This book is a study of the ways places are created and how they attain meaning. Smith presents archaeological data from Khonkho Wankane in the southern Lake Titicaca basin of Bolivia to explore how landscapes were imagined and constructed during processes of political centralization in this region. In particular he examines landscapes of movement and the development of powerful political and religious centers during the Late Formative period (200 BC–AD 500), just before the emergence of the urban state centered at Tiwanaku (AD 500–1100). Late Formative politico-religious centers, Smith notes, were characterized by mobile populations of agropastoralists and caravan drovers. By exploring ritual practice at Late Formative settlements, Smith provides a new way of looking at political centralization, incipient urbanism, and state formation at Tiwanaku.

The Ancient Andean States combines modern social theory, recent archaeological literature, and the experience of the author to examine politics and power in the great Andean pre-Hispanic societies. The ancient Andean states were the great shapers of Peruvian prehistory. Social complexity, architectural monumentality, and specialized economic production, among others, were features of these sophisticated societies known by professionals and travelers from around the world. How and when these states emerged and succeeded is still debated. By examining Andean pre-Hispanic societies such as Caral, Sechín, Chavín, Moche, Wari, Chimú, and Inca, this book delves into their political and economic structures as well as explores their ideological worldviews. It reveals how these societies were organized and how different social groups interacted in the states. Archaeologists and anthropologists interested in Peruvian archaeology and the political and social structures of ancient societies will find this book to be a valuable addition to their shelves.

Andean peoples recognize places as neither sacred nor profane, but rather in terms of the power they emanate and the identities they materialize and reproduce. This book argues that a careful consideration of Andean conceptions of powerful places is critical not only to understanding Andean political and religious history but to rethinking sociological theories on landscapes more generally. The contributors evaluate ethnographic and ethnohistoric analogies against the material record to illuminate the ways landscapes were experienced and politicized over the last three thousand years.

Warfare in the pre-Columbian Andes took on many forms, from inter-village raids to campaigns of conquest. Andean societies also created spectacular performances and artwork alluding to war – acts of symbolism that worked as political rhetoric while drawing on ancient beliefs about supernatural beings, warriors, and the dead. In this book, Elizabeth Arkush disentangles Andean warfare from Andean war-related spectacle and offers insights into how both evolved over time. Synthesizing the rich archaeological record of fortifications, skeletal injury, and material evidence, she presents fresh visions of war and politics among the Moche, Chimú, Inca, and pre-Inca societies of the conflict-ridden Andean highlands. The changing configurations of Andean power and violence serve as case studies to illustrate a sophisticated general model of the different forms of warfare in pre-modern societies. Arkush's book makes the complex pre-history of Andean warfare accessible by providing a birds-eye view of its major patterns and contrasts.

"The Ancient Andean States combines modern social theory, recent archaeological literature and the experience of the author to examine politics and power in the great Andean prehispanic societies. The Ancient Andean States were the great shapers of Peruvian prehistory. Social complexity, architectural monumentality, and specialized economic production, among others, were features of these sophisticated societies known by professionals and travellers from around the world. How and when these states emerged and succeeded is still debated. By examining Peruvian archaeological sites such as Caral, Sechâin, Chavâin, Moche, Wari, Chimâu and Inca, this book delves into their political and economic structures as well as exploring their ideological world views. It reveals how these societies were organized and how different social groups interacted in the states. Archaeologists and anthropologists interested in Peruvian archaeology and the political and social structures of ancient societies will find this book to be a valuable addition to their shelves"--

This book studies the relationship between pukaras and their surrounding landscape, focusing on the architectural and settlement variability registered in both contexts. It is the outcome of a symposium held at the XIX National Congress of Argentine Archaeology (San Miguel de Tucuman, August 8–12, 2016) entitled, "Pukaras, strategic settlements and dispersed settlements: Political landscapes of the Late Intermediate Period in the Southern Andes." Based on the topics discussed at the event, this book presents nine case studies covering a large geographic area within the Southern Andes (northwestern Argentina, northern Chile and southern Bolivia), and breaking the national barriers that tend to atomize pre-Hispanic landscapes. The respective chapters cover a wide range of themes: from architectural and settlement variability, ways to build and inhabit space, social segmentation and hierarchy; to endemic conflict, analysis of accessibility and visibility, spatiality and temporality of landscapes; as well as new dating. This book goes beyond the Late Intermediate Period (LIP) analyses from the perspective of fortified settlements and material evidence related to war, by placing the focus on how ancient political landscapes were constructed from the relation between the pukaras and other sites as part of the same territory. The methodologies used include pedestrian surveys, photogrammetric surveys with UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) or drones, topographic and architectural surveys, excavations of households, ceramic and rock art analysis, and spatial analysis with geographic information systems (GISs). Given the numerous thematic interconnections between the contributions, the Editors have organized the chapters geographically, moving from south to north: from the southern valleys of Catamarca Province in Argentina to Lipez in the southern part of the Bolivian Altiplano, passing through the Calchaqui valleys of Catamarca, the puna and Quebrada de Humahuaca of Jujuy in northwest Argentina and the Antofagasta region in northern Chile. The book provides valuable new theoretical and methodological perspectives on the study of political landscapes of the Late Intermediate Period in the Southern Andes .

"Arguing that the culturally constructed environment is always the expression of multiple decision domains, Moore outlines a series of domains linking architecture and human experience. He then provides an analysis of sound and space and an examination of ceremonial architecture and the nature of religious authority, and he explores the design logic and technologies of displays in ritual processions."--BOOK JACKET.

Addresses the importance of the human head in political, ritual and symbolic contexts in the ancient and modern Andes.

An innovative 1996 discussion of architecture and its role in the culture of the ancient Andes.

​Over the millennia, from stone tools among early foragers to clays to prized metals and mineral pigments used by later groups, mineral resources have had a pronounced role in the Andean world. Archaeologists have used a variety of analytical techniques on the materials that ancient peoples procured from the earth. What these materials all have in common is that they originated in a mine or quarry. Despite their importance, comparative analysis between these archaeological sites and features has been exceptionally rare, and even more so for the Andes. Mining and Quarrying in the Ancient Andes focuses on archaeological research at primary deposits of minerals extracted through mining or quarrying in the Andean region. While mining often begins with an economic need, it has important social, political, and ritual dimensions as well. The contributions in this volume place evidence of primary extraction activities within the larger cultural context in which they occurred. This important contribution to the interdisciplinary literature presents research and analysis on the mining and quarrying of various materials throughout the region and through time. Thus, rather than focusing on one material type or one specific site, Mining and Quarrying in the Ancient Andes incorporates a variety of all the aspects of mining, by focusing on the physical, social, and ritual aspects of procuring materials from the earth in the Andean past.