What Was Tiwanaku, Really?

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.

More than 30 years ago, Garth Bawden wrote a prescient review on the "Andean State as a State of Mind." He critiqued Andean scholars for focusing on the state as an analytical unit. He complained that much good scholarship was being ruined due to the "albatross of the state," and urged further attention to the subtle changes that impacted all aspects of society. In this paper, we review the "state of affairs," reflecting on data from both Tiwanaku and earlier Formative contexts. An explosion of research over the past 20 years has undermined many earlier "Visions of Tiwanaku"; in fact, the very nature of the Horizon has been compressed by several generations. These findings underscore the need for a new narrative for the Titicaca basin phenomena. We discuss the chronological bounding, the nature of Tiwanaku identity, and broader landscape data to critically engage recent models to Tiwanaku and broader approaches to complex political assemblages to ask, what was Tiwanaku, really?

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): 32667