BRUHNS

Bruhns’ (1994) survey of ancient South America is an admirable culture historical synthesis that eschews area-by-area developmental trajectories in favor of synchronic comparisons across the continent. South America is defined geographically; thus, the Antilles are not included despite their cultural relationship to Arawakan Amazonia. The treatment of the Andes (especially Peru and Ecuador) is the most complete as this is the author’s expertise and Peru is where the most fieldwork has been conducted, but the attempt to present a range of ancient societies at particular moments of time is fulfilled.

The volume’s driving temporal frames are not arbitrary but, rather, emanate from the Peruvian developmental and absolute chronology and can be particular to the Central Andes alone. Thus, “Cultural intensification in the Andes: 3500-2000 BC” largely corresponds to Peru’s Late Preceramic/Late Archaic/Preceramic VI period; “The first civilizations: 2000-200 BC” corresponds to Peru’s Initial Period and Early Horizon (the Chavin phenomenon); “Regional diversification and development: 200 BC-AD 600” corresponds to Peru’s Early Intermediate Period and Ecuador’s Regional Developmental Period; “Militaristic and religious movements in the Andes: AD 500-900” specifically refers to Wari and Tiwanaku; and “Kingdoms, chiefdoms, and empires: AD 900-1438” is driven by Peru’s Late Intermediate Period. In contrast, “The first peoples: 12,000-6000 BC” is applicable to the entire continent without regional preference. Of course, herein lies the great question so many scholars have tried to answer: why did the dramatic divergence from an initially similar start condition occur such that by 3000 BC the Central Andes were on a radically

Different trajectory from the rest of the continent? The issue of how has been and is being delineated by the past sixty years of systematic fieldwork.

In Bruhns’ attempt to be comparative, some conceptual looseness occurs. It is anathema for Andeanists (I think) to put the extraordinary Initial Period and Early Horizon civic-ceremonial centers of the Central Andes in the same chapter on “The first civilizations” as, for instance, contemporary developments along the Orinoco (Bruhns 1994: 126-155). Similarly, most Andeanists would regard the great Late Preceramic/Late Archaic centers as qualitatively more complex than the “cultural intensifications” occurring in Ecuador at this time (see Bruhns 1994: 97-115), especially in light of the dramatic data on the Norte Chico (Peru’s north-central coast) that has been generated since publication of the Bruhns volume, both in terms of the even greater monumentality present and the more agricultural basis of the diet (e. g., Chapter 31 in this volume; Shady 2006; Haas and Creamer 2004). On the other hand, the concept of “regional diversification” (Bruhns 1994: 185-222) permits very meaningful comparisons among the less complex societies of the Central Andes (such as Paracas, Nasca, Recuay) and the complex social formations of the North Andes (such as Jama-Coaque, Bahia, Tolita, San Agustin, Quimbaya), regardless of the contemporaneities involved or not. It is a stretch—to say the least—to put the urban, militarily and religion-based expansionist Wari and Tiwanaku empires in the same chapter as Tupi-Guarani (see Chapter 33 in this volume) or Colombian societies (Bruhns 1994: 239-277); these are not comparable phenomena. On the other hand, it is worthwhile to compare the range of complex societies of South America in the last five hundred years before the Spanish conquest (Bruhns 1994: 290-330), especially if one eliminates the Chimu and Inca empires such that the variations can be usefully analyzed, if not explained. For instance, with enough data it would be fascinating to compare Manteno and Chincha.