This is an HTML version of the dissertation of Matthew Bandy. It was filed in December 2001 with the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley.
This version was generated by a conversion tool. The text should be correct, but it contains errors of formatting, especially as regards figures, tables, equations, and front matter. I will correct these as time permits. However, the official copy of the document - identical to the filed copy available from UMI - may be obtained in PDF format. All citations and official use should refer to that document, and it should be consulted in the case of confusion or error in the HTML version.
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Matthew Sebastian Bandy
Our understanding of the processes leading to the emergence of the Tiwanaku state around 500 A.D. has been severely hampered by a lack of information on the long Formative Period (1500 B.C. - 500 A.D.) which preceded it. This thesis develops an agent-centered approach to studying prehistoric settlement system formation and transformation. It is argued that any adequate understanding of settlement dynamics must consider varying settlement growth rates as resulting from the concrete and historically contingent residential decisions of a regional population. Thus, regional settlement dynamics can be read in such a way as to reveal broad, aggregate patterns of prehistoric decision-making. Agency may be studied in the absence of a well-defined agent.
This approach is then applied to the problem of the southern Titicaca Basin Formative Period. The evolution of the regional settlement system is traced from the establishment of sedentary agricultural villages (1500 B.C.) through the early Colonial Period (1600 A.D.). Significant milestones include: 1) the evolution of a system of permanent autonomous villages (beginning 800 B.C.), 2) the development of a multi-community polity, which I term the Taraco Peninsula Polity (250 B.C.), 3) Tiwanaku regional dominance and eventual state formation (beginning perhaps around 400 A.D.), 4) Tiwanaku collapse (1100 A.D.), and 5) conquest by foreign powers (ca. 1450 A.D.). These developments are interpreted in light of the decision-making patterns revealed by settlement dynamics, as well as significant changes in regional exchange systems, political relations, subsistence regimes, and the level of Lake Titicaca. A new account of Tiwanaku state formation is finally presented, one which stresses cross-cultural processes as they were played out against the field of Titicaca Basin environmental, economic, and demographic history.