Communities throughout the south-central Andean region were similarly engaged in dense trade networks within which they developed discrete and recognizable stylistic ceramic traditions while also sharing a certain amount of material culture and behavioral correlates. These similarities have led to a number of regional models in the South American literature, such as the Puna complex (Bennett 1948), the Altiplano and Desert Traditions (Aguero et al. 1997; Berenguer et al. 1980; Uribe 1997; Uribe and Adan 1995), and the Algarrobo Culture Complex (Martinez 1998; see below) that are discussed below. All speak of the complex interconnections that characterized the social landscape of the southern Andes.
Bennett: Puna and Iruya Complexes
Bennett (1948: 26) argued for the existence of two regional complexes - Puna and Iruya - based on non-ceramic material culture attributes of sites from northwestern Argentina [Note 2]. Wooden artifacts associated with “llama herding, simple cultivation, hunting and warfare” characterize the Puna complex. These artifacts characterize the entire Atacama region, including gourds, wooden toggles and hoes, bows and arrows, hallucinogenic paraphernalia (tubes, tablets, containers and bags), coiled baskets, and copper metallurgy, and are found at sites in the San Juan Mayo, Miraflores, and Humahuaca River Valleys. The Iruya complex, less well defined, is characterized by stone implements for food cul-tivation/preparation, warfare, and by scarce ceramic material. Sites from this complex are located to the east of the Humahuaca Valley.
Castro, Berenguer and Aldunate: Desert and Altiplano Traditions
The Upper Rio Loa was apparently occupied by Bolivian people during the Late Intermediate Period, who brought new ceramic vessels and vessel styles (i. e., Hedionda), and burial rituals in the form of chullpas (tall mortuary structures). Commonalities between southern Bolivia and the Loa Valley material assemblages led Castro and her colleagues (1979, 1984) to propose the existence of a Late Intermediate Period “altiplano cultural tradition” which combined Bolivian attributes (chullpas, Hedionda and Huruquilla ceramics) with local post-Tiwanaku ceramics and other Atacameno, desert, or Puna tradition material culture (i. e., the above mentioned wooden implements, coiled basketry, copper objects and hallucinogenic paraphernalia).
Aguero and Uribe: Late Intermediate Period Regional Complexes
Aguero and colleagues (Aguero 2000; Aguero et al. 1997; Uribe 1997; Uribe et al. 2004) have also revealed a remarkable coherence in the material culture of sites from the Late Intermediate Period in the Rio Loa/San Pedro de Atacama region. This similarity is found in ceramic wares, textiles, wooden agricultural and textile manufacturing tools, baskets, gourd recipients, metal objects and mineral beads, and hallucinogenic paraphernalia. They argue for an Atacameno occupation of the Quillagua area between AD 900 and 1450, with a period of Tarapaca incursion during the Solor phase (ca. AD 1100-1300), which caused a re-entrenchment of Atacameno cultural attributes in opposition to this invasion. A San Pedro component (ca. AD 900-1200) was joined in a later period (ca. AD 1200-1400) by Loa materials, constituting a more general material assemblage shared by the San Pedro and Rio Loa sub-areas and represented by similar variants of the same vessel types (i. e., San Pedro and Turi variants of painted ellipsoid jars).
The production of similar ceramic assemblages, then, suggests a cultural articulation of the Rio Loa and San Pedro sub-areas, also potentially including the Argentine puna, certainly during the Late Intermediate Period. This relatively homogeneous Atacameno phenomenon is opposed to a Tarapaca regional social phenomenon including Pica and other north Chilean communities during the same period (Uribe 2006). Interestingly, the majority of these regional complexes are dated to the Late Intermediate Period (but see Sinclaire et al. 2000 for the Middle Period), which is thought to have usually been characterized by the development of numerous discrete senorios (chiefdoms). At any rate, the evident combination of material similarity with discrete ceramic differences defies traditional cultural models that picture the existence of mutually exclusive cultural categories in the past.
Martinez: El Complejo Cultural Algarrobo
In the sub region that includes San Pedro de Atacama we have a case where cultural attributes do not coincide entirely to create discrete socio-cultural entities. In addition, different material culture classes (and most likely other cultural attributes such as language) have different spatial distribution patterns, suggesting each had a different role in exchange relationships and identity representation locally and regionally (including those with no role at all). We have examined models to explain the exchange of non-local pieces and the presence of material similarities across large distances. The following models attempt to combine these two processes into one social system by proposing we consider the entire region as a single, multiethnic, cultural system.
Martinez (1990, 1996, 1998, 2000) has produced a series of fascinating papers on the historic period ethnic landscape of the south-central Andes based primarily on ethno-historic documents. Through these sources, Martinez has developed a complex picture of the construction of multiethnic spaces in the Atacama region between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Evidence from parish documents and census records demonstrates that the entire region was cohabited by a number of discrete but interlinked communities (Figure 49.3). All groups appear to have followed similar economic and social strategies of non-local residence (including inter-ethnic marriages or use of godfathers [compadrazgo]). That is, members of each ethnic group resided for long periods in various locations across the region, intermarrying locally, yet continuing familial bonds, ethnic affiliation, and tribute obligations with home communities.
Martinez (1998) asserts that individual south-central Andean communities did not have a single economic mode or discrete territory, nor were they motivated by desires for self-sufficiency. These groups employed various combinations of vertical complementarity and caravan trade (Browman 1980, 1990a, 1990b; Nunez and Dillehay 1995; Martinez 1990), leading to regional interdependence and multiethnic cohabitation. He proposes that basic pan-regional cultural continuity, characterized by similar dispersed settlement patterns and multiple complementary economic strategies, constituted a single regional cultural entity: the Algarrobo Complex.
The general and key attributes of Martinez’s south-central Algarrobo culture complex are:
1) Redundancy, where productive diversification served not the desire for exotic goods, but the need to ensure a reliable stock of key staples (1998:175).
2) Simultaneity, where groups maintained several economic strategies, key areas were exploited by several groups, and several groups engaged in the same productive strategies simultaneously (1998:173)
3) Regional multi-ethnicity, where ethnic identities were maintained over long distances and several generations within multicultural communities. This, perhaps, was necessary to ensure complementary relations between groups, a relationship rendered moot if they blended into one (1998:182-188).
Most interesting, Martinez (1998:186) reminds us that access to goods and resources occurred through people, and that the motivations for trade and exchange were not purely economic (see also Lazzari 1999; Pydyn 1999). Thus the human and social links forged between communities were more immediately important than the smooth functioning of balanced exchange and ecological diversification. Moreover, interaction, then, was
Motivated more by social ties and relationships than by economic need. Herein lies the reason that social distinctions (reflected in persistent ceramic differences) are maintained in benign trade contexts. Interaction is not motivated in all cases by a latent competitive economic goal to ensure local self-sufficiency. Instead it reaches out to engage others and re-assert important social ties between differentiated communities (who often consume certain amounts of similar material culture). This is not to say, however, that subsistence issues were not also a concern. In short, different communities co-occupied a large area simultaneously, interacting with each other, yet maintaining communal ties across space and time because when they traveled, they were not leaving home. Not only was identity developed and reproduced because individuals maintained long-distance ties to the service of needs in their natal community for diverse resources and abundant staples, but also
Because they were acting out internal cultural life on a larger stage. Thus non-local goods may not be exotic and may not even be non-local, but familiar and familial. Support for this proposition lies in identifying archaeological support for the Algarrobo cultural complex in prehistory.
Although Martinez makes use of data from archaeological excavation, all of the Algarrobo Complex patterns were discerned from ethnohistoric documents and may only be of colonial origin. Can Martinez’s Algarrobo model be sustained archaeologically? The following section of this paper elaborates archaeological evidence for this model, which involves the existence of relationships between the same key areas throughout prehistory and the absence of important regional ceramic styles attesting to structuring within interaction patterns.
World History
