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This chapter focuses on evidence for variables related to emerging complexity in northern Vietnam. In order to understand this development, it reviews trajectories of cultural change from the Late Neolithic Phung Nguyen Culture through the Bronze/Iron Age period and the Dongson Culture. The archaeological evidence suggests the societies of Bac Bo experienced increasing complexity due to a combination of factors, well before the arrival of the Han Empire. Variables for social change are examined with an emphasis on the importance of interregional interaction. Also of significance were the introduction and development of metal technology and the production of weapons and ritually important bronze drums, which were exchanged in far-reaching exchange networks. Lastly, archaeological evidence suggests that coercive power probably contributed to changing social and political patterns in the Bac Bo region. These influences contributed to emergent complexity.

This chapter summarizes results of excavations at Manachaqui Cave, a stratified rock shelter site beside a pre-Hispanic paved road used by travellers moving between the Andean highlands and the Amazon Basin. During 10,000 years of use, Manachaqui served as a hunting camp, semi-permanent habitation, and a travellers’ camp and refuge from the harsh climate frequently encountered at the cloud forest edge in tropical montane forests. The site and especially its assemblages dating from the Late Preceramic Period through the Early Intermediate Period provide a rare window on the nature of human occupation in the ceja de selva, changing travel and transport technologies, strategies for information exchange using ceramic styles and decorative symbols, and the growth of sociopolitical and economic complexity among autochthonous and autonomous societies on the eastern slopes. Evidence of interregional interaction reflects human decision-making embedded within historical and social contexts, and not just interaction between “cultures” or resource zones. The functionally specialized character of Manachaqui’s material culture offers singular insights into changing modes of pre-Hispanic travel, commodity transport, and societal communication during a crucial period of emerging cultural complexity in Central Andes.

This chapter introduces the archaeology and history of the Upper Amazon. Although little studied in comparison to Andean archaeology in the neighbouring highlands, the Upper Amazon (a region including waterways such as the Amazon River and Marañon River) has long thought to have been an important region to the development of social complexity in western South America. Through an overview of the volume, this chapter highlights major issues and themes that have been the focus of Upper Amazonian archaeology, including exchange and trade, frontiers and borderlands, and interregional interaction. It finishes by suggesting future directions for the field.