and motifs enabled the largely unskilled labor force to erect a multitude of
imperial Inca sites as rapidly as Tahuantinsuyu, the Inca Empire, expanded. The
result was a unified vision of the Inca presence that pervaded the Andean
landscape.
Finely built stone walls with trapezoidal niches and doorways are hallmarks of the
Inca architectural style, shown here at Pisac above Cuzco’s Urubamba valley.
Adriana von Hagen.The basic Inca building type, a freestanding rectangular structure, made up the
vast majority of buildings and allowed for a great diversity of functions to occur
in Inca settlements. The Inca combined these rectangular structures in a variety
of ways, differentiating them with meaningful openings, such as single- and
double-jamb doorways, windows, and niches. These buildings ranged across a
wide, but continuous, spectrum in size and were used to create a variety of
settlement types, such as administrative centers, way stations, royal estates, and
temple complexes.
The Incas included a diversity of functions into their standard rectangular
structures. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Incas saw function as the most
important factor in defining a building type. There were, for example, buildings