Early expressions of persistent leadership and inequality in the Andean Preceramic

Author(s): Mark Aldenderfer

Year: 2016

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.

Cite this Record

Early expressions of persistent leadership and inequality in the Andean Preceramic. Mark Aldenderfer. Presented at The 81st Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Orlando, Florida. 2016 ( tDAR id: 402953)

Keywords

General
andes inequality

Geographic Keywords
South America

Spatial Coverage

min long: -93.691; min lat: -56.945 ; max long: -31.113; max lat: 18.48 ;