Multi-community polities, tributary relations

In the late MF, as I have just said, the inhabitants of the Taraco Peninsula were confronted with new economic opportunities as a result of the drying of the little lake. Trade and trade goods became incorporated into the competitive strategies of local leaders. However, early in the following Late Formative 1 period two things happened which served to disrupt these strategies and thereby to provoke a generalized crisis of political legitimacy.

In the first place, around 250 B.C. the level of Lago Wiñaymarka rose again to near-modern levels. This had the effect of shifting the trade route to the yungas - upon which local leaders had come to depend during the two century period of low lake levels - to the south, to pass through Desaguadero and the Tiwanaku Valley (see Figure 7.5). This event would certainly have reduced the access to the trade route enjoyed by the Taraco Peninsula communities and eliminated any advantage they might have enjoyed due to to their strategic location in this regard.

At approximately this same time - the timing is somewhat uncertain - the Pukara polity came to dominate the northern portion of the Titicaca Basin. All evidence suggests that the Pukara polity was deeply involved in the regional exchange system, and it is entirely possible that its leaders attempted to suppress direct exchange relations with areas not under its control. It may be, then, that the Pukara polity attempted to eliminate the southern trade route which had been so active during the Middle Formative and to channel all exchange between the western Titicaca Basin and the yungas through a northern route, perhaps passing through the area of Huancané and Putina, which it controlled ([Plourde and Stanish 2001]). Whatever the case, it is clear that trade with the western basin was disrupted in the LF1. The evidence for this is the near-disappearance of the olivine basalt hoes which had been so ubiquitous in the MF. The hoes were still being produced in the western basin, but the southern basin communities no longer had access to them. This suggests some intentional disruption of exchange relations between the two regions.

In the early LF1, then, the Taraco Peninsula communities suddenly found themselves with reduced access to a probably greatly reduced volume of exchange. A political crisis seems to have ensued. In fact, this disruption of the political economy seems to have occasioned much more significant social upheaval than did the earlier disruption of the subsistence economy resulting from the drying of the lake. First of all, a true three-tiered settlement hierarchy emerged on the Taraco Peninsula for the first time in the early LF1. This was a result of the fact that Kala Uyuni (T-232/T-225), one of the four principal MF villages, more than doubled in size, to a population index value of 901. At the same time the other MF centers actually shrank slightly. I interpret this as indicating that the entire Taraco Peninsula was unified into a single polity encompassing perhaps 100 km$^{2}$ with an overall population index value of around 5000. I have tentatively located the eastern boundary of this polity between the sites of Chiripa (T-1) and Chiripa Pata (T-4) on the northern side of the peninsula. This was the first true multi-community polity in the area.

If I am to interpret the rapid LF1 growth rate of Kala Uyuni in the same manner as I did that of the large MF villages, I must understand it as resulting from a sustained residential bias toward residence in Kala Uyuni. In the MF case, I suggested that biases in residential choice resulted from an expansion of public ceremonialism in certain of the Taraco Peninsula villages. This expansion was underwritten by the increasing access of the leaders of these communities to exotic trade goods as a result of their newly-found privileged position on the yungas trade route. I have argued that access to the yungas trade decreased in the LF1. How then did the leaders of Kala Uyuni underwrite the expansion of their own ceremonial sponsorship and increase the number of their dependants? I would suggest that they did so by extracting tribute from neighboring communities. That is, the acquisition of exotic wealth items from trading partners was replaced, in the LF1, by the appropriation of staple items from neighboring communities. Obviously, not all communities in a region could succeed in such an enterprise. On the Taraco Peninsula, Kala Uyuni seems to have won out. The establishment of some kind of regular tribute flow between communities would have simultaneously increased the scale of ceremonialism sponsored by the Kala Uyuni leadership, and reduced that of their tributary communities. It was this, then, that would have produced, over time, 1) a systematic bias toward residence in Kala Uyuni, resulting in 2) a higher population growth rate for Kala Uyuni than for tributary communities, which lead to the formation of 3) a three-tier site size hierarchy.

This political development was accompanied by a wholesale transformation of the entire ceremonial complex. The characteristic Chiripa decorated ceramics, in continuous use for over 500 years, were abruptly abandoned, replaced by the Kalasasaya complex. The latter includes significant imitation of the northern basin Pukara style. Given my suggestion that the Taraco Peninsula Polity's political economy was critically dependent on tribute extracted by Kala Uyuni from neighboring communities, it is probably no coincidence that martial themes, especially trophy head imagery and the figure of the ``decapitator,'' come to be prominent in LF1 iconography (cf. [Chávez 1992]). At the same time, the sunken court complex was reinvented, incorporating for the first time the large upright pillars that come to be characteristic of later Tiwanaku architecture. The association of stone tenon heads with sunken courts is also characteristic of this phase (again, possibly a martial theme). The overall impression is of a complete reinvention of ceremonial practices and political strategies. I propose that this was ultimately in response to the political crisis resulting from the interruption of the Taraco Peninsula communities' access to the trade route between the western basin and the yungas.

The trade route to the yungas seems to have remained a settlement determinant, however reduced its volume may have been. At the same time that the lake level rose and the trade route shifted, the site of Tiwanaku - which is located in what would have been the new caravan route - began to grow rapidly. Prior to the LF1, the Middle Tiwanaku Valley had been only lightly populated. However, by the end of the LF1 the site of Tiwanaku had a population index value of somewhere around 1000. That is, it was as large as the center of the Taraco Peninsula polity. This very rapid rate of growth would suggest that there was some movement of population out of the Taraco Peninsula - where growth was a somewhat slow 0.08% annually - and into the site of Tiwanaku. In the course of the LF1, Tiwanaku almost certainly became the center of a multi-community polity of its own, probably competing with the Taraco Peninsula polity. The abandonment of the Lower Tiwanaku Valley in the LF1 probably indicates the formation of an unpopulated buffer zone between these two polities. Thus, while the Taraco Peninsula remained the demographic core of the southern Titicaca Basin in the LF1, a movement of peoples inland had begun which was to continue for more than 1000 years.

Late in the LF1, around 100 A.D., lake levels dropped again, and Lago Wiñaymarka once more dried up. We have yet to identify a corresponding change in ceramic style, so we are unable to say what the exact demographic, political and economic effects of this drop were. We may imagine that the Taraco Peninsula polity once again came to enjoy privileged access to the yungas trade, and that the flow of population to Tiwanaku was stemmed, at least for a while. One effect may have been the relocation of the center of the Taraco Peninsula polity. Though this is not certain, is seems as if Kala Uyuni was abandoned sometime in the LF1 and its population relocated to a group of three sites on the tip of the peninsula, near the modern town of Santa Rosa. These three sites are Sonaji (T-271), Kumi Kipa (T-272), and Kollin Pata (T-322); I refer to them collectively as the Santa Rosa group. By the end of the LF1 these three sites had a combined population index value of 1217, probably larger than Tiwanaku, certainly larger than the old center of Kala Uyuni. Thus, it may be that the 100 A.D. lake level drop made possible a brief rise in the fortunes of the Taraco Peninsula polity and of its new center at the Santa Rosa group. The flow of population to Tiwanaku may have slowed or even reversed during this 200 year period. The respite was to be short-lived.