It is well known that in contrast to the Pacific coast of Peru, very little evidence of social inequality leading to persistent leadership can be found in the highlands during the Archaic (Aldenderfer 2004). This does not mean, however, that foundations of leadership and inequality are nonexistent. Leadership strategies only become apparent after 4800 BC and these reflect a mixture of aggrandizing, ritual practice, and the use of threat of conflict or warfare. At Jiskairumoko, the presence of gold beads in a mixed adult-and-child secondary burial is interpreted as evidence for aggrandizing given the high costs of obtaining a truly exotic resource (Aldenderfer 2004: 24). At Qhuna phase Asana (3800-3000 BC), changes in ritual practice are reflected by the transformation of an open, visible ceremonial structure to one surrounded by walls, and the construction of interior features is seen as
An attempt to capture ritual practice and leadership positions (Aldenderfer 2004: 22-23). Finally, most of the obsidian found in the Late Archaic in a number of regions, most notably in the circum-Titicaca and the Ayacucho Valley, was used to fashion small arrow points (Aldenderfer 2004: 29). This costly good was most likely used in display and threat, which would have increased the status and prestige of those wielding the weapons. A strategy to leadership conspicuously absent is feasting.
None of these strategies led to the establishment of persistent leadership within the trajectories of their discovery. One of the reasons for this failure, and for the absence of feasting, is that until very late in the Archaic, few of these regions were characterized by a context of resource abundance. The subsistence quest certainly provided the basis for population growth and the diversion of some resources to aggrandizing behaviors, but the level of that production was insufficient to provide a long-term basis for leadership and inequality. The evidence in the Ayacucho Valley is suggestive of a transition to some ritually-based form of inequality at the end of the Cachi Phase (2200 BC), but unfortunately, the data are not sufficient to verify this assertion. In fact, real inequality in the highlands does not appear until agropastoral adaptations are firmly established.
World History
