Political Organization of the Tiwanaku Polity: A View from Copacabana

Summary

This is an abstract from the "A New Horizon: Reassessing the Andean Middle Horizon (AD 600–1000) and Rethinking the Andean State" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Tiwanaku has been described as an expansive state by archaeologists working in the first half of the twentieth century. At that time, the idea of a powerful empire in Bolivian prehistory aided and reinforced the nationalistic political narrative. However, archaeological data does not support the idea of Tiwanaku military expansion. Therefore, subsequent researchers proposed other models, such as nested hierarchies within a segmentary state, emphasizing the ceremonial importance of the Tiwanaku ceremonial center and mechanisms of reciprocity, rather than a centralized government with military power. Archaeological evidence from the Copacabana Peninsula supports models viewing Tiwanaku as the prestigious ceremonial center of a wide religious and cultural sphere of influence, rather than the political capital of a large state. Moreover, the Tiwanaku polity, while innovative in terms of spectacular monumental architecture, in many ways was a continuation of earlier cultural processes taking place in the Lake Titicaca Basin. Recent extensive archaeological work on the Copacabana Peninsula shows integration into the Tiahuanaco sphere of prestige while maintaining local traditions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• A New Horizon: Reassessing the Andean Middle Horizon (AD 600–1000) and Rethinking the Andean State

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33360