This book is a study of the ways places are created and how they attain meaning. Smith presents archaeological data from Khonkho Wankane in the southern Lake Titicaca basin of Bolivia to explore how landscapes were imagined and constructed during processes of political centralization in this region. In particular he examines landscapes of movement and the development of powerful political and religious centers during the Late Formative period (200 BC–AD 500), just before the emergence of the urban state centered at Tiwanaku (AD 500–1100). Late Formative politico-religious centers, Smith notes, were characterized by mobile populations of agropastoralists and caravan drovers. By exploring ritual practice at Late Formative settlements, Smith provides a new way of looking at political centralization, incipient urbanism, and state formation at Tiwanaku.

The Ancient Andean States combines modern social theory, recent archaeological literature, and the experience of the author to examine politics and power in the great Andean pre-Hispanic societies. The ancient Andean states were the great shapers of Peruvian prehistory. Social complexity, architectural monumentality, and specialized economic production, among others, were features of these sophisticated societies known by professionals and travelers from around the world. How and when these states emerged and succeeded is still debated. By examining Andean pre-Hispanic societies such as Caral, Sechín, Chavín, Moche, Wari, Chimú, and Inca, this book delves into their political and economic structures as well as explores their ideological worldviews. It reveals how these societies were organized and how different social groups interacted in the states. Archaeologists and anthropologists interested in Peruvian archaeology and the political and social structures of ancient societies will find this book to be a valuable addition to their shelves.

Andean peoples recognize places as neither sacred nor profane, but rather in terms of the power they emanate and the identities they materialize and reproduce. This book argues that a careful consideration of Andean conceptions of powerful places is critical not only to understanding Andean political and religious history but to rethinking sociological theories on landscapes more generally. The contributors evaluate ethnographic and ethnohistoric analogies against the material record to illuminate the ways landscapes were experienced and politicized over the last three thousand years.

"The Ancient Andean States combines modern social theory, recent archaeological literature and the experience of the author to examine politics and power in the great Andean prehispanic societies. The Ancient Andean States were the great shapers of Peruvian prehistory. Social complexity, architectural monumentality, and specialized economic production, among others, were features of these sophisticated societies known by professionals and travellers from around the world. How and when these states emerged and succeeded is still debated. By examining Peruvian archaeological sites such as Caral, Sechâin, Chavâin, Moche, Wari, Chimâu and Inca, this book delves into their political and economic structures as well as exploring their ideological world views. It reveals how these societies were organized and how different social groups interacted in the states. Archaeologists and anthropologists interested in Peruvian archaeology and the political and social structures of ancient societies will find this book to be a valuable addition to their shelves"--

This book examines the varied faces of war, politics, and violent spectacle over thousands of years in the pre-Columbian Andes.

This book studies the relationship between pukaras and their surrounding landscape, focusing on the architectural and settlement variability registered in both contexts. It is the outcome of a symposium held at the XIX National Congress of Argentine Archaeology (San Miguel de Tucuman, August 8–12, 2016) entitled, "Pukaras, strategic settlements and dispersed settlements: Political landscapes of the Late Intermediate Period in the Southern Andes." Based on the topics discussed at the event, this book presents nine case studies covering a large geographic area within the Southern Andes (northwestern Argentina, northern Chile and southern Bolivia), and breaking the national barriers that tend to atomize pre-Hispanic landscapes. The respective chapters cover a wide range of themes: from architectural and settlement variability, ways to build and inhabit space, social segmentation and hierarchy; to endemic conflict, analysis of accessibility and visibility, spatiality and temporality of landscapes; as well as new dating. This book goes beyond the Late Intermediate Period (LIP) analyses from the perspective of fortified settlements and material evidence related to war, by placing the focus on how ancient political landscapes were constructed from the relation between the pukaras and other sites as part of the same territory. The methodologies used include pedestrian surveys, photogrammetric surveys with UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) or drones, topographic and architectural surveys, excavations of households, ceramic and rock art analysis, and spatial analysis with geographic information systems (GISs). Given the numerous thematic interconnections between the contributions, the Editors have organized the chapters geographically, moving from south to north: from the southern valleys of Catamarca Province in Argentina to Lipez in the southern part of the Bolivian Altiplano, passing through the Calchaqui valleys of Catamarca, the puna and Quebrada de Humahuaca of Jujuy in northwest Argentina and the Antofagasta region in northern Chile. The book provides valuable new theoretical and methodological perspectives on the study of political landscapes of the Late Intermediate Period in the Southern Andes .

For about a century and half, between the collapse of the highland state of Tiwanaku about 1300 and the unification of the area under the Incas about 1450, the Colla people living on the plains west of Lake Titicaca lived within walled settlements called pukaras in fear of violence. The author explored the hilltop villages over several seasons between 2000 and 2007, and here discusses the results in terms of warfare and the built environment, the Colla and their lands, studying fortifications, hierarchy and heterarchy within pukara communities, spatial and temporal dimensions, and regional histories.