Traditionally, archaeologists characterize the Late Period as a time of regional development and increased socio-political complexity, when regional chiefdoms ruled discrete portions of the landscape (Gonzalez and Perez 1972; Ottonello and Lorandi 1987; Raffino 1983, 1988; Tarrago 2000). According to this interpretation, the road toward social complexity, inequality, and economic stratification initiated in the Middle Period was more emphatically consolidated during the Late Period. However, following popular ideas and models of cultural evolutionism, many aspects of the social, political, and economic organization were assumed rather than proved. Consequently, social inequality and stratification have been greatly emphasized without much proof. We think that social inequality and differences in power between individuals and groups were far from being consolidated, and that the Late Period was not an era of centralized political structures with marked economic stratification.
There are four main features that archaeologists have deemed indisputable indicators of institutionalized social inequality and/or economic stratification during the Late Period:
1) sites of different sizes (assumed to represent evidence of settlement hierarchy); 2) craft specialization; 3) differences in offerings among burials; and 4) warfare (principally indicated by a tendency to occupy higher and more defensive locales, creating fortified strongholds on the Late Period landscape).
Despite archaeologists’ assertions that chiefdoms and social inequality characterized the Late Period, ethnohistory downplays the power of chiefs. Historical accounts state that at the time of the Spanish conquest there were no large polities in northwestern Argentina ruling wide regions (Lorandi and Boixados 1987-88; Ottonello and Lorandi 1987; Raffino 1983). The political situation was quite fragmented. Indigenous chiefs acquired their position based on their skills in battle and their political ability to organize resistance against the Spaniards, to negotiate with them, or to make alliances with other indigenous groups. However, the chiefly office was temporary and quite weak, reinforced in times of war or conflict, but later dissolved as political situations returned to normal (Lorandi and Boixados 1987-88; Raffino 1983). Chiefs did not have institutionalized power and were not capable of controlling the means of production or of extracting labor and goods from their people
(Lorandi 1997: 255). Thus, there was no full-time managerial elite, liberated from primary activities, residing in Late Period centers. Historical accounts even claim that chiefs and their households worked the land (Lorandi and Boixados 1987-88; Zanolli 2005: 171).
Although these observations were made some years after the Late Period, and after the impact of Inca conquest, we believe that the descriptions apply to Late Period society.
In addition to the historical information some significant indicators of ranking, economic stratification, centralized decision-making, and social inequality are clearly missing in the archaeological record of the Late Period (see Ottonello and Lorandi 1987; Raffino 1988; Tarrago 2000). Here is the argument:
1) There is no evidence indicating control and management of staple production and appropriation of surplus labor and products. There are no traces of centralized storage or signs of restrictive access to productive resources.
2) We do not find obvious administrative areas or buildings within Late Period centers. It is surprising that in many paramount sites there are no buildings that are clearly set apart from the rest in terms of design, form, or quality. Examples of this include Cerro Colorado in the Jujuy Puna; Penas Blancas, Yacoraite, La Huerta, Juella, and Pucara de Tilcara in the Quebrada de Humahuaca; Tastil in the Quebrada del Toro; Valdez, Mariscal, Las Pailas, and La Paya in the northern Calchaqui Valley; El Pichao, Loma Rica de Shiquimil, Famabalasto in the Yocavil Valley area; and Loma Negra de Azampay in the Hualfin area, among others (Figure 30.1).
3) Settlements were not assembled around central public spaces or special residential structures that may have acted as axis mundi. Rather, they constitute a continuum of residential compounds. Plazas were just empty spaces without formal arrangement. Furthermore, many large and important regional centers did not have plazas and some had more than one open, or large walled space, in different parts of the site (for instance, Los Amarillos, La Huerta, Juella, and Pucara de Tilcara in the Quebrada de Humahuaca; Tastil in the Quebrada del Toro; Mar-iscal, Las Pailas, and La Paya in the northern Calchaqui Valley; Quilmes and Loma Rica de Shiquimil in the Yocavil Valley area, among others). This may suggest that more than one group hosted feasts and competed for power and prestige within the same community.
4) There is no clear proof of corporate labor employed in the political sphere, that is, labor managed by a chief and his household to aggrandize his person, or increase their power. Contrary to the situation in the Central and South-Central Andes, in this area of the Southern Andes there are no constructions such as pyramids, mound platforms, royal tombs, etc., representing the power of a ruling elite.
5) More or less the same activities were undertaken in all residential compounds. Domestic spaces were the center of many activities during the Late Period and archaeological evidence shows that production activities, storage, food processing and consumption, artifact use, ritual practices, and social reproduction, among others, were, in general, not centralized activities that an elite could have easily controlled. Rather, they were dispersed among every household in the community so the diverse spheres of social life were firmly located within individual dwellings.
6) Archaeologists do not find clear-cut differences regarding the goods used and consumed within different houses.
7) Every household had access to the same means of production and tools (spindle whorls, grinding stones, molds and crucibles, ore, hoes, and obsidian).
8) There were not great differences among residential compounds regarding architectural style and quality, size, and their location within the site [Note 5].
9) It is unlikely that full-time craft specialization was widely developed in northwestern Argentina during the Late Period. There are only a few cases in which archaeologists have actually found evidence of specialized workshops. The most remarkable case is a workshop for metal production found in Rincon Chico in the Yocavil Valley (Gonzalez 2004). Actually, data indicate that in several cases many craft activities (such as the production of textiles, pottery, worked bone, and even metallurgy) were handled adequately within the domestic domain employing relatively simple technology.
Examining daily experiences and interactions within settlements can give us a new understanding of social life during the Late Period. Large and clustered settlements mushroomed during this era (Figure 30.7). Conglomeration of structures was due to the high position of the settlements on the landscape, in defensible although narrow spots. However, there were other towns and villages established in the valley bottoms or in other open areas (Raffino 1988: 163), where there was more room for the construction of buildings. In these cases, and despite space availability, people chose to build their houses and buildings in a crowded cell-like pattern. This shows that at some point in the Late Period the town or village became the normal way of dwelling.
Clustered residential compounds constituted Late Period sites. Household residences were the basic unit of spatial organization and settlements were created by the accretion of one residential compound next to the other. Typically the residential compounds were composed by an open patio, a variable number of large rooms, stone tombs, and sometimes a round earthen mound. In many cases they were semi-subterranean and shared walls, halls, and passages with other compounds. Low and wide walls created a network of paths that allowed movement among and above buildings (as in sites such as Yacoraite and Pucara de Tilcara in the Quebrada de Humahuaca; Tastil in the Quebrada del Toro; Mariscal and La Paya in the northern Calchaqui Valley, Tolombon, Pichao, and Quilmes in the Yocavil Valley area). In other cases, pedestrian circulation implied passing from building to building, such as in La Huerta in the Quebrada de Humahuaca and Loma Rica de Shiquimil in the Yocavil Valley. Thus, movement within these crowded centers entailed passing through, in-between, and/or above different houses and structures (Figure 30.8).
The spatial arrangement and architecture of Late Period centers put people in close proximity to one another. In these crowded settlements it was possible to hear conversations or to smell what other families were cooking. Walls were permeable to sounds and odors. By walking the elevated pathways and walls, or by crossing from building to building, people encountered their community, seeing what others were doing in their houses, and even more in the open patios and large unroofed rooms, where the majority of the daily activities were undertaken. Pedestrian circulation within these crowded centers produced constant interaction of people and households, allowing individuals to see the activities other residents, the goods they consumed, and the rituals they performed. This situation implies a high degree of communal control, with accumulation of power and material benefits so noticeable that it would be easy to restrain and regulate. Although there may have been symbolic restrictions to circulation there certainly were no material ones.
Living in a Late Period settlement entailed sharing walls, material objects, iconography, activities, experiences, and a common identity. People also shared common spaces.
Figure 30.7. Mariscal, Late Period site, northern Calchaqui Valley. (Juan Leoni and Felix Acuto)
In some sites there are groups of rooms that are not associated with patios, or a number of patios interconnected among one another but not with rooms [Note 6]. We believe that these were collective spaces where people carried out activities, overcoming the boundaries of the household [Note 7]. In these cases, it is difficult to say where a dwelling ends
Figure 30.8. Example of pedestrian circulation in a Late Period settlement: Pucara de Tilcara, Quebrada de Humahuaca. (Juan Leoni and Felix Acuto)
And another begins. In fact, the limits of the dwellings were quite indistinct. The conception of residence apparently was not like our modern, western idea, but rather the limits of dwellings, of public and private space, and of household and community, were much more flexible.
What people experienced within their settlements was not areas from which they were excluded, buildings set apart from the rest, or the materialization of political structure. Rather, they experienced a materially homogeneous landscape of residential compounds where houses were alike, including the objects employed in them. This should have promoted a sense of place characterized by feelings of communal integration and lack of differentiation. The material homogeneity of Late Period places should have encouraged a perception of everyone as equal and the same, part of the same unit. We believe that this way of dwelling produced, at least in part, a social life generating communality and tight integration. Social life had a sense of homogeneity, openness, and equality to the communal eye.
But this sense of communality experienced within Late Period centers was in tension with struggles to obtain power and hierarchy. The Late Period was also a time of competition to overcome the structural constraints of the period. Archaeological evidence indicates that within these settlements there was competition for power and prestige. In many places the presence of several plazas or large open spaces suggests that different groups or factions undertook feasts and redistributed goods, probably to gain supporters and foster prestige and power. Long-distance exchange and warfare may have been other spheres of competition and tension. Thus, during the Late Period, status and distinction still had to be competed for and negotiated. In the majority of the regions
There was not an indisputable and institutionalized ruling elite, but instead individuals and extended families, as well as political factions struggling to aggrandize power and consolidate status gains.
World History
