Some Remarks on Early Social Complexity in the Central Andes

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Dedication, Collaboration, and Vision, Part II: Papers in Honor of Tom D. Dillehay" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The well-known protohistoric Inca Empire of the late fifteenth century had achieved a remarkable degree of social complexity preceded by a similar expansive state some 500 years earlier. The lack of pre-European writing systems, however, obscures access to these earlier social formations. Thus, the social nature of pre-sixth-century polities has been much debated. In the search for the origins of Andean states, Chavín in the northern highlands is often seen as the earliest manifestation of social complexity or civilization. But, more recently, a large coastal site with presumably similar characteristics flourished much earlier. Culture historical approaches, however, cannot explain the emergence of these phenomena. The step toward social complexity in the Old World has been known as a long process of domestication and related sedentism beginning in the Late Pleistocene and leading to the Neolithic period. It has been assumed that the Central Andes is an exception to that rule, but Dillehay´s long-standing research in northern Peru demands a profound revision backed by solid datasets, which require insertion into a wider picture of cultural and social diversity. This presentation aims at some approaches in this direction.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Dedication, Collaboration, and Vision, Part II: Papers in Honor of Tom D. Dillehay   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36115.0