Excavations Excavations Introduction Survey of the Taraco Peninsula Excavations at Chiripa Excavations at Cala Cala

Survey of the Taraco Penninsula

Population and History in the Ancient Titicaca Basin

Matthew Sebastian Bandy
Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology
University of California at Berkeley
Professor Christine A. Hastorf, Chair

Abstract from Dissertation
Our understanding of the processes leading to the emergence of the Tiwanaku state
around 500 A.D. has been severely hampered by a lack of information on the long Formative
Period (1500 B.C. - 500 A.D.) which preceded it. This thesis develops an agentcentered
approach to studying prehistoric settlement system formation and transformation.
It is argued that any adequate understanding of settlement dynamics must consider varying
settlement growth rates as resulting from the concrete and historically contingent residential
decisions of a regional population. Thus, regional settlement dynamics can be read in
such a way as to reveal broad, aggregate patterns of prehistoric decision-making. Agency
may be studied in the absence of a well-defined agent.
This approach is then applied to the problem of the southern Titicaca Basin Formative
Period. The evolution of the regional settlement system is traced from the establishment of
sedentary agricultural villages (1500 B.C.) through the early Colonial Period (1600 A.D.).
Significant milestones include: 1) the evolution of a system of permanent autonomous
villages (beginning 800 B.C.), 2) the development of a multi-community polity, which I
term the Taraco Peninsula Polity (250 B.C.), 3) Tiwanaku regional dominance and eventual
state formation (beginning perhaps around 400 A.D.), 4) Tiwanaku collapse (1100 A.D.),
and 5) conquest by foreign powers (ca. 1450 A.D.). These developments are interpreted in
light of the decision-making patterns revealed by settlement dynamics, as well as significant
changes in regional exchange systems, political relations, subsistence regimes, and the level
of Lake Titicaca. A new account of Tiwanaku state formation is finally presented, one
which stresses cross-cultural processes as they were played out against the field of Titicaca
Basin environmental, economic, and demographic history.

Please see Dr. Bandy's dissertation for more information.

Revised February 26, 2003 11:46 - For broken links or comments and suggestions email whitehea@sscl.berkeley.edu.