Tiwanaku is a complex of ruins on the Bolivian altiplano or highland plateau. The site lies in a valley at 3,800 masl, about 70 km from Bolivia’s capital of La Paz. This prehistoric urban site is “the only planned settlement in the Titicaca Basin built prior to the Inca settlements of the fifteenth century AD” (Stanish 2001:185). The dominant feature of the ruins is the massive, artificial terraced mound of Akapana, standing over 15 m high. To the southwest is the Pumapunku platform in whose eastern entry court the famous “Gateway of the Sun” may have originally stood (Kolata 1993: 99). Akapana is flanked to the north by the large rectangular Kalasasaya precinct which is connected by a megalithic staircase to a semi-subterranean temple, whose walls are dramatically punctuated by tenoned heads and in whose court stand three carved stone sculptures; this is where the Bennett Monolith was originally found. The Putuni complex is immediately west of the Kalasasaya. In addition to this civic-ceremonial architecture, a large urban settlement existed contemporaneously at Tiwanaku. Indeed, at its height, Tiwanaku was a sprawling city spread over 12 to 15 km2 with a population of 30,000-60,000 inhabitants. Radiocarbon dating and stratigraphy of material culture place the Tiwanaku civilization between AD 300 to 1100, with the expansion of its influence dated to after AD 400 or 500 (Kolata 1993: 85-86, 243). At this time, the Tiwanaku empire held administrative centers and colonies from far south coastal Peru to the headwaters of the tropical Amazon in eastern Bolivia, and had penetrated as far south as the northern desert coast of Chile (Kolata 1993).
From the time of the Spanish conquest Europeans recognized the grandeur of Tiwa-naku, yet there is a general consensus that Tiwanaku culture “remains the least understood of the New World civilizations” (Goldstein 2005: 50). Archaeologist Paul Goldstein attributes this situation to the fact that several cycles of conquest and ethnic displacement between the site’s abandonment and the arrival of the Spanish chroniclers left Tiwanaku in a huge gap in the historical record. Additionally, the remote location of the ruins, depth of soil deposition at altiplano archaeological sites, and ever-shifting political realities in Bolivia, Peru and Chile (Goldstein 2005: 51) have contributed to this situation. Despite the fact that archaeological research at Tiwanaku has been carried out continuously for many decades, a recent estimate by the Bolivian Ministry of Culture states that less than 10% of the ceremonial core has been excavated (Rivera 2002: 19).
The lack of data on the site has caused a prolonged and ongoing debate about the chronology of Tiwanaku, as well as the characteristics of the rise and fall of this state. Archaeologist Wendell Bennett established the site’s original chronology, based on his findings there and his studies of Tiwanaku pottery in private collections in the 1930s. Bennett made a preliminary classification of four different periods, which he named Early, Classic, Decadent, and Post Tiwanaku (Bennett 1934: 450). He cautiously added that “this stratigraphic set-up [was] not conclusively proven” (Bennett 1934: 477), and exhorted scholars to conduct further studies. The next attempt to define a cultural chronology was made by Bolivian archaeologist Carlos Ponce Sanjines. Ponce carried out extensive work in the site’s core during the 1950s and 1960s and used radiocarbon dating to support his identification of five successive cultural strata in the Kalasasaya that he named Tiwanaku I through V (Alconini 1995). These phases became the yardstick by which time is measured in prehistoric Tiwanaku. Scholars who have conducted research on this culture have conformed to Ponce’s chronology in one way or another, despite the fact that fitting different findings to this sequence has many times proven to be difficult (see Albarracin-Jordan 1996; Alconini 1995; Kolata 1993; Stanish 2001). Over time,
Different archaeologists have developed varying schemes of different phases. The overall confusion is further exacerbated by Bennett’s and Ponce’s choice to tie chronological sequences to developmental stages such as “expansive” and “decadent” whose names have driven archaeological interpretation. New efforts to redefine the Tiwanaku chronology are being made by archaeologists currently working on excavations at regional and administrative centers of this Andean culture (Janusek 2004: 83); these scholars emphasize the critical importance of developing a valid chronological framework for comparative studies of the different Tiwanaku sites.
In terms of the nature of the Tiwanaku state, debate about this state revolves around whether Tiwanaku was a top-down expanding state with a homogenizing influence (e. g.,
Kolata 1993) or, conversely, whether the many and diverse “colonies” of this empire were heterogeneous and had greater autonomy (e. g., Isbell and Burkholder 2002). Researchers today largely agree that the organization and expansion of this Andean prehistoric polity was based on a pragmatic combination of conquest by military force, colonial outposts and trade (Browman 1997; Janusek 2004; Stanish 2001; Williams 2002). It is also now known that the large population of the Tiwanaku core was supported by an intensive and vast agricultural system of raised fields that exploited the challenging environment of the altiplano (Janusek and Kolata 2004; Matthews 1997). The production of surplus agriculture was one of the pillars of the Tiwanaku sociopolitical organization that was also closely related to a system of religious beliefs and specified rituals. It is believed that the combination of both explains why Tiwanaku’s expansion took place in only a few select regions, such as where water and other agricultural conditions were favorable (Blom and Janusek 2004; Browman 1997; Isbell and Burkholder 2001).
Brockington et al. (2000) provide a further interesting perspective on the Tiwanaku state based on their research in the lower-lying Cochabamba Valley. They argue that the Andean region should not be seen as having a clear cut division between highlands and tropics, and propose a very close relationship between these two regions as early as the Formative era (and see Chapter 46 in this volume). Contacts between the two regions were not only based on trade, but evidence shows that large groups of jungle residents would make their way into the highland valleys and spend a season or two exploiting a different ecological region. In this sense, it could be argued that lowland people were performing their own colonizing settlement process and probably came into contact with Tiwanaku culture and developed a balanced relationship with Tiwanaku that included adapting and exchanging religious rituals and customs as well as material goods.
The organization and expansion of the Tiwanaku state seems to have varied according to circumstances; Tiwanaku used different strategies to achieve economic control, as well as the spread of their religious ideology. That Tiwanaku people co-habited with other populations is consistent with the fact that ceramics, textiles and other material culture reflect the dominance of a powerful culture together with a continuous open-ended interaction among populations.
World History
