Annu. Rev. Anthropol.2001. 30:41-64 Copyright() 2001 by AnnualReviews. All rights reserved THE ORIGINOF STATESOCIETIES IN SOUTH AMERICA CharlesStanish Departmentof Anthropology,University of California,Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095-1553; e-mail: [email protected] Key Words stateformation, cultural evolution, Andes, chiefdoms, states * Abstract Theearliest states developed in thecentral Andean highlands and along thecentral Pacific coast of westernSouth America. The consensus in thearchaeological literatureis thatstate societies first developed in thecentral Andes in theearly part of the firstmillennium C.E. A minorityopinion holds that first-generationstates developed as early as the late second millenniumB.C.E. in the same area.The Andeanregion constitutesone of a few areasof first-generationstate development in the world.This areatherefore represents an importantcase studyfor the comparativeanalysis of state formation.This articleoutlines the argumentsfor stateformation in SouthAmerica, presentsthe evidence, analyzes the underlying assumptions about these arguments, and assessesthe SouthAmerican data in termsof contemporaryanthropological theory of stateevolution. SOUTH AMERICA South America, a continent approximately17,870,000 km2 in size, has been di- vided into as few as three and as many as two dozen different cultural areas by anthropologists(Willey 1971, pp. 17-24). Borrowing on the earlier work of Wissler (1922, pp. 245-57) and Bennett (1946, p. 1), Lumbreras(1981, p. 42) provides the most common culturalgeographical division of South America:the Andes, the Llanos, Amazonia, the Chaco, the Pampas,and Patagonia(Figure 1). First-generationstates evolved only in the central and south central part of one area, the Andes. This area, referredto collectively as the central Andes, would correspondto partsof Wissler's Inca area and to all of Willey's Peruviancultural area(Willey 1971, p. 4). Borderedon the west by the Pacific Ocean, this culturally precociousregion stretchesfrom roughly the Peru-Ecuadorborder in the north,to the low forests of Peru and Bolivia in the east, and south to the southernpart of the Titicaca Basin in Bolivia. 0084-6570/01/1021-0041$14.00 41 This content downloaded from 129.252.86.83 on Wed, 12 Mar 2014 18:49:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 42 STANISH ?- ,?,-. i .;?i? . I ? ?:: ?- ?:i .? :i... ??* ?i?.;I.?.. ..?, i.:; "' '' .Y1-: ,.. r :; 1 ?.?? ?? ??.?? '?-.',i?? :?"I,.?'??-' .?? -??,.?? :? 1- :.? r- 1-.,?- ,;1:1?.. .... '?'r:: "'' '' ??', i ? ?; s a. ';'' ?'' T' p.C ? `? ?: c"_7 :? c ..?;? .....??? Llanos \I ;r :? ?;? i / ? Andes c,,, ??'? ?? .. (C(/i t i :? ?I ,. i.?? s jz;p-i;' `?,-I z: .? forthf \?"'.' Central Andes . Amazonia ;, I Sout_h Chaco .z , 1'" 0 / 6-0f Figure 1 South American cultural areas. This content downloaded from 129.252.86.83 on Wed, 12 Mar 2014 18:49:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ORIGINOF SOUTH AMERICAN STATES 43 THE CENTRAL ANDES The centralAndes extends over 1,000,000 km2 and includes some of the world's driest deserts, rugged mountainsides and peaks, highland grasslands, and low forests (Figure2). At the time of Europeancontact, the centralAndes was home to severaldozen distinctethnic and linguistic groups. In spite of this diversity,the idea that the centralAndes is culturallyunified and homogenous has been a subtextin anthropologicaland historical studies since at least the Europeanconquest. A good argumentcan be made that such a bias developeddirectly out of Inca and Spanish Colombia 0 200km Qulito Eata-dior z PC", 24 36 4 17 Chiclayo 28 12 Brazil TInjillo 3 18 19 20 25 Casot 637735 16 Supe 3 O Bo~~~~~~~~~~~~livia 7212.3 IjlibHxancavte1ica *A.yacucho26 Pisch (' Cusc1 .Ica. Nasmc 31 30 2 29 ~~~'ticwcra 1-Aspero 2-Cahuachi, 3-Cardarl, 4-Cerro Blantco, 5-Cerrro Sechht,n, 6-Chankillo, 7-Chavin, 8-Chiripa, 9-Chupacigarro, 10-El Para(so, Arica Il-Huaca La Florida, 12-Huacaloma, 13-Huaca Prieta, 14-Huaricoto, 15-Hsaynund, 16-Kotosh, 17-Kuntur Wasi, 18-La Galgada, 19-La Pampa, 20-Las Haldas, 21-Mina Perdida, 22-Modw, 23-Pachacamac, Iquiqw. 24-Pacopampa, 25-Pampa de las Llamas - Moxeke, 26-Pikillacta, 27-Pirurn, 28-Porn Porn, 29-Pucara, 30-Putina, 31-Qaluyu, 32-Salinas de Chao, 33-San Jacinto, 34-Secht AAlto, 35-Sedhfn Bajo, 36-Sipdn, 37-Taukachi-Konkan, 38-T:wanaku, 39-Wari Figure 2 The centralAndes. This content downloaded from 129.252.86.83 on Wed, 12 Mar 2014 18:49:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 44 STANISH imperialpropaganda that promoted the culturalunity of empire.It is thereforenot surprisingthat many definitions of the Andean or central Andean cultural area correspondrather neatly to the Incan imperialboundaries in the 1530s. If one used the political and linguistic boundariesof the later first millennium C.E., there would be a very different picture. Around C.E.600 there were three relativelydistinct cultural, linguistic, political, and geographical areas in the central Andes. The Moche culturedeveloped in the northerncoastal desert. In this area, people spoke Mochica andrelated dialects (Torero1990). In the centralhighlands, the Wari state dominatedthe political landscape. Most likely, an ancestralform of Quechua was spoken in this region. The people of Tiwanakuruled the south centralAndean altiplano, or high plains.In this region,Aymara, Pukina, and related dialects were the dominantlanguages in the sixteenth century,and we presume that some form of proto-Aymara(Aru) and/orPukina was spoken in this area at the time of Tiwanaku.Each of these areas has its own researchtraditions. Given thatthis discussion focuses on the origin of the state and thatmany archaeologists point to these threeregions as home to the earliest states, these areasstructure this discussion. DEFINING THE STATE Flannery(1998, pp. 15-16; 1999) makesthe essentialpoint that the definitionof the stateis a taskfor anthropologistsand political scientistsworking with ethnographic or historicaldata. The role of archaeologists,in contrast,is to define the material indicatorsof this phenomenonand then assess the datato define the emergenceof the state. The anthropologicaldefinitions of the state, as well as its materialindi- catorsin the archaeologicalrecord, are closely linked to the theoreticalframework in which the concept of the state is developed. Definitions that focus on political power and social classes tend to define states broadly,with many archaeological cases fitting into the definition.In most neomarxistframeworks, the existence of social classes in and of itself is the defining feature of state organization.Silva Santisteban(1997, p. 22), for instance,argues that the existence of any monument that is significantlylarge or elaborateenough to indicate group labor above the household, is evidence for state organization.In his words, "... the presence of a ceremonialcenter [is] tangible evidence of the sociopolitical formationthat we call a State" (Silva Santisteban1997, p. 101). A theoreticallysimilar position is advocatedby Haas (1987, p. 32), who also sees the exercise of economic power to be the essential variablein the definition of the state. In the Andes according to this definition,large earthenconstructions reflect concentrated economic power and a state organization(Haas 1987, p. 22). A more common view is that monumentalarchitectural construction precedes the statein westernSouth America. In this view, nonstatesocieties arefully capable of amassingsufficient labor to buildlarge monuments, usually throughreligious or "theocratic"means (Burger1995, p. 37; Fung Pineda 1988, p. 80; Moseley 1975, This content downloaded from 129.252.86.83 on Wed, 12 Mar 2014 18:49:44 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ORIGINOF SOUTH AMERICAN STATES 45 1992). Moseley refers to complex, prestate societies as "civilizations,"in which hierarchycan exist withouthereditary rank (M.E. Moseley, personalcommunica- tion). In this context, the ideology representsthe community,not individuals or elite groups, and corporatearchitecture is created to provide focus for commu- nity ritualsand the materializationof chief ideologies (e.g. DeMarraiset al 1996, Dillehay 1992). In models thatemphasize the religious functionsof early monumentalconstruc- tions, the state develops after the shift from a kin-based, chief "hierarchyat the service of the collectivity" (Albarracin-Jordan1996, p. 70) to a hierarchyheaded by a stateelite thatacts largelyin its own interest.The stateis definedby a series of factors that distinguishit from chief, kin-basedorganization. The relative impor- tance of these factorsis based upon the particulartheoretical framework in which they are proposed. In the Andes, factors that have been proposed are generally consistent with the literatureon state formationfrom aroundthe world. THE EMERGENCE OF COMPLEX SOCIETY IN THE LATEPRECERAMIC PERIOD At the beginning of the fourth millennium B.C.E., all peoples in South America lived in small hunting, gathering,and horticulturalcamps, or, on rare occasions, in small semipermanentvillages. By 3000-2500 B.C.E.,the first fully sedentary and complex societies developed on the Pacific coast of Peru. Social complexity in the Andean archaeologicalrecord is generally indicated by the existence of large monumentsthat have functionsbeyond domestic residence and subsistence. Andeanarchaeologists refer to such architectureby severalterms, including corpo- rate, civic-ceremonial,elite-ceremonial, ritual, or public architecture.Settlements that have pyramids,courts, walled plazas, and