LATE INTERMEDIATE, CHIMU
AND
OTHER STATES: A.D. 900 - 1450
Lesson objectives: characterize regional polities and trace antecedents of empire.
Discuss the meaning of the term Late Intermediate . Shimada (1999:488) points out that, in sum, the
Middle Horizon, like the Early (Chavin) and Late (Inca) Horizons, are times of ideological and organizational integration,
however brief, across horizontal and vertical dimensions. In other words religion and bureaucracy spread during horizons
over both geographic space and vast differences in altitude, whereas intermediate time periods featured regional states that
only expanded along horizontal dimensions, not up or down. However, remember, again, that we want to think of transformations
of what came before, not necessarily decline. There was disappearance of bureaucratic reach, and less powerful and splendid
monuments. Kolata (1993:281) notes that generations after Tiwanaku was in ruins, local cultures still produced textiles
and ceramics with its state motifs; even the Inka, 400 years later, identified with the site as a mystical place of origins
and seat of power. However the Late Intermediate was apparently a time of political instability and competing small states,
many of which gained in prominence until one, the Inka, took over (for a really very short while, due to the accidents of
history).
How is history important in this time period? We finally have historic archaeology. The Spanish recorded
oral traditions of Inca and of their predecessors. So for the first time we can get names of rulers and stories of events.
But of course all these accounts are colored by biases not only of the Spanish, total outsiders, but also of the Inca who
understood life and time very differently from Western concepts, then told it to the Spanish! Still, we can test
archaeological hypotheses derived from the ethnohistoric record. After the collapse of Tiwanaku, some (e.g., Richardson
1994) see immediately a period of dark ages, until smaller local polities or city-states emerge. There is great diversity
of cultures from the complex Sican then Chimu on the coast to highland societies, which were apparently simpler and
locally contentious. Again, it'll be like the Early Intermediate where 1 or 2 spectacular cultures dominate the
literature, but there were lots of regional states. Though we try for a more processual archaeology approach to
understanding this period, we nonetheless start with the spectacular cultures.
But we know far less of the Late Intermediate because 1. archaeologists are more interested in more ancient and more
spectacular stuff; 2. Western thought is preoccupied with origins research; and 3. by this time period everyone had metals,
so there has been much more looting than of sites from earlier time periods. See the pictures in Bruhns, p. 292, showing
holes all over like a battlefield. Moseley (p. 264) calls it a pitted, cratered moonscape! There are even bulldozer holes.
More of the devastation was done by Europeans, who didn't begin the looting but did begin it on a far larger scale.
Describe the state of Sican. This is one of the better investigated areas, in the Lambayeque valley, descending from the Moche state (which, remember was centered in the Moche valley). We must also remember that the north coast of Peru was less affected by the fall of Wari because it was farther away. The Lambayeque has most irrigatable floodplain and today supports >50% of Peru's population. Successors of the late Moche at Pampa Grande built a new city at Batán Grande to dominate the Sican precinct, that whole archaeological region mapped in both your texts. The site was a major ceremonial, government, and production center, especially for metals, which might have given them the edge (similar to the Etruscsans in Italy). Evidence of furnaces and industrial technology for prill-extraction copper and copper alloy smelting suggests one of the major independent metallurgical traditions in the world (Shimada et al 1982). The site was once full of elite burials, but is now thoroughly looted. Bruhns calls it a necropolis where there was continuity for the lords of Sipan. On the17 pyramids, many tombs and structures had columns and roofs. Some important people were later deliberately buried in clean white sand, a custom we've seen in earlier cultures. There were human sacrificial offerings with exotic burial goodies, or sometimes just the exotics as offerings without the sacrificial person. Besides the pyramids there were plazas, palaces, houses over an extent of 4 square km. From the Lambayeque, large irrigation systems included canals from one valley to the next.
What was the extent of long-distance economic interaction? This great metallurgical center was especially
important for the copper trade over a wide extent of external networks from the rest of Peru, up to Ecuador, and into many
other different environmental zones such as the tropical forest in the Zana valley. This very long distance exchange brought
to the necropolis shaft tombs the gold, silver, Spondylus shells, textiles, pots, and other important goods.
Moseley mentions how much of the gold is in world museums, including the museum of Batan Grande. One tomb had 200 gold
and silver necklaces, masks, vases, tumis (the ceremonial, distinctly shaped knives). Some burials had emeralds that
could only have come from Colombia. Shimada dug a tomb at Huaca Loro (Parrot Mound) that yielded a ton of metal artifacts.
Bruhns mentions how Shimada dug one only partially looted burial in 1992 in Huaca Ora; it was 12 m deep and had 6 levels
of burials and goods including bronze and tumbaga, a middle-aged guy covered with cinnabar (mercuric sulfide, heavy mineral)
and wrapped in cloth sewn with thin metal squares, a gold mask, thousands of beads, tumbaga gloves, 17 sacrifices
(especially girls), lots of sheet metal pieces to be worked, and other metal items including ax money.
What
is ax money? Called naipes (“playing cards”), these are small flat hammered and cut sheets of copper or
bronze, like ingots, in double-T or I-shapes, averaging 4 x 6 cm, stacked in similar-sized groups of up to 500 in a stack.
Probably they were made or minted at Batan Grande, and they were traded widely and possibly served as a form of true money.
From economic anthropology, developed to deal with all types of cultures, not just market societies (like formal economics
does), we know that to be true money your artifact must have several specific criteria, such as anonymity, divisibility
(so you can make change), and portability. But it is hard to tell whether prehistoric artifacts fit all the criteria,
especially in a non-literate society. At any rate, naipes are found as far away as coastal Ecuador in graves, northwest
Argentina, west Mexico. There is no naturally occurring copper in coastal Ecuador, so they clearly traded southward
with Peru. From coastal Ecuador traders went northward to Mexico, apparently first introducing metallurgy into Mexico
this way in about A.D. 800-1200. Ethnohistoric reports by the Spanish for the Chincha valley alone describe 6000
seafaring merchants traveling to Ecuador, using copper as a medium of exchange. Bruhns says they were always packed
in multiples of 5. We know Moche was a bigtime seafaring state. Sican continued this and it carried on with the Chimu
state later. What was the big trade item coming from Ecuador? Probably the sacred pink Spondylus shell,
which can only survive in the warm tropical waters there, not the cold upwelling currents of coastal Peru. This
shell was so much in demand that Ecuadorians apparently went north to get more from Mexico and also brought back
to Peru the Mexican hairless dog (for eating or pets), while introducing a bird species and new clothing forms,
in addition to metalwork, into west Mexican cultures (Anawalt 1997)
How can we characterize the Sican state? Batan Grande is explained by Bruhns as the center of a state
ideology, promoted through pilgrimages and a rigid art style. Moseley says tens of thousands are buried there, maybe
more than the number who lived there; it was a religious capital, for veneration of ancestors. Both texts use the term
Vatican as a model. The art styles are important. For the first time there are paddle-stamped ceramics. The major motif
or dominant image is Lord of Sican (who looks like the tin woodsman), with a square or trapezoidal face, comma-shaped
or winged eyes, the tumi or crescent-shaped ceremonial knife and crescent headdress; the personage is forward facing
and has something in each hand, sometimes wings on his shoulders, rich clothes, a beak-like nose and sometimes talons
instead of feet. On libation vessels he is shown in what looks like a flying position on top a double-headed serpent
or with serpents elsewhere on other types of vessels. The continuity with previous art is obvious: a front-facing god,
the double-headed serpent of Moche, etc. This image appears on masks over the dead, on bottles, textiles, etc.
Who is the Sican lord? There is oral history, from Spanish chronicler Miguel Cabello de (B)Valboa in 1586 we get a story that the Lambayeque valle was invaded long ago by a warrior named Naymlap or Yamlap, who came on a fleet of balsa wood rafts with his wife Ceterni and lots of other folks, including servants and 40 officials. He set up his capital with a palace called Chot, and a green stone idol to be worshiped by all. He apparently founded a dynasty, or, as Moseley calls it, a dual rulership, or something that led to a confederacy (full of myth and allegory, the legends are hard to interpret). Yamlap is so important that he had a harem and different officials in charge of things such as the litter and throne, the road, the facial painting, the bath, the plumed weavings, and playing the shell trumpet (Lumbreras 1999). Another official had Spondylus shells crushed into dust for him to walk on. This shows also how the demand for this sacred, rosy-colored shell might have been huge enough to spur the Ecuadorian providers to range as far as west Mexico to get more. (Because of the year-round demand for strawberries and oranges, we here in Florida have to put up with California-produced fruits in the summer, before ours are in season.) Anyhow, as the legend continues, when Y amlap lies dying, he puts himself in his tomb and commands the tale be told that he sprouted wings and flew off to heaven. After he died, his son Cium took over; another son, Zolzdoni, had 12 sons who went off to found 12 new settlements. Moseley says there were 12 rulers but Bruhns says there were 9 succeeding rulers until Fempellec, who tried to move the green stone and angered the heavens. Also he was seduced by the devil in the form of a woman (a very western idea portrayed by the Spanish sources; see The Devil is a Woman, 1935 movie with Marlene Deitrich, set during 19 th-century Spanish revolution!). In response to Fempellec's bad behavior, the gods brought 30 days of flooding and one year of famine. To help, priests and nobles tied up Fempellec and threw him into the sea; this did not help, after all.
Is this story real? Is the Sican lord Yamlap? Moseley says probably the legends include fantasy things, but clearly places and events in the story are identifiable in the archaeological record (Moseley and Cordy-Collins 1990). Radiocarbon dates suggest the deeds and events are in chronological order, though maybe really over several centuries but compressed into a dozen generations in native accounts for propaganda reasons. The number 12 is a recurrent motif in the story and of ritual, maybe calendrical importance. Nobles in the story have titles such as “lord of the feathered clothmakers,” which might be demonstrating the craft guild importance later seen by the Spanish. The palace of Chot may be the site of Chotuna, in the lower Lambayeque valley 4 km from the Pacific, dug by Donnan; it had pyramids and metalworking buildings. Huaca Gloria was a 2-story high platform with friezes of double-head serpents but no Sican lord (though it was looted). Was it Yamlap's shrine? There is good evidence for a huge El Niño and large-scale flooding in ca. A.D. 1100. There is also evidence from Batan Grande and other sites of flooding at this time.
What happened to the Sican polity? After the flooding Chotuna was abandoned, with only a small-scale building on it after this time. Batan Grande was also not only abandoned after the flood but deliberately burned, possibly demonstrating deliberate rejection or banishment of the noble classes here. The irrigation systems in the Moche valle were also ruined. Apparently the capital was transferred to Tucume in the Leche valley, where there is a huge pyramid, Huaca Larga, and evidence of new iconography and beliefs, as the Sican lord is not portrayed any more. This capital fell 250 years later in 1370 to Chimu conquerors from the south, from Moche valle. Moseley mentions other centers that could be those founded by the 12 sons: Cinto, Tucume, Juayanca, and others. But the legend may really mean not a single dynastic monarchy but a confederation of local city-states. Archaeological evidence of site clusters suggests 10 of them, maybe arising separately and at different times but later confederated and claiming descent from Naymlap to consolidate alliances to get into a linked canal system, because the Lambayeque had more water than other valleys in the region. These centers do sit on large canals. To summarize the Sican culture: there is apparently lots of syncretism, which means merging of different beliefs– old Moche iconography, Wari influence, local ideas– but all of them combine in a distinctive style.
What is Chimu? This archaeological culture and historic state (small empire?) conquered the Sican state (see Moseley's p. 244 map of the one including the other), expanding out of the Moche valley 200 km to the south. The capital was Chan Chan on the coast, one of the great capital cities in the Americas. This site was investigated a lot by Moseley (Moseley and Cordy-Collins 1990, Moseley and Day 1982) in 1969-74 in the largest multidisciplinary project since Gordon Willey's in the Viru valley in the 40s. The site consists of grand walled palaces, ciudadelas (little cities), the first one built by A.D.900. By the time the Inca conquered them in the 1470s, the people had built between 9 and 11 ciudadelas with pyramids, nobles' estates, thousands of residences of specialized craftworkers doing textiles, metals, woodworking and stoneworking. The number of ciudadelas depends upon interpretation (at least 2 were razed and buried). The population is estimated at 26,000 for artisans alone, plus the king, nobles, 3000 retainers (farmers, fishers, and others not directly serving the central bureaucracy lived outside the city). The ciudadelas are named after famous Peruvian archaeologists - Tello, Uhle, Squier, Bandelier, and others. The whole city was 20 square km.
Describe the layout of Chan Chan. Early ciudadelas show diverse designs, but the last 6, from around 1100-1200, are all built to rigid architectural plans: rectangular with high walls, divided into 3 sections (good pictures in Moseley and Mackey 1973). Large courtyards with friezes of mud showing birds, geometric motifs, and time scenes opened into the first section, with 10 U-shaped audiencias where administrators did government, taxes, irrigation planning, labor, trade, military stuff (see the lovely audiencia in Moseley's plate 100 with bird friezes, niches in the walls). The second section, in the center, had rows of storerooms, sunken wells, and palaces and later tombs of kings. The third section was for retainers and support activities such as cooking. Chan Chan is so big that little is understood here and Bruhns notes how the more excavations that are done, the more questions arise. McEwan (Moseley and Cordy-Collins 1990) thinks the shift from pyramid -dominated ceremonial centers of the Moche era to the enclosed rectilinear compounds of Chimor was a deliberate imitation of Wari architecture. He interprets this shift as a process of secularization of authority. All the tombs were plundered by the Spanish, who were granted mining contracts on them. One small detached burial platform recently excavated, though looted, provided some fascinating data. It had a T-shaped central tomb with the primary burial robbed, but surrounded by 25 deep cells filled with sacrificed women (at least 93 of them) “stacked like cord wood,” Bruhns says, but perhaps representing annual maintenance sacrifices. There were also enormous piles of cloth, shells, metal ornaments, pots, gourds filled with food, and the remains of hundreds of camelids. Humbler folks were buried in the cemetery around Chan Chan, which is also looted. Outside the ciudadelas were multiroomed houses of nobles and thousands of houses and workshops arranged in 4 barrios (neighborhoods), with craft areas for woodworkers, metalworkers (especially important), weavers, etc.
Describe craft production at Chan Chan. Most was in wealth items to keep elites special and to exchange. There were 2 inns with stables to accommodate llama caravans bringing foreign wealth, and huge storehouses in which to deposit all this wealth for rulers (though all the wealth of Chimu state combined could be held in just 1 standard Inca administrative center, there was so much increase by Late Horizon). Pottery was smoked black ware, some red, and some polychrome and made in industrial quantities. But as Bruhns notes, it was valued far away, including by the Inca later. Art styles and religious ideology on pottery, metalwork, textiles, and all the arts and crafts present lots of the same motifs seen far earlier. The idea is that key cultural concepts transcended archaeological periods, although the precise meaning of those ideas may have been modified over time.
Describe agricultural production and water management . Water was obtained in 125 walk-in wells around the city. On the coast here side garden plots were sunken to the water table level to be wet enough. The agricultural economy was made possible by the most extensive irrigation system ever in the Moche valley – bigger than during the Moche state, bigger than today. Bruhns (p. 299) shows a picture of what is today desert but was irrigated fields then. The Chimu engineers ran main canals far into the desert and also laid out a canal to link the Chicama valley to the Moche valley which ran over 50 km and for part of the time passed through a 30 m-high aqueduct (think of human labor needed here - something we often forget). Moseley says (p. 274) this canal was built to recharge the urban aquifer, but it apparently never held water. The trench was dug but only part of it lined; it ran uphill, so either the engineers miscalculated or things happened after they were only partly finished – they may have tried to cross an active fault. The history of the last millennium here, as interpreted by Rostworowski (Moseley and Cordy-Collins 1990), can be seen as the history of hydraulic technology and of conflict/cooperation over water use and rights. When there is strong coordination, such as during Chimu times, coastal polities took control of canal intakes in the highlands and established mid-altitude settlements. When the coast lost power as during Wari and Inca times, the highlands had control of water and extracted payment from coastal states. Further, Moseley and others have noted that construction of irrigation canals with all the sophisticated engineering that they had, was still at the mercy of slow tectonic movement of the earth (not to mention sudden earthquakes), which would have made many canals shift and sometimes run uphill (no – of course the prehistoric people were not dumb enough to construct them that way in the first place! But that is what some very ethnocentric accounts suggest). This is important because today Peru is trying to reuse old prehistoric canals to improve agricultural production; despite the pride of using the ancestors' methods here, this is probably a mistake since they will again fail for the same reasons – some real public and practical archaeology knowledge here, if authorities would heed it.
What is the story of the founding of the Chimu dynasty? There is a similar legend to that of Naymlap, recorded in 1604, Anonymous History of Trujillo . A ruler arrives again by balsa raft, to take possession of Moche valle (we can already see similarities to Messiah legends in the religions predominating in the world today). His name is Taycanamo. His son took over the lower Moche valle and his grandson, Y ançenpinco, took over the coast by military conquest, from the Santa River in the south to the Jequetepeque in the north (find these valleys on map).
Another Spaniard wrote in 1638 that Y ançenpinco's general, Pacatnamu, captured the Jequetepeque valley 75 km north of the Moche, and was rewarded by being appointed its governor. Geoffrey Conrad investigated the site of Farfan, largest in that valley, and thought it was Pacatnamu's palace and administrative center. There is a palace there similar to Chan Chan in layout, with a burial platform. It had been thought that Chan Chan's layout was tied to the 10 kings in the Taycanamo Dynasty. Recently archaeologist Raffael Cavallaro reinterpreted the ciudadelas at Chan Chan, originally tied to these 10 kings and thought to number 10, in a different way. They may have been paired and represented a dual social system. Ciudadelas on the east side are larger, for kings; those on west were for nobles, and were smaller. One large and one small may have been in use at any one time. Perhaps there are 5 paired compounds. Apparently the compounds were not roofed, since there is seldom rain on this desert coast.
How was Chimor ruled and expanded? Moseley & Alana Cordy-Collins (1990) edited a book called The Northern Dynasties: Kingship & Statecraft in Chimor , in which they see both the archaeological and ethnohistoric data showing Chimor ruled by dual rulership or diarchy, not a monarchy. It is also thought that the king lists should be compressed and the ancient Peruvian sense of time not conceived of not as western and linear but linked with the cosmology and not concerned with getting things in proper chronological order. As Chimor expanded the invasions may have been helped by the A.D. 1000-1100 El Nino, which weakened neighboring societies. We noted how they conquered the late Sican state in the Lambayeque valley by 1350. Victorious armies and craft production led to great surpluses, wealth for kings and nobles. Six or 7 rulers followed Y ançenpinco, and the last king, Minchancaman or Minchançaman, sent troops north and south of established frontiers and expanded some more, setting up regional centers. Armies moved over an elaborate road system connecting coastal valleys and funneling wealth, tribute and taxes into Chan Chan. There was a naval force also, which used large rafts, as is clear from the legends. Trade with Ecuador, Central America, West Mexico, continued the exchange of metals for Spondylus shell. See the scenes on earspools and disks of rafts and divers getting Spondylus – they must have gotten absolutely huge amounts. The shellfish lives between 18-50 m --165 ft deep. So lots of effort was needed to get it and fuel this huge trade. An interesting connection with modern public archaeology has just been made with the Spondylus shell. After years of fierce border conflict between Peru and Ecuador (which disrupted archaeological research), a peace agreement was signed in 1998 and the Spondylus shell decreed to be its official symbol by the Peruvian government, emphasizing a change in attitude toward the past as a negative time and stressing modern identity as rooted in that past (Sandweiss 1999).
No watercraft are preserved, but there are drawings on pottery of reed rafts. Chan Chan had sunken gardens to grow totora reed for boats. But balsa wood had to have come from Ecuador. Recently a small 5-log balsa raft has been found at Chan Chan. There were few harbors but you don't need them for rafts to slide up onto the beach. None of the balsa rafts is shown with sails on any artistic rendering. But there are toy balsa rafts with sails in graves in south Peru of the Chiribaya culture. And yes, Pizarro's pilot Bartolome Ruiz saw a balsa cargo raft with triangular sails with 20 people on a trading venture near the equator, with silver, gold, and textiles to trade for Spondylus . Sails may have been used to travel against ocean currents, but not often (this may be like the situation where in Gulf Coast Mexico and Central America we get wheeled toys but no wheels – they knew about the technology– just did not need it much). Today balsa log rafts have sails on the north coast of Peru, and can maneuver where fishing boats can't go. In the Late Intermediate apparently there was large-scale maritime interaction for economic, political, and doubtless social functions. Chan Chan became the cente r of a major conquest state stretching from the Casma valley to the edge of Ecuador. John Rowe suggests the Chimu moved entire villages or regional populations to live in newly conquered zones where no people were, or where populations were similarly moved away - just like the Inca did later. As for violence and military force, there is one fortress, Cerro Paclo in the Jequetepeque valley, overlooking Farfan. It had piles of sling stones, but was occupied only a short time. Apparently there was no need for defense in the rest of time or space, and the conquest was peaceful.
Who were the people of the Chimor state? We know about them from 16 th - and 17 th -century Spanish chronicles and church records (including writings by El Inca, Garcilaso de la Vega, who also chronicled the early Spaniards in Florida). They apparently spoke a language totally different from Quechua or Aymara, the two large linguistic groups of the Central Andes. It was called Yunka language in Quechua, which refers to coastal or tropical, and evidently includes several different languages or dialects spoken in each of the valleys. In the Moche valley the language was known as Quingnam, and we have several other names (Lumbreras 1999:551).
What happened to Chimor? The Inca conquered Chimor between 1462-70; this was the largest state they overcame. They adopted much of Chimu statecraft, looted Chan Chan, took the king off to their capital at Cuzco and put in his son as puppet, then his grandson who'd been raised in Cuzco. Most of Chan Chan was abandoned because the craftworkers needed jobs so they left, and also the Inca removed populations and resettled them elsewhere and divided the state into parcialidades. Four Spanish writers mention Chimor but little was there for them to see by the 16 th century. When the Spanish came, there were only a few folks living there, but they built the city of Trujillo to control the north coast. Now that city is threatening to overwhelm the ruins.
At any rate, the north coastal/lowland cultural evolution here culminated in the Chimor empire, the last and greatest polity centered in that environment, while the Inca of the southern highlands dominated from a foundation in the highlands and mountains. Much work is going on these days to see how the Late Intermediate cultures were different from the Inca. Charles Stanish (1992), studying events in Moquegua valley, which we saw earlier had great strategic importance, says in Ancient Andean Political Economy that we cannot contrast John Murra's model of vertical control in which the conquering state moves populations to or from the highlands, and horizontal political integration via trade and elite alliances. Both are part of the same political economy. The contrast comes between direct control of people and resources, which is present with Tiwanaku and Inca, and indirect control by alliance and exchange during the Late Intermediate (which he and others call a Regional State period).
What other cultures contemporaneous with Chimu are present elsewhere during the Late Intermediate? Chancay is a central coast regional culture that arose after the collapse of Wari, from which there was slow recovery. Chancay is best known for black and white ceramics, often molded to shapes of people with elaborate body paint, and complex tapestries that inspired the geometrically inclined modern artist M.C. Escher. Motifs are animal figures but mostly humans, mostly women. Chancay is especially also noted for incredible textiles, elaborate gauzes and brocades and painted cloth. Farther south the Ica and Chincha cultures did lots of fishing, shell trading, and textile manufacture, as we see preserved in the Ica and Nazca drainages. There are links with the Ayacucho region because there is lots of continuity with Wari.
The Mollo culture emerged in the area of the altiplano after the collapse of Tiwanaku, defined by ceramics of black and white on natural red clay. Chullpas were stone or adobe towers used for burial in altiplano, Aymara area. There is continuity with late Tiwanaku in domestic and village architecture, just no elaborate elite stuff or pyramids. There are many ethnic names for peoples in the former Tiwanaku area and debate over whether the Aymara were descendants of the Tiwanaku empire or came in after its collapse. Quechua and Aymara are the 2 major indigenous languages of Peru today, but there were many many more languages and ethnic groups when the Inca started to take over. The Inca tradition said the area was full of warring states that they conquered one by one. It looks like after agricultural collapse, people intensified pastoralism and built more defensive settlements. Dwellings are often arranged in 2 discrete clusters, reflecting that dualism again that may be moiety social systems. During this time, there was continual production of copper-tin bronze (in contrast to the arsenical bronze of Peru). But there are no more platform mounds or evidence of such grandeur as earlier. A new form of burial, in these round towers or chullpas, indicates they were mausoleums of ruling families. Now all are looted. Many remained and were used through Inca times, showing how the Inca incorporated local rulers. Similar Tiwanaku-derived cultures existed in south Bolivia, northwest Argentina and Chile. There was maize agriculture in warmer areas, potatoes and herds in colder areas, often with terraces and irrigation systems.
On the south coast into northern Chile the people were not Aymara and never conquered by Wari or Tiwanaku, just somewhat influenced by them. The Chiribaya culture of the Moquegua valley coast is well known, with its polychrome ceramics like those of earlier Tiwanaku. On the southern sierra of Peru, consolidation began in what was to be the Inca stronghold in Cuzco area. The central sierra had a powerful state known as Wanca or Huanca, which emphasized herding over farming, but then adopted a large-kerneled maize and shifted to higher population densities and walled defensive communities. The Inca said they were always hostile, and their capital was called Wari Willka. Far to the south in south Chile, horticulture finally appeared among the hunter-gatherer cultures of Araucania by 500, and by the Late Intermediate, Bruhns notes the first evidence of stratified society: burials in urns in canoes, some with rich grave goods such as stone beads and copper rings.
To the north, in the northern Andes in Ecuador was the Cañari culture, developing out of the already rich traditions there. There were wealthy kingdoms with burials of leaders accompanied by lots of copper in the forms of tumi knives, headdresses, and other items. One burial of an important woman was accompanied by both male and female attendants. In Ecuador an earthen platform mound is called a tola. Many local cultures built them and had imported goodies to bury in them with the dead. Bruhns notes many of these regional cultures.
On the Ecuador coast were Mante Z o-Huancavilca cultures, with several distinct political units extending up the coast, growing rich from trading Spondylus to Peru. The Milagro culture inland was less urban, with burials in chimney formations, long strings of pots with the bottoms broken out.
Chachapoyas and related cultures, on the difficult puna and forested eastern monta Z a slopes of Andes, had small settlements located near topographic high points (Muscutt 1998). One argument is that they were there because those locations were home to powerful spirits, apu, in the animistic highland regions. The rugged eastern slope of Andes is little known archaeologically, but during this time period lots of sites are known because we can see them more easily as they are built of stone. A characteristic split shale dry stone was used to construct round houses, and there were apparently very large populations. There had been rumors of lost cities in this area, and there was a big scandal in 1985 when some amateurs and a professor from the University of Colorado, Boulder, “discovered a lost city” that had already been in the guidebooks and had an earlier “discoverer” who named it Gran Pajaten, an inaccurate name for the Abiseo site. It has stone mosaics of birds, humans, round buildings and a couple of interesting rectangular ones at edge of the precipitous ridge the settlement is on. The dead of Chachapoyas were buried in round stone chullpas, and recently there has been well-publicized recovery of data from these mummies. One famous city is Kuelap, in the Peruvian Amazon, with circular towers that are probably for defense. Some of this area became conquered during Inca takeovers.
In the Amazon -Orinoco area, very little known for this time period, but lately there is exciting progress showing more complexity and landscape manipulation than we thought. It was just harder to see in the jungle, but the people were intensifying production. There was steady population growth and expansion of agriculture. We noted earthworks already beginning earlier, but they are very hard to date. Roosevelt documented early settlements on artificial mounds, and large areas of drained fields in the galley flood forest have been explored by Erika Wagner. Raised fields are especially good for tubers such as manioc. We know modern peoples continually open new canals and channels, changing the landscape. We already discussed the recent work in the Xingu basin (Heckenberger et al. 2003) documenting major ditches, plazas, and connecting roads. With drained fields were earth and stone mounds, settlement platforms, causeways connecting settlements. There is a huge amount of causeways in southern Venezuela, which is not much explored. This cultural tradition is called Tierroid, and is characterized by elaborate polychrome pottery. On the Apure River, on the western arm of the Orinoco, is the Valencia culture, best known for figurines of women and animals. We have also already noted the Marajoara people and their giant polychrome urns with faces modeled on them (see picture in Bruhns p. 328), associated with mounds and villages. The polychrome pottery of the Amazon is all very similar in the whole basin, so it may indicate people moving around up streams. Meggers saw polychrome moving upstream, Lathrap said it all originated in the central Amazon and moved in both directions. Of course it is easy to move in either direction with currents and tides. At the time of contact there is a problem because there were lots of linguistic and cultural groups, but all with similar material culture, so it is hard to see migration or ethnic dispersal in archaeological record. Her it is important to know languages in Amazonia to try to associate them with variability in the archaeological record. Clearly there were complex chiefdoms in the tropical forest by the 15 th century. Some of these terra preta sites have no midden --either they are raised agricultural fields or ceremonial earthworks.