ABSTRACT
By the end of Tiwanaku IV Lukurmata had expanded from a community of about twenty hectares into a major ceremonial urban center of 120 hectares. Several nearby settlements were directly linked to the center, together forming a greater metropolitan community approaching two square kilometers. Following population estimates proposed for Tiwanaku, the core settlement alone could have housed a population of 2,500 people, and the greater urban community may have housed as many as 4,000. Although the ceremonial complex of Wila Kollu formed Lukurmata’s civic-ceremonial core, a platform known as Wila Waranka in a gulley just to the west, covered with sherds of elaborate ceremonial vessels such as feline-effigy incensarios, also dated to Tiwanaku IV (Figure 6.1). Along with the K’atupata ceremonial platform, which continued in use in Early Tiwanaku IV, Wila Waranka indicates that communal ritual activity in
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Lukurmata was distributed among several places in the larger metropolitan landscape, as it was in Tiwanaku.
