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The dispersal of the Romance language family by the Roman Empire is an attractive model for examining the spread of Quechua. Wari and Tiwanaku are often considered the first Andean empires, during the Middle Horizon (cal. ad 650–1050). Despite being contemporaries sharing the same religious iconography, they were unlikely to have spoken and dispersed the same language. Tiwanaku material culture rather implies ethnic and linguistic diversity, not least in its best-documented colonization in Moquegua. Wari, meanwhile, appears culturally and administratively unified, colonizing and controlling a territory across southern Peru, from Cuzco to Nasca. If Wari was responsible for a language dispersal, then this should represent its core territory; and it is indeed the heart of Southern Quechua. In northern Peru, Wari presence seems less intense, its rule more complex and indirect. The Moche region remained essentially beyond Wari influence, while for the central coast and distant Aguada culture more research is needed.

This chapter focuses on Tiwanaku, the first state in the Titicaca Basin region. In the seventh century ad Tiwanaku represented the first fully developed archaic state in the Titicaca Basin. It expanded rapidly after the collapse of Pucara in 400 ad Tiwanaku incorporated or added several areas to its territories and by 800–900 ad, it dominated a large area across the south-central Andes. By 1100 ad, Tiwanaku had declined as a regional power, a process that set the cultural stage for the rise of the Aymara señoríos.

Using biogeochemistry, archaeologists and bioarchaeologists can identify residential mobility and migration in migratory individuals themselves, rather than using proxies such as artifact distributions. Here, an introduction to biogeochemical approaches to migration is provided, followed by detailed discussions of the challenges of identifying migration in the archaeological record. Case studies from the Tiwanaku polity (ca. ad 500–1000) are used to illustrate residential relocation and political integration at the Tiwanaku-affiliated sites of Chen Chen, Peru, and San Pedro de Atacama, Chile.

In the South Central Andes, a number of different cultural groups emerged in the wake of the collapse of the Tiwanaku polity. Among the cultural groups to emerge in the wake of this collapse were the coastal Chiribaya. While some scholars have argued that the Chiribaya represent the descendants of middle-valley Tiwanaku colonists, others assert that they represent a locally derived ethnic group which evolved from pre-existing coastal populations. This chapter tests these hypotheses using biodistance data. Results of design-matrix analyses suggest the Chiribaya are descended from the Tiwanaku. Chiribaya ethnogenesis is discussed in light of these results and the archaeological record. Chiribaya ethnicity emerged in both new political and environmental landscapes; their ceramics, textiles, and other cultural elements modify many of the motifs found in Tiwanaku styles, while incorporating new economically relevant elements that reflect their dependence upon both maritime and agropastoral resources.

Political integration and expansion in archaeological states and empires uniquely affected incorporated peoples, who often created and manipulated social, political, and religious identities in response to interactions with larger and more powerful polities. Between AD 500 and 1000, the Tiwanaku polity exerted influence throughout the South Central Andes. This chapter utilizes multiple lines of evidence, including isotope and biodistance analyses, cranial modification, mortuary artifacts, and burial treatments to examine the relationships between the hinterland sites of Chen Chen and San Pedro de Atacama and Tiwanaku. While individuals buried at Chen Chen included immigrants from the Tiwanaku heartland, in San Pedro de Atacama local inhabitants consciously manipulated their social identities as they articulated with the distant Tiwanaku polity. This unique example of identity formation and manipulation in the archaeological record demonstrates the potential of multiple lines of bioarchaeological evidence to elucidate the complex relationships between material culture, geographic origin, and identity.

This chapter examines the pukara chronology and its implications for understanding the causes of warfare in this context. Radiocarbon dates show that the pukaras did not evolve gradually over time but appeared suddenly on the scene at about AD 1300, undermining the interpretation that Late Intermediate period warfare resulted directly from the collapse of Wari and Tiwanaku. This chapter presents a chronology of pukara construction and use, drawn mainly from radiocarbon dates. Hillforts in the Colla area did not become common for more than two centuries after the collapse of Tiwanaku. This finding shifts the onus to other explanations for the late escalation of warfare. The evidence for climate change as a factor is especially well supported, but in addition, there is evidence that warfare, once it became widespread, worked to create the social, political, and material conditions for its own perpetuation.

This chapter investigates the spread of the Tiwanaku drinking culture (ad 600–1100) by addressing shifts in the drinking cup assemblages found at sites in the Cochabamba Valley of highland Bolivia. Drinking behavior changed radically as it became widespread during the period of Tiwanaku influence and transformed again after that influence waned. The chapter specifically explores drinking vessels, including changes in style, archaeological context, and importance. There were significant changes which occurred in local drinking practices when Cochabamba was integrated into the Tiwanaku political economy. In sum, Tiwanaku drinking customs promoted social cohesion at the household level, at home, and abroad, using paraphernalia heavily coded with state symbols. So powerful was this tradition that it radically changed Cochabamba, an area with a preexisting chicha tradition in which the drink was nothing new.

Cusco, the inka capital, is understood largely through colonial historical accounts and not through the archaeological record. The intention of this book is to use the archaeological record to re-examine the interpretation of inka Cusco. The concept of the city compares the ancient and modern cities and their modes of analysis and interpretation. Prehistoric andean urbanism is described as intermittent. Cusco emerged as the capital of a local polity, developing its urban characteristics while probably looking toward the earlier city of Tiwanaku, so renowned in oral tradition, as its ancestor.

This chapter investigates the role of environmental and political disruption on migration patterns in the South-Central Andes during the Middle Horizon (c. A.D. 500–1100) and Late Intermediate Period (c. A.D. 1100–1400) in the San Pedro de Atacama oases of northern Chile. During the centuries covered by this study, life in the oases was impacted by the decline of the large, expansive Tiwanaku polity in neighboring Bolivia and a severe drought. This study presents bioarchaeological and biogeochemical, including isotopic, data to identify migration in the oases. These data suggest that what had been potentially regular and visible migration and interregional movements in the Middle Horizon was greatly reduced in the subsequent Late Intermediate Period, a period characterized by political and environmental disruption. This chapter illustrates that human responses to environmental disruptions vary, and may or may not include migration from one environmental zone to another, presumably less affected, zone.

This chapter fills a gap in studies of the ancient Andes by incorporating age identities into previous research into the formation of social identities in the Tiwanaku polity (ca. AD 500 – 1150). A general theoretical approach to concepts of childhood in the Andes is discussed, using the ethnographic and ethnohistoric record to outline significant issues in early childhood that can be addressed through bioarchaeology and biogeochemistry. By investigating past Andean concepts of childhood with a focus on the development of and intersections between gender, age, residence, and community identities, it is illustrated how reframing data on Tiwanaku childrearing practices (e.g., cranial modification), social identities, paleopathology, and paleomobility/migration and the use of case studies can address the experience of Tiwanaku childhoods and begin to shed light on how childhood was constructed for individuals within Tiwanaku society.

In order to illuminate the complexities of culture contact in colonial settings it is not enough to simply shift one’s research onto the periphery, instead it is imperative that these peripheral areas are also viewed as interaction zones in their own right. This chapter presents a graphic model for representing a range of cross-cultural interaction designed specifically to address archaeologists’ challenges of conceptualizing several types of cross-cultural interaction in the cultural and geographic borderlands at the frontiers of the influence sphere of expansive states or colonial powers. The model’s design allows for the numerous simultaneous levels of interaction, which reflects the intricate nature of cultural contacts, and which considers indigenous perspectives in tandem with colonial aspirations. The model’s utility is illustrated through research from the early Middle Horizon (ca. A.D. 550–800) in the Moquegua Valley, Peru, a borderland between the Wari and Tiwanaku States.

Climate is a fundamental and independent variable of human existence. Given that 50 percent of the Earth’s surface and much of its population exist between 30^oN and 30^oS, paleoenvironmental research in the Earth’s tropical regions is vital to our understanding of the world’s current and past climate change. Most of the solar energy that drives the climate system is absorbed in these regions. Paleoclimate records reveal that tropical processes, such as variations in the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), have affected the climate over much of the planet. Climatic variations, particularly in precipitation and temperature, play a critical role in the adaptations of agrarian cultures located in zones of environmental sensitivity, such as those of the coastal deserts, highlands, and altiplano of the Andean region. Paleoclimate records from the Quelccaya ice cap (5670 masl) in highland Peru that extend back ~1800 years show good correlation between precipitation and the rise and fall of pre-Hispanic civilizations in western Peru and Bolivia. Sediment cores extracted from Lake Titicaca provide independent evidence of this correspondence with particular reference to the history of the pre-Hispanic Tiwanaku state centered in the Andean altiplano. Here we explore, in particular, the impacts of climate change on the development and ultimate dissolution of this altiplano state.