Construction

Inca complex is almost entirely built of adobes, whereas the adjoining structures are primarily built of tapia. Adobes are air or sun-dried bricks made of an argillaceous soil mixed with sand and water (sometimes straw, or even manure, is added to the mixture as a temper.) Adobes may be shaped by hand or with the use of molds as we have seen the Incas did at Tambo Colorado. Tapia is a mode of construction in which a material similar to that used in making adobes is rammed between planks that are raised as the wall gains in height. The question of whether the adobes are hand-formed or molded is relevant to the establishment of chronologies, since the use of molds is generally a later development.

The Incas’ use of adobes in the Cuzco region is well documented (Moorehead 1978; Protzen 1993). All pre-colonial bricks there are hand-shaped. The use of molds appears in the local construction practices of the north coast, where, for example, it is found at Moche sites such as El Brujo and the Chimu site of Chan-Chan. Although the Incas had conquered these areas, they seem not to have imported the molding technique to the highlands, but they did adopt it for the construction of Tambo Colorado.

Hand-shaped, “semi-elliptical” adobes have been found at the early Paracas (700 -200 BC) and Topará (200 BC to 100 AD) occupations of the site of Chongos (Peters 1987:32) some 25 km downstream from Tambo Colorado. Max Uhle has reported seeing one small structure built of “semi-globular” adobes in some unspecified location, but presumably in the vicinity of Tambo Colorado. In the same structure, which Uhle associated with early materials he found in the Ica Valley and that he dated to ca. 1,500 years before the Incas, he also uncovered a few rectangular adobes with colors on both sides (Protzen and Harris, 2005:7). Unfortunately, he did not give any indication whether the rectangular adobes he saw were made with a mold or formwork.

Tapia was a traditional construction technique for large-scale architecture both in the Pisco and the nearby Chincha Valleys. One finds massive tapia walls the site of Chongos and sites such as La Centinela, Huaca Alvarado, Huaca Hoja Redonda, and others in the Chincha Valley, all of which predate the Incas. The Incas seem to have spurned tapia in favor of adobes for their entire complex—except for the construction of the latticework and a figurative frieze.

Tapia construction, as Elizabeth Moorehead noted and we have seen, was practiced on the south-central coast. It thus would seem that the tapia structures at Tambo Colorado predate the Incas. Additional support for this may be found in the encroachment of the Inca structures on the tapia structures and perhaps also in their generally more ruined state.

Of all the outlying structures, the Eastern-Most Complex is a different matter. It is primarily built of adobes. Besides the adobes, there are other similarities with the Inca complex. At least one building shows traces of yellow paint and a select few trapezoidal niches, and another building features stepped windows and a double-framed niche. But here the similarities end. All other niches found in this complex are horizontally elongated and rectangular. Not all walls are of adobes; some are built with river cobbles held together with argillaceous mortar.