There are indications that the Tiwanaku state began to break down some time prior to its actual collapse ([Janusek 1994]). However, around 1100 A.D. a dramatic lake level drop took place ([Abbott et al. 1997a]: 179, [Binford et al. 1997,Kolata and Ortloff 1996a,Ortloff and Kolata 1992]). This drop may or may not reflect severe drought conditions at that time. Whatever the case, the local inhabitants reacted as they had reacted to such events before. They reoriented their subsistence economy to emphasize camelid pastoralism in order to make up for the disappearance of lacustrine resources and probably for worsening agricultural conditions as well. It is also possible that individual households came to incorporate raised field agriculture into their subsistence strategies ([Graffam 1990]).
The latter possibility is especially intriguing when it is considered in light of my proposal that the Tiwanaku political economy was fundamentally premised on a strategy of staggered production cycles, in which state labor took place at a different point in the agricultural cycle than did household subsistence labor. Household involvement in raised field agriculture would have introduced scheduling conflicts between household subsistence activity and state tribute demands. This would have undermined what I have suggested was the fundamental political-economic strategy of Tiwanaku statecraft. This process could quite plausibly have caused the collapse of the state itself.
Tiwanaku state collapse, for a number of possible reasons (see Chapter 9), involved some very fundamental transformations of Titicaca Basin settlement systems. The village system that originated in the Early Formative and persisted for more than two thousand years was abandoned. Nucleated habitation and stable village life was replaced by dispersed residence in extended family farmsteads. These farmsteads were occupied for perhaps one or two generations and were then abandoned. This manner of life has persisted to the present day in Titicaca Basin communities.
Political life was similarly reinvented. Camelids and their secondary products seem to have become the primary source of wealth, and so the political center of gravity shifted to areas suitable for the raising of very large herds. Thus, the principal settlements and chiefly centers in the Late Intermediate Period seem to have been located in higher elevation areas of the basin, in contrast to the lakeshore demographic focus of the Formative and Tiwanaku Periods (see Frye's Appendix 2 in [Stanish et al. 1997]; Kirk Frye personal communication), with significant centers established at Tanka Tanka, Cutimbo, and other sites. In addition, political entities seem to have become more fragmented and unstable. A state of more or less constant warfare seems to have prevailed, as indicated by the building of fortifications - pukaras - throughout the Titicaca Basin (cf. [Hyslop 1976,Stanish et al. 1997]). The Taraco Peninsula was not suited for large-scale camelid herding, and no fortifiable prominences exist. It was therefore a very marginal location in the LIP, and it is to this marginal status that we may attribute the dramatic decline in population on the peninsula in this phase.
Sometime probably in the 15th century the Titicaca Basin was invaded by a new northern power, the Inka empire. The divided and feuding Aymara señorios were played off against one another by the Inka generals. After a short campaign, the Aymara kingdoms were violently subjugated to Inka rule. Thus began a long period of central Andean hegemony in the Titicaca Basin. Its populations were ruled first from Cuzco and later from Lima. Sources of power, authority, prestige, and legitimacy were located far from the old center of Tiwanaku. Quechua and Spanish began to replace Aymara throughout the south-central Andean region. The long history of autonomous social and political evolution in the Titicaca Basin had come to an end, and its people had become enmeshed in continental and later global relations of domination and dependence.
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