Early expressions of persistent leadership and inequality in the Andean Preceramic

Summary

Research over the past few decades in the Andean world has identified a number of preludes to sociopolitical complexity, persistent leadership, and emergent inequality that involve a diversity of social and cultural forms, including the control and manipulation of ritual or religious power, the mobilization of labor to construct a variety of forms of public architecture, the display of status or prestige items, and control over access to socially valued goods. In many archaeological contexts across the region, different combinations of these preludes have been observed. Unsurprisingly, not all preludes lead to persistent leadership and a greater degree of social inequality. In this paper, I will compare and contrast successful and failed trajectories in these preludes in search of commonalities that help to explain the emergence of complexity from this preceramic baseline.

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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