Wow, I'm getting hungry.  Let's take a peak at what is cooking.  Our kitchen is the one building in our compound which is architecturally particular to our ancestral province.  It is a good example of how the diverse people of Tiwanaku manifest themselves in a diverse architecture. 

Despite the significance of the kitchen structure, much of our cooking and butchering takes place outside in the open air.  Here you can see many cooking and serving vessels filled with various foods.  Corn, potatoes and quinoa constitute the majority of our diet.  These are brought in from the raised fields which are farmed outside the city.  For meat, we eat the llamas and alpacas we raise, but my favorite meal is cuy, guinea pig.  Birds and fish from the lake are also common fare. 

My mother grinds the maize and quinoa in the flat stone batánes and rounded moleadores (seen here near the wall).  With a mortar and pestle (in the lower right of the lower right picture), peppers, dried camellid meat (charqui) and seeds are ground to a paste.  The meat is prepared with stone knives and scrapers and bone utensils.  With so much food being constantly prepared, we cook on both indoor and outdoor hearths.  Food and drink are central to our lifestyle because ceremonial and social feasts are a common occurrence in every house compound.

Our food comes from raised field farming. The raised fields are rectangular mounds of dirt that our people use to plant their vegetables on. In the wet season, water floods the flat areas, but leave the raised fields above water level.  

However, the most important food preparation involves the brewing of chicha, our corn beer.  Served in the keros (lined up on top of the drainage canal), this beverage is brewed by the women in the household.  Each family has their own variant; we like to add strawberries into the fermentation. Have a glass!

For pictures of real Tiwanaku ceramics, go to virtual Museo Contisuyo