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Cross-cultural data demonstrate that the political collapse of states is frequently accompanied by social fragmentation. This is apparent in settlement pattern shifts that occurred with the breakdown of the Tiwanaku state in the south-central Andescircaad1000, as populations abandoned large, urban centers and established smaller villages that were dispersed across the landscape. This article examines how inhabitants of one new settlement built a sense of community. Crafting cohesion was especially challenging because factional differences within the village were asserted more strongly than they had been during state control. I suggest that community solidarity was fostered through collective ceremonial practices. While the activities themselves replicated long-standing Tiwanaku ritual behavior, they were performed in very different physical spaces than during the height of the state. Undertaken in an open, accessible, central collective space, these practices simultaneously referenced the villagers’ shared ancestry and reinforced the rejection of elite power and authority. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ongoing debate about the expansion of the Tiwanaku state has centred on the extent to which it exercised direct political control over a continuous territory. Positions in this debate range from those that posit a unified Tiwanaku heartland comprising much of the Lake Titicaca Basin to those that conceptualize Tiwanaku influence as more circumscribed, and perhaps limited to the city itself. We engage this debate by assessing evidence for Tiwanaku expansion into the upper Desaguadero Valley, a region often argued to have been within the core area of Tiwanaku control. We present new evidence from four sites: Khonkho Wankane, Iruhito, Cerro Chijcha and Nazacara. These data suggest that Tiwanaku political influence was selective and focused on developing relationships with riverine communities in order to gain access to caravan circuits. Rather than a core area of continuous control, these processes created a shifting political mosaic rooted in fluid politico-religious webs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Andes, prominent mountains are revered as earthly spirits that protect, but may also punish, their human constituents. These apu were often linked to distant ancestors and are considered the most important local deities. During the phase of the earliest highland Andean expansive states (ad 600–1000), the Wari and Tiwanaku utilized mountain worship as a means of establishing hegemony over local peoples who considered these mountains as places of ancestral origins. By usurping the apu , or including them in the pantheon of imperial deities, the expansive state effectively held these sacred places hostage and incorporated local belief systems into an imperial ideology. Recent research has yielded new clues to the worship of mountain peaks, including the usurpation of a unique geological mesa formation at Cerro Baúl as the basis for the Wari colonization of its southern frontier. Furthermore, research on the mountain summit has revealed architectural complexes oriented to, and presumably dedicated for, rites of veneration to the higher snowcapped volcanic peaks visible from this mountain summit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The means by which past complex societies thrived at high altitudes remain puzzling. In this paper I suggest that religious ideology and ritual practice shaped the cultural processes that fostered Tiwanaku state rise in the south-central Andean highlands. Physical changes in the monumental core of the state's principal centre are particularly revealing. Material transformations in monumental axiality, spatiality, materiality and iconography were critical elements in a changing religion that sought to integrate the symbolism of prominent generative forces such as mountains, vital elements such as water and recurring celestial cycles. After ad 500, Tiwanaku's innovative religion meshed imposing natural features with timeless solar cycles. This embodiment and objectification of nature was increasingly critical for a polity that thrived precariously on an effective coordination of fishing, herding and new technologies of high-altitude farming. The symbolic appropriation of the natural world and its immanent spiritual forces was constitutive of Tiwanaku's political integration of diverse societies and productive landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The character of dedication assemblages is frequently linked to the specific place and social context in which they are deposited. At the site of Tiwanaku, political and ceremonial center of a prehispanic state that influenced much of the South American Andes for several centuries (AD 500-1150), human dedications shaped the significance of built ritual environments. We compare the treatment and deposition of human remains in two ritual contexts at Tiwanaku: Akapana and Akapana East. In Akapana, some human remains took on the significance of human sacrifices and, in Akapana East, they appear to have been carefully curated ancestors. In the one, they represented elite bids for power and the encompassing identity of the emerging Tiwanaku community and, in the other, they embodied the common identity of a local residential group. Through human dedications, architectural constructions came to embody the identity of scaled social communities, ultimately uniting the diverse groups, elite and commoner, who inhabited and worshipped in the center of the emerging civilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of drought in the collapse of the ancient states of the Andean Middle Horizon has received a great deal of attention in recent years. The only Andean valley where both principal states of this time period, Wari and Tiwanaku, had established settlements is in Moquegua, Peru. Based on a GIS network analysis of ancient irrigation systems and detailed palaeoclimatic data, I assess the assertion that a centuries-long drought caused the collapse of state colonies in this valley circa AD 1000. I conclude that the onset of the drought significantly postdated collapse and suggest that factions of Tiwanaku social groups who allied themselves with Wari settlers upset the ecological balance of water use in the valley prior to the end of the first millennium AD. The increase in agricultural activity in the upper sierra in conjunction with the political instability caused by the fissioning of Tiwanaku political power in the valley created an environment of vulnerability for the Tiwanaku state colonies. It was the complex interaction of social and ecological factors that led to the collapse of the largest western colony of the Tiwanaku state. The Wari imperial colony played a pivotal role in this collapse by establishing an administrative center in the upper valley that drew away resources from the Tiwanaku state below. Ironically, the political instability caused by the Tiwanaku colonial collapse may have been instrumental in the downfall of the Wari colony as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]