The Middle Formative: emerging complexity

In the Middle Chiripa phase we witnessed the first appearance in the southern Titicaca Basin of decorated serving ceramics and public architecture in the form of the sunken court. The meaning of this remains obscure, of course, and cannot be established on the basis of our present knowledge. However, we may suggest, following Hayden ([Hayden and Gargett 1990,Hayden 1993,Hayden 1996a]) and others - and ultimately, of course, Mauss ([Mauss 1967]) - that the appearance of these things reflects the advent of ``competitive feasting'', an elaborate form of what Dietler calls ``commensal politics'' ([Dietler 1996,Dietler 1999]). The core concept of commensal politics is that giving establishes obligation on the part of the recipient. This obligation may be later redeemed to the original donor's advantage. Thus, competitive feasting:

... ambitious [persons] try to give away as much food and as many goods as possible in order to earn interest on their gifts and establish a debt hierarchy. Desirable foods and exotic decorative items were also given to supporters as rewards for their help in raising the capital for these feasts ([Hayden 1993]: 255).

The significance of competitive feasting in the Early and Middle Formative context is precisely that it represents a mechanism by which conflicts may be resolved and personal and structural antagonisms pursued in a manner that is not destructive to the social body.

The critical point to retain is that commensal hospitality centering around food and drink distribution and consumption is a practice which, like the exchange of gifts, serves to establish and reproduce social relations. This is why feasts are often viewed as mechanisms of social solidarity that serve to establish a sense of community. ([Dietler 2001])

It would not be at all surprising, then, if we were to see an intensification in the scale and elaboration of commensal activities at the same time that villages are first experiencing the stresses that arise when group size increases to unprecedented levels (cf. [Johnson 1982]). It seems that the beginnings of such a process are evident in the Middle Chiripa phase.

As population increased, and as the landscape of the Taraco Peninsula began to fill up, the difficulty and costs of village fissioning and relocation rose, while scale-related stresses and conflicts also increased. This will become apparent when the overall demographic patterns of the Middle Formative are discussed later in this chapter. This being the case, it is not surprising that we witness an increase in the scale and elaboration of the hypothetical correlates of competitive feasting. Decorated serving ceramics (bowls) become common in the Late Chiripa phase, accounting for as much as 6.5% of some assemblages ([Steadman 1999]: 66). Throughout the Late Chiripa phase we also see a steady increase in the size and elaboration of public architectural complexes, as, I document at length in section 6.3.

Another significant point of this chapter is that political units integrating large populations over significant geographical areas - multi-community polities - had yet to emerge. I make this statement in order to correct some common misconceptions regarding the nature of the Chiripa political formation. I refer specifically to Browman's concept of a ``Chiripa polity'' integrating much of the southern Titicaca Basin. This conception of Upper House Level-contemporary political organization has recently been echoed by Stanish, who sees multi-community polities emerging earlier in the southern Titicaca Basin than in adjacent areas, largely on the basis of his interpretation of the Chiripa sequence ([Stanish et al. 1997]: 11). Much of this chapter will be devoted to refuting this hypothesis, using the evidence of the Chiripa architectural sequence, and, especially, the properties and dynamics of the Middle Formative settlement system. My basic contention is that during the Middle Formative Period the Taraco Peninsula communities participated in a continuous regional escalation of commensal politics and of external exchange relations. These developments set the stage for the emergence of true multi-community polities, which occurred, in fact, early in the following Late Formative Period.