-
structed pre-Columbian terraced landscape.
3. Conclusions
One of the impressive accomplishments of the Inca
was their intentional design buildings and settlements to
direct vision and experience towards the awe inspiring
and the sacred. To understand the Inca, and to under-
stand the Andes, we have to think in three-dimensions.
Building in such a steep environment was a challenge to
the Inca engineers, but it also offered them the opportu-
nity to create visual experiences that continue to astound
visitors. The use of walls is an effective manner of re-
stricting access and vision but the Inca engineers were
experts at using changes in elevation as an efficacious
means of altering views and structuring movement.
Based on the limited settlement information we have on
the centuries just prior to the rise of the Inca empire
(BAUER AND KELLET 2010), the form and location
of Cuzco is in part the product an unstable and periodi-
cally violent landscape, where people lived in high loca-
tions surrounded by walls or more appropriately, terrac-
es, to provide clear views to launch stones on raiding
parties.
Within the site, movement, circulation and access
were structured by the location of terraces and changes
in elevation. The experience for Cuzco would be less
like the streets and avenues of the modern city and more
like stadiums where changes in elevation separates
people and structure movement and vision. For theoreti-
cal inspiration in future analyses, I would suggest a turn,
at least slightly, away from urban studies and design -
the world of streets and walls – and the two dimensional
world of European-style urban cartography, with all the
hierarchical implications between urban space and or-
ganization, towards a theoretical paradigm of perfor-
mance and festival (MORRIS AND THOMPSON 1985,
CONRAD AND DEMAREST 1984, DIETLER 2001).
Clearly, Andean scholars recognize the importance of
Proceedings of the 38th Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology
Granada, Spain, April 2010
festivals and feasting in modern communities and in pre-
Columbian empires (ABERCROMBIE 1998, SALL-
NOW 1987), but the role of festival and performance as
the basis of authority is only recently starting to be taken
seriously (INOMATA AND COBEN 2006). This hesita-
tion is in part the result of the contrast between ethnohis-
torical and ethnographic sources that detail elaborate
Andean festivities that lasted for days, and the sparse
archaeological record where the particulars of these
complex activities are lost. A method of virtual render-
ings that offers testable models for understanding the
effects the ancient architecture had on human perception
and movement (e.g., TILLEY 1994, BRADELY 1989,
2001) would allay the unease some archaeologist feel
about inferences made concerning ancient ideation
without some form of “independent controls” (HOU-
STON 2005:150) such as indigenous text. Consequent-
ly, part of our aim is to propose in an objective and rep-
licable manner the multiple ways ancient participants
viewed and participated in and interpreted these salient
rituals.
Crucial to this effort, and to the lifecycle of any spatial
data involved, will be a viable archival database that is
both recursive and inclusive to the various research and
management efforts in this historic and modern city. An
effective database will be will need to absorb both the
several centuries of descriptions of Cusco, and the large
amount of new data that is being generated by specialists
of various fields and non-academic agencies in charge of
city planning (LIMP et al. 2010).
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