Top-down or bottom-up: rural settlement and raised field agriculture in the Lake Titicaca Basin, Bolivia

Differing interpretations regarding the organization of past intensive farming are often distinguished as “top-down” or “bottom-up” perspectives. The development of intensive farming and its social organization are attributed to either nascent states and centralized governments or the incremental work of local communities or kin-based groups. We address the social organization of raised field farming in one region of the Lake Titicaca Basin of the Andean altiplano, Bolivia. We evaluate past research in the Katari Valley, including our own, based on recent settlement survey, excavation, and a variety of analyses. Taking a long-term perspective covering 2500 years, we find that relations of production and rural organization changed greatly over time in relation to changing sociopolitical conditions. Local communities played dynamic roles in the development and organization of raised field farming, yet its intensification and ultimate recession were keyed to the consolidation and decline of the Tiwanaku state. We conclude that the top-down/bottom-up dichotomy is overdrawn. Local communities and their productive practices never operated in a political or economic vacuum but both shaped and were transfigured by regional processes of state formation, consolidation, and fragmentation.     

Tiwanaku trade patterns in southern Peru

This paper provides data and analysis from an intensive settlement survey in the southwestern Titicaca Basin. This research was designed to assess the nature of Tiwanaku (AD 600–1100) long-distance trade. The survey area was placed between the prehistoric urban capital of Tiwanaku and its primary colony in Moquegua, a valley located on the Pacific watershed approximately 325 km away. The survey was specifically placed in an area where GIS analysis indicated a least-cost transit route between Tiwanaku and Moquegua. Field adjustments to the survey area were made based upon informant data about the historic location of caravan routes. The results of the survey indicate that there is a light but virtually continuous string of Tiwanaku occupation along the trails and roads in the area sampled between Tiwanaku and Moquegua. However, in contrast to the later Inca (AD 1450–1532) period pattern, Tiwanaku did not maintain way stations or build any kind of formal road system. The data indicate that Tiwanaku had indeed relied upon camelid caravans utilizing the least-cost pathways, but it did so in a more decentralized and informal way than the later Inca state.     

Tiwanaku and Its Precursors: Recent Research and Emerging Perspectives

The Lake Titicaca Basin provides a fascinating case study for examining the prehistoric rise of complexity and archaic state development. The development of the Tiwanaku state and preceding polities involved conjunctions of regional environmental, socioeconomic, and ideological transformations. Significant social, economic, and ideological diversity characterized each major phase, indicating that the creation of inclusive domains of shared values, practices, and identities was critical to the formation of polities in the region. Tiwanaku and its precursors were, in great part, incorporative sociopolitical phenomena in which social diversity remained vital throughout their histories.     

Tawantinsuyu Integration of the Chillon Valley,Peru: A Case of Inca Geo-Political Mastery

Abstract

Archeological and ethno-historical data from the coastal, transitional, and lower sierra variants of the Chillon Valley, Central Coast of Peru, have led to a new understanding of the nature of Inca political and economic control of one subjugated region. The data reveal that the region was settled unevenly by the Cuzqueños; a more intensive state occupation of the lower sierra is indicated. It is suggested that control of the valley was managed by choice from a geographical-political locus in the highland zone because of certain cultural and environmental circumstances in each valley variant that posed advantages and disadvantages for state operations. Major sites yielding evidence of integration into the Inca state are discussed within the context of such a settlement pattern.     

Landscapes of death: GIS-based analyses of chullpas in the western Lake Titicaca basin

The western Lake Titicaca basin is marked by above-ground funerary towers, known as chullpas, located in a variety of geographical contexts and dating to the Late Intermediate Period, or LIP (AD 1100–1450), and Late Horizon (AD 1450–1532). Over the years, interpretations of these tombs have concentrated upon their roles as loci for ancestral veneration and their abilities to perpetuate memory, delineate social ties and territories, and demarcate access to resources. These views share the implicit or explicit assumption that these mortuary structures were intended to be highly visible. Yet this assumption has never been formally tested. By using GIS-based geospatial tools and statistical analysis, this paper investigates the extent to which chullpas surveyed in the western Lake Titicaca basin visually dominated the landscape. These tombs were not positioned in random locations; they exhibit a high degree of clustering and were built in highly visible areas that could be seen from sites of occupation and regions of economic importance such as Lake Umayo. This paper suggests that this landscape of death was deliberately constructed to have an enduring social impact.     

Wak’a/shrine making and pilgrimage tourism in Copacabana,Bolivia

Abstract

The cultural landscape of the town of Copacabana and nearby ancient sites on Lake Titicaca, Bolivia, have functioned as magnetic places of pilgrimage from Inka times to the present. They are analyzed as landscape constructions through the eyes of political and religious authorities as well as through those of the common pilgrims in a bottom-up perspective from Inka to Colonial times and to the present. Methodologies used are study of pertaining archaeological data and Colonial documents complemented by ethnographic interviews and participant observation. The data demonstrate how the past is redefined in the present as local heritage in a landscape perceived as Andean as well as Christian. Throughout Andean history, Copacabana has been the land terminal for pilgrims to set over to the Islands of the Sun and Moon to visit empowered shrines (wak’as) viewed as places of emergence of the Sun and the first humans. This pilgrimage was fabricated into state ideology by the Inka from ca. A.D.1450–1550. After the Spanish invasion, Copacabana became the seat of a widely revered Virgin who attracts pilgrims from all over Bolivia and southern Peru. Ethnographic fieldwork was conducted in early August 2015 and 2017 during one of the pilgrimages. Most visitors identify as pilgrim-tourists and many walk to five spatially distinct but thematically related wak’ as at which the past coalesces with the present and the secular with the divine in passionate and colorful performances for family wellbeing. Discussions center on the limited spatial control of the Catholic Church and on the growing practice of making new wak’as in Andean terms to the Virgin at selected landscape features outside of town as a form of popular heritage. Findings demonstrate that local Aymara people are not passive Colonial victims but selectively adopt from their conquerors what they hope may help alleviate poverty.     

The fish of Lake Titicaca: implications for archaeology and changing ecology through stable isotope analysis

Research on past human diets in the southern Lake Titicaca Basin has directed us to investigate the carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes of an important dietary element, fish. By completing a range of analyses on modern and archaeological fish remains, we contribute to two related issues regarding the application of stable isotope analysis of archaeological fish remains and in turn their place within human diet. The first issue is the potential carbon and nitrogen isotope values of prehistoric fish (and how these would impact human dietary isotopic data), and the second is the observed changes in the fish isotopes through time. Out of this work we provide quantitative isotope relationships between fish tissues with and without lipid extraction, and a qualitative analysis of the isotopic relationships between fish tissues, allowing archaeologists to understand these relationships and how these values can be applied in future research. We test a mathematical lipid normalization equation to examine whether future researchers will need to perform lipid extraction procedures for Lake Titicaca fish. We also analyze a number of aquatic plants to better understand the range of isotopic signatures of the Lake Titicaca ecosystem. We use these data to better understand prehistoric human diet and the role that fish may have played in the past as well as potential changes in local lake ecology through time.     

Violence in the Atacama Desert during the Tiwanaku period: social tension?

Tiwanaku influence significantly affected the lifestyle of the prehistoric peoples of the Atacama Desert as it represented an important period of social and economic change. Such intense changes as social stratification and new religious and ideological influences have always been characterized as peaceful ones. Palaeopathological studies based on the violence‐induced traumatic lesions of 64 well‐preserved human skeletons from an excavated funerary site named Solcor‐3 have facilitated a comparison between Pre‐Tiwanaku and Tiwanaku periods. Results show an increase in violence between males represented by low‐intensity skull traumas, arrow wounds and a high mortality rate between 20 and 30 years of age during the Tiwanaku period. The interpretation of this data is contrary to the model of peaceful acceptance of the changes that followed the Tiwanaku influence into the Atacama. At least for Solcor‐3, economic and political factors should be re‐considered in order to explain the emergence of social tension during the Tiwanaku period. In the future, more detailed studies will probably help to clarify if conflicts had also extended to other sites in San Pedro de Atacama under Tiwanaku influence. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

二十一世纪西方“比较城市研究”进展与述评

进入21世纪以来,伴随南半球城市快速发展,以及全球尺度的区域和城市间经济、社会、政治联系的加强,全球城市化景观持续重构,展现出多元发展特征,对传统城市理论的解释范式提出了新挑战。在此背景下,西方的比较城市研究开始复兴,尤其关注南半球城市经验,探索城市理论与研究范式的转型与建构,并成为城市研究的热点。为了把握国际城市研究前沿,本文通过详细解读相关文献并结合CiteSpace引文空间分析,全面梳理了21世纪西方比较城市研究的最新进展,评述和解析比较城市研究的概念、发展进程、研究方向和理论成果。希望以此拓展国际视野,为中国城市理论建设提供参考和借鉴。     

Feasting landscapes and political economy at the Early Horizon center of Huambacho, Nepeña Valley, Peru

The present contribution examines feasting practices at Huambacho (800–200 cal. B.C.), an Early Horizon elite center of the Nepeña Valley, Department of Ancash, Peru. Feasts are approached as long-term strategies essential to the political economy of human societies. Drawing upon data from public architecture, material culture and food remains, the study closely considers feasts as political actions and investigates the organization and social meaning of these special events. At Huambacho, I contend that the diacritical aspects of feasting practices, such as the use of exclusive spaces and special paraphernalia, contributed to the dual celebration of communal identity and prosperity, and the creation and reproduction of social inequalities. The research highlights the dual centripetal and centrifugal dynamics of Early Horizon feasts and demonstrates the role of the Huambacho center in advertising the success of the local community based on new forms of production and innovative rules of commensal hospitality.     

House forms and Recuay culture: Residential compounds at Yayno (Ancash,Peru), a fortified hilltop town,AD 400–800

This article assesses residential architecture at the site of Yayno, Pomabamba, north central highlands of Peru. Mapping and sampling excavations show the primary occupation of the site dates to cal AD 400–800, by groups of the Recuay tradition. The results are described in relation to three forms of local dwellings. Considerable variability characterizes their size, construction quality and contents, although the present evidence suggests their inhabitants were largely coeval and used similar material culture. Also, some of the circular and quadrangular compounds are of monumental character. The imagery of Recuay artworks allows further understanding of the compounds, specifically as mimetic forms of chiefs, both representational and metaphorical. The research concludes that the development of chiefly political centers in the high Andes coincided with strong internal differentiation at the community level, and that Recuay elite practices and monumentalism emerged out of local corporate traditions.     

Notes on women in the global city: Chicago

As the organizers of an event on women in the global city, we wanted to create a forum exploring the intersections of class, gender and other forms of inequality that fracture ‘global Chicago’. In the panelists' discussion of the intersections of struggles relating to housing, education and environmental justice in Chicago's particular version of the global city, we found evidence of lives disrupted by neoliberal trends, as well as possible sites to contest these disruptions. These struggles reverberate to shape a new urban vision, as the academics and activists assembled for our panel aim not just to work on the local issues of specific women, but to create a city in which work is well compensated, housing is affordable for everyone, schools educate all children well, all neighborhoods are safe both from crime and environmental pollutants, and everyone has the time to fully engage as active citizens of the city.