Prehispanic Warfare, Leadership and Demography in the Llanos of the Orinoco, Northern South America

Summary

Although for northern South America it has been proposed that warfare was an important mechanism that elites used to promote their authority and the institutionalization of their leadership during precolonial times, the evaluation of the available evidence is still not systematic. This presentation offers a comparative discussion about warfare in the Llanos of the Orinoco. The archaeological evidence suggests that warfare in the Llanos played a differential role in the historical and evolutionary sequences of the complex societies in the Llanos. In contrast to the Barinas (Venezuela) complex societies, in the Casanare (Colombia) region warfare was not a main factor that affected the emergence of central leadership or its consolidation at least during the first stages of the occupational sequence. The archaeological evidence recovered during the regional survey conducted in the Barinas and Casanare regions supports the ethnohistorical accounts of the varying extents of centralized power and the varying strategies used by emerging elites according to the capabilities and the possibilities at the disposal of aspiring rulers in different times and places.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20505