Discussion

To sum up the contents of this chapter, six key historical processes have been identified during the Middle Formative Period:

1. a gradual elaboration of public architecture, culminating in the Upper House complex at Chiripa and probably similar features at other sites,
2. the appearance of a Titicaca Basin-wide stone sculptural style (variously called Yaya Mama [[Chávez and Mohr Chávez 1975,Chávez 1988,Chávez and Chávez 1970,Rowe and Donahue 1975]] or Pajano [[Portugal Ortíz 1981,Portugal Ortíz 1998]]),
3. the appearance and elaboration of a complex of ceremonial artifacts, including ceramic trumpets, ring-base burning bowls and decorated serving wares,
4. an increase in the material wealth and therefore probably social status and power of some individuals or social groups, as indicated by relatively wealthy burials in the Upper House Level at Chiripa,
5. the probable emergence of a regional exchange system involving the Titicaca Basin and the eastern valleys, the yungas, within which the Taraco Peninsula communities were advantageously situated , especially after the 450 B.C. lake level fall, and
6. a modest movement of population from smaller villages to larger, producing a two-tier site size hierarchy.

These processes are all interrelated, and in the manner of their articulation we may appreciate something of the very significant social transformation which took place at this time.

At the beginning of this chapter I proposed that the Middle Formative Period on the Taraco Peninsula witnessed an intensification of commensal politics. The development of a ceremonial complex including architectural, sculptural and ceramic elements was associated with this intensification of competitive feasting activity. This complex - which Chávez and Chávez call the ``Yaya-Mama Religious Tradition'' ([Chávez 1988]) - essentially defines the Titicaca Basin Middle Formative Period and comprised the ideological and social matrix from which the later Pukara and Tiwanaku polities emerged.

The settlement dynamics outlined in this chapter and in Chapter 5 point up some interesting facts about the context in which the Yaya-Mama Religious Tradition emerged. In the Middle Chiripa phase, the Taraco Peninsula villages began to reach a size which gave rise to scale-related stresses and conflicts. These stresses caused a number of village fissioning events in the Middle Chiripa phase and early in the Late Chiripa phase. The founding of new villages, however, raised the costs of village fissioning and relocation by increasing the distance groups would have to move in order to found a new village. The landscape, in other words, was filling up. And as it filled up, the options of the members of the Taraco Peninsula communities were reduced. No longer could they easily move a few kilometers and found a new village. Instead, they might have to move as far as twenty kilometers, and lose direct access to the lakeshore in the process. Therefore, local communities and their members had a great incentive to find ways to reduce or mediate the scale-related stresses to which their communities were being exposed.

What emerged, of course, was to become the Yaya-Mama Religious Tradition. The process by which this ideological and sociological transformation was played out remains - and may forever remain - obscure to the modern analyst. What seems certain, however, was that the solution involved an intensification of ritual activity - and probably also of an associated commensal politics - and the embedding of these politics into a cosmological idiom of reciprocity and exchange. It is in this way that we come to see symbols of natural fertility ([Portugal Ortíz 1992,Portugal Ortíz et al. 1993]) iconographically linked to the generosity and largess of prominent community members, as manifested in ceremonial competitive hospitality.

Whatever the precise nature of the solution, it is clear that it was successful in mitigating scale-related stresses in the Taraco Peninsula communities. One instance of village fissioning can be shown to have occurred early in the Late Chiripa phase. Throughout the remainder of the Middle Formative, however, the villages continued to grow at a regular pace and did not fission. This is despite the fact that many of them reached populations well over four times what seems to have been the fission threshold during the Early Formative. Villages continued to grow, but they did not fission. Fletcher's first C-limit had been decisively overcome.

At the same time that the ideological/ceremonial complex of the incipient Yaya-Mama Religious Tradition was successful in mitigating scale-related social friction, it also opened up new opportunities for an expansion of the scope of status competition. Through the sponsorship of community-wide ceremonial events embedded within the developing religious tradition, ambitious individuals (Hayden's ``accumulators,'' or ``Triple A individuals'' [[Hayden and Gargett 1990,Hayden 1996b]]) were able to increase the scale of their hosting and gift-giving activities, and thereby engender broader and deeper social obligations among their neighbors and affines.

This is not to say that the one led to the other in some deterministic fashion. It is rather to say that this expansion of community ritual and probably also of commensal politics served a perceived social need, and was therefore tolerated by the communities at large. Over time, of course, this process took on a dynamic of its own, as the community ritual occasions and their associated set of propositions about the world came to form an established matrix of "rules and resources for action" ([Giddens 1984]); a 'structure.' Thus a process which had its roots in a perceived social problem and a convenient solution came to take on a certain autonomy. Pauketat calls this process, by which individuals acting of their own volition establish a structure which functions to limit their future autonomy, the "tragedy of the commoners" ([Pauketat 2000]).

The earliest indications we have of this process appear in the Middle Chiripa phase, and include the introduction of decorated serving ceramics, heretofore absent, and the construction of the first public architectural features, exemplified by the Choquehuanca structure at Chiripa. These ceramics and structures were probably the product of early experimentation, which was not entirely successful, as is shown by continuing village fissioning through the early Late Chiripa phase. Early in the Middle Formative, however, the developing complex of competitive ceremonialism and its associated ideological forms stabilized and was to endure for more than 500 years, though with continual modifications and adjustments.

One of the adjustments of the system seems to have occurred around 450 B.C. when the level of Lago Wiñaymarka dropped drastically (see Figure 6.8). As I argued earlier, this lake level drop could have led to a shift in the trade route between the western basin and the yungas. The Taraco Peninsula communities suddenly found themselves occupying a strategic position in a regional exchange network. We may imagine that the emerging community elites of these villages exploited their relationships with extra-local exchange partners to obtain significant quantities of exotic goods. The olivine basalt hoes - possibly from Incatunahuiri - are the visible example of these goods, but we may suppose that other exotic items were involved as well, such as coca, ají, feathers, animal pelts, precious metals and hallucinogenic drugs.

Thus, to the pre-existing system of competitive feasting and ritual sponsorship was added the procurement and strategic distribution of desirable exotic goods. In other words, a limited system of wealth finance was folded into the political economy. As has been noted by other investigators ([Earle 1997]; [D'Altroy and Earle 1985]), the procurement and control of exotic exchange items permits a degree of autonomy to an emerging elite not possible in a pure system of commensality. The source of wealth no longer derives from the labor of a single household or group of related households. Rather, astute dealings with exchange partners can tap into a regional network of surplus production oriented to exchange - a "collective power network" (see [Mann 1986]). This in turn permits a degree of wealth differentiation not possible in a purely commensal system.

The political economy of the Taraco Peninsula communities was thereby transformed in the middle of the Late Chiripa phase. Some individuals, families or lineages in some villages were able to gain access to significant quantities of desirable exotic goods. These goods were then distributed strategically, probably within the existing context of ceremonial occasions and festivals, in order to increase the social leverage of the groups involved.

Relations of dependency were thus expanded in the Taraco Peninsula villages, allowing certain groups and individuals to lay claim to the reciprocal labor services of their neighbors. A portion of the surplus labor harnessed in this way was fed back into the system via the construction of increasingly elaborate ceremonial facilities and related items of material culture. This is documented by the increasing scale of labor investment in public architecture, stone sculpture and ceremonial ceramics throughout the Middle Formative.

As discussed in Chapter 4, through their disproportionate ability to collect and distribute exotic items and agricultural surplus, certain individuals and groups came to function as point resources on the social landscape, and in this way became a settlement determinant. This accounts for the emergence of a two-tier site size hierarchy in the Middle Formative. The inhabitants of the Taraco Peninsula communities were selecting the location of their residences in order to increase their access to the developing system of competitive generosity. This produced the differential population growth rates of the various communities. Those which were the place of residence of the more successful members of the emerging elite attracted population from the surrounding settlements. In the terminology of systems theory, this was a positive feedback loop, since competitive success in this kind of system is critically scale-dependent.

In this way, it was possible for a site size hierarchy to emerge on the Taraco Peninsula in the absence of political integration. It is possible that as the villages in question increasingly diverged in size that the larger villages began to assert coercive influence over the smaller. At present it is impossible to confirm or deny this possibility. However, political control and tributary relations were not the cause of the site size hierarchy, but rather its consequence. Toward the end of the Middle Formative simple multi-community polities may have emerged, with one or two smaller villages paying tribute to the leaders of an adjacent larger village. This is another possibility which cannot at present be evaluated. However it makes very little difference in terms of the overall historical trajectory.

I would like to offer a concluding observation: by including the procurement and strategic distribution of exotic goods into the existing system of competitive generosity, the emerging elites of the Taraco Peninsula exposed themselves to a new kind of risk (e.g. Earle's discussion of the economy as a source of social power [[Earle 1997], Chapter 3]). Any disruption of their access to these goods would undermine the basis of their legitimacy and influence, and throw the entire political economy into crisis. This vulnerability was to have very important ramifications in the following Late Formative Period, as I will discuss in the following chapter.