Despite the fact that Roman Catholicism has no doctrinal mandate that churches be built in a manner that has significance related to astronomy (and didn't in the 16th century), although there were traditions in support of that idea, many colonial era Roman Catholic churches in northern Chile were built in a manner that reflected these considerations. New world church construction in the 16th century reflected somewhat different considerations.
From the introduction and conclusion:
The spatial orientation of ancient Christian churches is one of the most characteristic features of their architecture (Dietz 2005). In Europe and in many remote sites where the missionaries arrived, there is a clear tendency to orient the altars of the temples in the solar range; namely, the axis of the temple, from the front door towards the altar, is aligned to those points on the horizon where the Sun rises on different days of the year. Among these days, there is a marked preference for those corresponding to astronomical equinoxes, when the axes point towards geographical east, the direction which down through the ages has symbolized the eschaton: the second coming of Christ in kingly glory (McCluskey 2015). However, even within the solar range, alignments in the opposite direction –with the altar to the west– are not uncommon, although they are exceptional because they do not follow the canonical pattern (see Gangui et al. 2016a, and references therein).Soon after the Spanish settlement in the Viceroyalty of Peru, Francisco de Toledo decided to reorganize the territory and its population. He focused on the trade routes of the southern Andean area, the main objective of which was to organize the transport of silver from Potosi to the Pacific and also that of quicksilver from Huancavelica to the high Andean mines. On the way to the city of Arica, official maritime port for the merchandise since 1574, there appeared small villages and tambos with stable populations. Modest chapels and churches in this region emerged in strategic locations along the route which trajinantes marched to transport the precious metals from Potosi to Arica beaches, particularly around the Lluta and Azapa valleys. . . .
Our results show that, unlike what is commonly found in studies involving European historical churches, in the temples we studied here we found no single orientation pattern valid throughout the whole region. However, we found that almost half of the churches surveyed were oriented within the solar range, with a dominant share in those presenting their altar towards the west. We have also identified some notable cases where the orientation of the temples seems to follow the location of distinctive elements of the landscape –as volcanoes or other aboriginal culturally relevant apus– rather than the rising or setting Sun during meaningful dates for the particular dedication of the churches, a fact that brings to mind more the Aymara worship (BouysseCassagne 1987) than the 16th century Instructions on Ecclesiastical Building written by the Italian Cardinal Carlo Borromeo (1985).
Archaeoastronomy in northern Chile: Andean churches of the Arica and Parinacota region
(Submitted on 8 May 2019)
We present the results obtained from the analysis of the precise spatial orientations of almost forty old colonial Christian churches located in the Arica and Parinacota region. This is an extended and difficult to travel area that received little attention from parish priests, and where one might expect some dialogue to have taken place between the Western tradition and the local Aymara culture in regard to the design and construction of temples. We also briefly comment on our plans to explore neighboring areas to the region here studied, which include many additional historical constructions that share similar cultural traditions.
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