Rejection or Reinvention: Rethinking social hierarchy in the post-collapse Colla polity (AD 1000-1450) of southern Peru.

Summary

The collapse of the highland state of Tiwanaku, around AD 1000, was accompanied by a dramatic uprising against the ruling elite. Elite ancestor effigies placed in large open plazas were iconoclastically disfigured, while the Putuni Palace, home to Tiwanaku’s ruling dynasty, was leveled. In the post-collapse period, Titicaca basin peoples abandoned the symbols of Tiwanaku’s authority. A 1500-year tradition of ritual architecture and craft goods disappeared, and ritual practice turned to the worship of ancestors placed in modest burial towers, or chullpas. Does such a transition in ritual architecture and the rejection of state-affiliated material culture signal a reinvention or, conversely, a rejection of hierarchy in the post-collapse period? Excavations conducted at the post-collapse Colla necropolis and pilgrimage center of Sillustani revealed a series of kin-focused ritual compounds as well as a previously understudied domestic sector characterized by multiple elite houses. Such findings suggest a more segmented, and possibly situational, role of leadership during the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000-1450).

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage