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.

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 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.

For about a century and half, between the collapse of the highland state of Tiwanaku about 1300 and the unification of the area under the Incas about 1450, the Colla people living on the plains west of Lake Titicaca lived within walled settlements called pukaras in fear of violence. The author explored the hilltop villages over several seasons between 2000 and 2007, and here discusses the results in terms of warfare and the built environment, the Colla and their lands, studying fortifications, hierarchy and heterarchy within pukara communities, spatial and temporal dimensions, and regional histories.

Rituals of the Past explores the various approaches archaeologists use to identify ritual in the material record and discusses the influence ritual had on the formation, reproduction, and transformation of community life in past Andean societies. A diverse group of established and rising scholars from across the globe investigates how ritual influenced, permeated, and altered political authority, economic production, shamanic practice, landscape cognition, and religion in the Andes over a period of three thousand years. Contributors deal with theoretical and methodological concerns including non-human and human agency; the development and maintenance of political and religious authority, ideology, cosmologies, and social memory; and relationships with ritual action. The authors use a diverse array of archaeological, ethnographic, and linguistic data and historical documents to demonstrate the role ritual played in prehispanic, colonial, and post-colonial Andean societies throughout the regions of Peru, Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina. By providing a diachronic and widely regional perspective, Rituals of the Past shows how ritual is vital to understanding many aspects of the formation, reproduction, and change of past lifeways in Andean societies. Contributors: Sarah Abraham, Carlos Angiorama, Florencia Avila, Camila Capriata Estrada, David Chicoine, Daniel Contreras, Matthew Edwards, Francesca Fernandini, Matthew Helmer, Hugo Ikehara, Enrique Lopez-Hurtado, Jerry Moore, Axel Nielsen, Yoshio Onuki, John Rick, Mario Ruales, Koichiro Shibata, Hendrik Van Gijseghem, Rafael Vega-Centeno, Verity Whalen

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.

"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.