The third significant fact about the Middle Formative settlement system is the emergence of a two-tiered site size hierarchy. This can clearly be appreciated in Figure 6.9, which indicates a bimodal population distribution. This is plainly distinguishable from the Middle Chiripa site size histogram, shown on the same figure for comparison. In the Middle Formative Period, then, population was more or less equally distributed between a group of larger villages with population index values of 350-450, and a group of smaller villages with population index values of less than 300.
Further, the larger sites are distributed on the landscape in such a way as to suggest the formation of a set of small polities. That is, they are located at regular intervals along the lakeshore, generally with smaller sites interspersed between them. This pattern is fairly clear in Figure 6.10. In this figure, three of the four large sites are clearly distinguishable as higher peaks, surrounded by lower. These are Chiripa (T-1), Janko Kala (T-394) and Yanapata (T-130). The fourth first-tier community is formed together by Kala Uyuni (T-231) and Achachi Coa Kkollu (T-225), and therefore does not appear as a single peak on Figure 6.10. The Kala Uyuni community is also the smallest of the four large villages, with a combined population index value of 361.
Some archaeologists would view this settlement configuration as an
indication of the emergence of a series of ``simple chiefdoms'',
or those characterized by a two-level decision-making hierarchy ([Anderson 1994,Wright and Johnson 1975]).
However, there are several ways in which site size hierarchies can
come about.![[*]](file:/usr/share/latex2html/icons/footnote.png){kind=icon}
On the one hand, they may - as generally is assumed in archaeological
analyses of political structure - reflect the movement of population
from smaller sites, or from outside the study region, to larger ones;
that is, they may result from faster population growth rates at the
larger sites. Such movement can be motivated by many factors, but
are usually related to elements of the political economy. On the other
hand it is possible for such hierarchies to emerge organically and
entirely accidentally from the process of village fissioning. That
is, some villages within a settlement system fission while others
do not. The villages which do not fission come to comprise the group
of first-tier sites, using the terminology I have already employed,
and the group of fissioned villages together with their daughter communities
form the group of second-tier sites. Given time, this process could
conceivably produce elaborate, multi-tiered settlement size hierarchies
without any of the institutions normally considered to accompany these
settlement system configurations. That is, it is possible for settlement
hierarchies to arise in the absence of political or economic hierarchies.
The difficulty, then, is in distinguishing between these two scenarios. Does the two-tier settlement hierarchy evident in the Middle Formative Period reflect intentional, motivated movement of persons from smaller sites to larger sites, or does it simply reflect the fissioning of some communities and the non-fissioning of others? One way to answer this question is to compare population growth rates of the larger villages with that of the smaller villages. If there was motivated, intentional population movement into the larger villages, then their growth rate should be higher than that of the smaller villages. If the configuration is accidental then the growth rates of the two groups should be comparable.
Figure 6.11 shows change in population density over space during the Middle Formative Period. In general, the peaks for the larger settlements are higher than the peaks for the smaller settlements, indicating more rapid population increase in the former group. One must remove from the analysis, of course, villages resulting from the fissioning of an older Early Formative settlement. For this reason Cerro Choncaya (T-2) and Sunaj Pata (T-268), both located near the end of the peninsula, must be discounted, since they resulted from the fissioning of the Early Formative 2 village of Sonaji (T-271).
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A systematic comparison is made in Table 6.4.
It includes all Middle Formative sites which were also occupied during
the Early Formative and which do not seem to have experienced any
fissioning event. That is, they all seem to have grown without interruption
throughout the Middle Formative Period. As the table shows, three
quarters of the first-tier sites grew at a rate greater than or equal
to the phase average of 0.13%, while all three of the second-tier sites had growth rates below the
phase average. The average growth rate of the first-tier sites was
0.13%, 44% higher than the second-tier site average growth rate
of 0.09%.
These data indicate that the two-tier settlement hierarchy observed in the Middle Formative was not, in fact, an accidental configuration, but rather resulted from the intentional and motivated movement of people from the smaller sites to the larger sites. The rate of this population transfer was slow, of course, but it was enough to materially affect the growth rate of the two groups of sites. The meaning of this population flow is less than obvious. However, it is very suggestive when considered in relation to the previously presented data concerning the development of material culture, public architecture and exchange systems. For the moment, however, we can suggest that during the Middle Formative Period resource concentration and distribution by community leaders and prominent individuals - as discussed in Chapter 4 - became, for the first time, a settlement determinant. This in turn would suggest at least sporadic surplus flow from smaller to larger villages, and therefore at least some level of political integration above the level of the individual village.
