Formative Urbanism in the Andean Lake Titicaca Basin

Summary

Archaeologists tend to apply the term ‘formative’ to phases of emergent complexity in a given world region. I critically engage the concept by honing in on what I term incipient urbanism as a core dimension of formative complexity. I draw on comparative data from across the Americas to situate formative complexity and incipient urbanism in the Andean Lake Titicaca basin. Archaeologists working in the region have known for years that by at least 800 BC, the region was home to multiple influential, in some cases competing ritual-political centers. We tend to agree that Tiwanaku emerged as the region’s first city later than AD 500, with ensuing generations of intensifying urbanism and political centralization referred to as the ‘Middle Horizon.’ I explore the urban dynamics of the ‘pre-city’ Titicaca formative. I focus on a few cases to argue that fields of highly mobile communities identified with multiple incipient centers at any given time, and that the ritual practices and political gatherings they periodically housed were the generative focus of emerging, dynamic urban processes that ultimately produced Tiwanaku.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Olmec, Chavin, and Things in Between: A Comparative Approach to Emergent Complex Societies

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