Tiwanaku

Arthur Posnansky was the illustrious pioneer of Tiwanaku archaeology, remembered as a quixotic, flamboyant, and swashbuckling character. He was a naval officer, a businessman, and a scholar. He dedicated nearly fifty years of his life to the study of the Andean past, which resonates through the history of Bolivian archaeology. While clearly not the field’s father, his commanding presence and outsized legacy could make him the czar of Tiwanaku archaeology. He developed a hyperbolic narrative of Tiwanaku as the ’cradle of American man’ and tirelessly promoted it in Europe and the Americas. Like many pioneers, he was not trained as an archaeologist. His theories were based on little concrete information but he defended them with enviable passion. His ideas were strongly influenced by intellectual trends he lived though and participated in, including racist anthropology. This has led some to dismiss him as a misguided, self-appointed champion of Tiwanaku. However, I suggest that Posnansky’s life and times are very relevant to both understanding popular views and scholarly interpretations of the site.

For decades archaeologists have recognized that Khonkho Wankane was an important monumental site in the Bolivian Andes, and most have interpreted it as a Tiwanaku regional center. A decade of research indicates that Khonkho Wankane was an important Late Formative center that engendered Tiwanaku’s Middle Horizon urbanism and ritual-political centrality. It was neither a Tiwanaku regional center nor Tiwanaku’s second city. Furthermore, recent research at Khonkho suggests a critique of the “one center, one polity” model of political complexity. Rather than being the singular center of a spatially bounded multi-community polity, Khonkho was one of multiple interacting Late Formative centers in an emergent macro-community that gave rise to Tiwanaku urban centrality.

Durante el Horizonte Medio (500-1100 d.C.), los Andes sur centrales fueron el escenario de la formación, desarrollo y colapso del Estado de Tiwanaku. A pesar de que existe un considerable debate acerca del alcance político y el control efectivo que mantuvo Tiwanaku de su periferia, la ideología religiosa y el intercambio interregional, al parecer, fueron, dos aspectos muy importantes en la dinámica hegemónica del Estado. Por un lado, la interpretación del sistema religioso de Tiwanaku ha sido, tradicionalmente, enfocada a través de la arquitectura monumental, los patrones funerarios y la iconografía en diferentes objetos finamente elaborados. Por otro lado, la interpretación del intercambio económico ha sido abordada a partir de la presencia de restos arqueológicos provenientes de lugares distantes en el núcleo ceremonial, así como por la presencia de materiales Tiwanaku en asentamientos lejanos al área nuclear. A partir de la descripción contextual de un hallazgo arqueológico realizado en el altiplano de Lípez, elaboramos algunas hipótesis en relación a los cambios producidos en el sistema ritual y de interacción social a finales del Horizonte Medio. Concluimos que la hegemonía de Tiwanaku, efectivamente, promovió un sistema ritual y de interacción social que facilitó la transmisión de sus pilares ideológicos, los cuales, sin embargo, cambiaron radicalmente al producirse la desestructuración política del Estado, durante el siglo XI.

During the Middle Horizon (500-1100 AD) the south central Andes were the scenario of the formation, development, and collapse of the Tiwanaku state. Although there is considerable debate about the political implications and the effective control of its periphery, religious ideology and interregional exchange were apparently, two very important aspects of the hegemonic dynamics of Tiwanaku. On the one hand, the nature of Tiwanaku religious system has been primarily focused through monumental architecture, funerary patterns and iconography in different finely crafted objects. On the other hand, the interpretation of economic exchange have been addressed from the presence of archaeological remains from distant places in the ceremonial core as well as by the presence of Tiwanaku materials in the nuclear area from distant settlements. In this paper, based on the contextual description of an archaeological discovery made in the highlands of Lípez, we discuss some hypotheses regarding changes in the ritual system and social interaction near the end of the Middle Horizon. We conclude that the Tiwanaku hegemony effectively promoted a ritual and social interaction that facilitated the transmission of their ideological foundation, which, however, changed radically as the political disintegration of the state occurred during the eleventh century.

El lugar de los abuelos, allí donde habita lo ancestral, de donde abreva lo comunitario, es un espacio presente en la cosmovisión de diversos pueblos originarios del mundo. Se abordan tres contextos latinoamericanos: desde Santa Ana del Valle, se explora el comunitarismo y la preservación identitaria en México; en Guambia, la recuperación del territorio originario en Colombia y con el valle de Tiwanaku, el fortalecimiento comunitario y la transformación del Estado en Bolivia. Se presenta la relevancia del fenómeno étnico en América Latina en torno a la arqueología, la defensa del patrimonio cultural y del territorio, como elementos fundamentales del proyecto de vida comunitario, y como alicientes de las reivindicaciones étnicas de los pueblos originarios, en donde la carga histórica ancestral se expresa en lo cotidiano, y se nutre de la sabiduría del tiempo de los abuelos.

La Física de la Cuarta Dimensión en los tiempos de Tiwanaku es simple y llanamente es un "Calculo de la mente Humana y por lo tanto la física Interdimensional postula que un nuevo sistema matemático deberá ser descubierto cuyos conceptos mentales se racionalicen a una básica ecuación: La lógica y la razón Pero este nuevo sistema matemático también se adelantaron en la Lógica tiwanacota por lo que considera un trabajo excepcional el de el Dr. Emilio Molina en su obra "La Lógica Tetralectica" la
que debe ser considerada como una plataforma de la Nueva Matemática que en su forma dualice la teoría relativista; física Cuántica con la Física Interdimensional ya que de momento el estudio de la lógica nos sincroniza la función de los dos hemisferios cerebrales para al manera de percibir la simbología cuatrimencional presente en el mundo tridimensional.

Siendo que también nos demuestra que al utilizar la Ciencia y Tecnología, dentro de una Nueva Matriz Civilizatoria, propensa a una Cultura de la Vida del Dialogo, una civilización humana que convivía en armonía, equilibrio, complementariedad, reciprocidad y respeto con el Cosmos y su Madre Tierra, al conocer simplemente el hecho de la fisión nuclear al frió para modificar su clima frió en época de heladas para crear microclimas y una mayor productividad y desarrollo del ser humano, pues al comprender que una sociedad con producción comunitaria era necesario modificar
el clima para una mayor producción y no exista hambre ya supone otra lógica
civilizatoria notase la diferencia de lógicas con las de Occidente que al modificar el átomo para crear, destrucción, muerte, guerra, lógica a la que nuestros ancestros y nosotros nos oponemos.

"Recent discoveries of megadroughts, severe periods of drought lasting decades or centuries, during the course of the Holocene have revolutionized our understanding of modern climate history. Through advances in paleoclimatology, researchers have identified these periods of climate change by analyzing high resolution proxy data derived from lake sediment cores, marine cores, glacial cores, speleothem cores, and tree rings. Evidence that megadroughts occurred with frequency and abruptly over the last 12,000 years, a time span long assumed to be stable compared to earlier glacial periods, has also altered our understanding of societies’ trajectories. The fact that severe, multi-decadal or century-scale droughts coincided with societal collapses well known to archaeologists has challenged established multi-causal analyses of these events. Megadroughts, impossible to predict and impossible to withstand, may have caused political collapse, regional abandonment, and habitat tracking to still-productive regions. The nine megadrought and societal collapse events presented in this volume extend from the foraging-to-agriculture transition at the dawn of the Holocene in West Asia to the fifteenth-century AD collapse of the Khmer Empire in Angkor (Cambodia). Inevitably, this collection of essays also raises challenges to causal analyses of societal collapse and for future  paleoclimatic and archaeological research."

El quehacer arqueológico en Bolivia tiene una historia relativamente nueva. Las investigaciones realizadas desde fines del siglo XIX y hasta nuestros días, con distintos objetivos y alcances, han dado lugar a un continuo crecimiento sobre el entendimiento del pasado prehispánico. Los trabajos presentados en este volumen muestran el estado de las investigaciones arqueológicas en Bolivia y la madurez que esta ciencia ha ido alcanzando en Bolivia a inicios del siglo XXI. La información presentada sintetiza, en gran medida, la situación de las investigaciones en disitnas regiones de Bolivia.

Los estudios arqueológicos sobre el Horizonte Medio (500-1000 d.C.) en los Andes han dado poco énfasis a entender aspectos de género y su relación con la estructuración de poder en sociedades que emergieron y se consolidaron como Estados en este período. Las transformaciones en las estructuras sociales de sociedades relativamente igualitarias a sociedades más estratificadas debieron implicar cambios en la vida diaria y en las estructuras familiares y sociales que afectaron los roles de género y por ende las relaciones de poder que hombres y mujeres ejercitaron dentro de Tiwanaku y su esfera de influencia. Este trabajo explora estos temas considerando no solamente los datos arqueológicos, especialmente las representaciones iconográficas sobre hombres y mujeres durante el Horizonte Medio, sino también trabajos etnohistóricos y antropológicos sobre género que permiten articular una visión general sobre el contexto de producción y reproducción de las relaciones de poder dentro de una estructura estatal.

Como su "alter ego", la auténtica litoescultura de Tiwanaku, el facsímile exhibido en la Sala de Arqueología Latinoamericana del Museo de La Plata, ha transitado por diferentes sectores de esa expresiva sala. Por rara coincidencia el legítimo "Portal del Sol" sufrió también migraciones similares dentro de la antigua Capital andina Tiwanaku. A punto tal que los especialistas en el tema no han podido acordar cuál fue el sitio original donde fue levantada.
He aquí una crónica sobre este singular paralelismo en el peregrinaje de ambas, y sobre algunas cosas más.

Considerable debate surrounds the economic, political, and ideological systems that constitute primary state formation. Theoretical and empirical research emphasize the role of religion as a significant institution for promoting the consolidation and reproduction of archaic states. The Tiwanaku state developed in the Lake Titicaca Basin between the 5th and 12th centuries CE and extended its influence over much of the south-central Andes of South America. We report on recent discoveries from the first systematic underwater archaeological excavations in the Khoa Reef near the Island of the Sun, Bolivia. The depositional context and compositional properties of offerings consisting of ceramic feline incense burners, killed juvenile llamas, and sumptuary metal, shell, and lapidary ornaments allow us to reconstruct the structure and significance of cyclically repeated state rituals. Using new theoretical tools, we explain the role of these rituals in promoting the consolidation of the Tiwanaku polity.

""El objeto de estudio es la iconografía del Sacrificador y el Señor de los Cetros que aparece en el Norte Grande de Chile, presente en las tabletas para el uso de psicoactivos (de influencia Tiwanaku) y el arte rupestre, ambos del Período Medio (500-1000 d.C.) principalmente.
Se analizan mitos andinos que pudieron tener relación con estos personajes, y finalmente se realiza una interpretación simbólica junguiana.""

Tourists to the archaeological site of Tiwanaku are presented with ancient calendars, of which the Gateway of the Sun is the most important, famous, and beautiful. Arthur Posnansky and other early 20th-century archaeologists claimed that its inscriptions constituted a written calendar. These claims were intimately connected to narratives of Tiwanaku as a central source of knowledge in both pre-Columbian times and the contemporary world. Posnansky presented his interpretation of Tiwanaku's calendars as a response to the debates of the World Calendar Movement, which in the 1930s was attempting to rationalize the Gregorian calendar. In the Gateway, Posnansky found a uniquely Bolivian response to the international, North Atlantic-dominated scientific community's search for a rational way to keep time in the world economy. Bolivian intellectuals merged their interest in the indigenous past with their concerns about the role of the modernist Bolivian state in the global system.

This book re-examines the occupation of the lake basin at Lake Titicaca during the Tiwanaku period (500-1150 AD) using the concept of ‘lacustrine cultural landscape’. Considered as ‘cultures of the land’ (agriculture, pastoralism, etc.), the pre-Hispanic societies of Lake Titicaca developed many practices specific to ‘cultures of the sea’ (navigation, offerings, etc.). Whether politically, socio-culturally or ritually, the lake has had an impact on the evolution of these populations and has encouraged the emergence of practices that are inseparable from a lake area. Delaere proposes a new ‘vision’ of archaeology at Lake Titicaca by integrating the lacustrine factor into the interpretation of Tiwanaku cultures, and by reconciling our present knowledge of both terrestrial and underwater ‘archaeologies’.

For more than 30 years, numerous research projects have revealed the dense and complex human settlement of the lacustrine basin of Lake Titicaca in Bolivia and Peru. Physical evidence of such establishments has been discovered in plains, valleys, and highlands connected to the lake. These remains confirm human occupation and development in this environment, particularly during the Tiwanaku (AD 500-1150) and Inca (AD 1400-1532) Periods. The research project discussed in this paper includes consideration of submerged areas through underwater archaeology. This investigation involves analysis of two areas that have evidence of ancient human occupation but are poorly documented: the coastal and lacustrine regions. Due to its dominance in the landscape, Lake Titicaca has always been a major feature in the life and identity of populations of this vicinity. These inhabitants have developed socioeconomic and ritual behaviours directly associated with the lake that have left cultural and material prints that are the foci of the present study.

Durante más de treinta años, numerosos proyectos de investigación han hecho evidente el denso y complejo asentamiento humano en la cuenca lacustre del Lago Titicaca (Bolivia, Perú). La evidencia física de este establecimiento había sido descubierta en llanuras, valles y elevaciones naturales conectadas con el lago. Estos restos confirman la ocupación humana y el desarrollo en este ambiente, particularmente durante los periodos de Tiwanaku (500-1150 d.C.) e Inca (1400-1532 d.C.). El proyecto de investigación discutido incluye la consideración de áreas sumergidas a través de la arqueología subacuática. Esta investigación implica el análisis de dos áreas que han sido parte de la ocupación humana antigua, pero están mal documentadas: las regiones costeras y lacustres. Por su predominio en el paisaje, el Lago Titicaca siempre ha sido una característica importante en la vida e identidad de las poblaciones de esta vecindad. Estos habitantes han desarrollado conductas socioeconómicas y rituales directamente asociadas con el lago que han dejado una huella cultural y material que es el foco del presente estudio.

This dissertation identifies the particular urban design features that have aided people living in the varying environmental extremes of the Andes region of South America to be able to maintain an urban co-existence in pre-Hispanic times. Beginning with the newly discovered, and earliest American, urban site of Supe – Caral on the central coast of Peru around 2600 BC it follows the evolution of urban planning throughout the Andes region up to the conquest of the Spanish in 1532 AD. This period of over 4000 years of urban planning includes the pan-Andean civilizations of Chavín, Wari, Tiwanaku and Tawantinsuyu (Inca), and also large polities such as the Moche, Chimú and Pachacamac, as well as the diverse regional periods.

Specifically investigated is the question whether these features formed an Andean urban planning tradition through continual use across these successive periods of time, societies and civilizations, while covering an extensive and varied geography. Further it places these urban design features within their particular Andean cultural context; that is, a context that includes religious, political, economic and geographical forces that shaped the independent creation of urbanism and its forms and that was an adaptation to environmental, religious and socio-political needs of the Andean people. The urban planning tradition reflects the inter-connection of Andean cultures both geographically and culturally through time and space. The varied responses of the Andean urban planning tradition, whose usefulness was proven both through millenniums of time and extensive geographical space, can be clearly seen in the urban characteristics and features created by Andean solutions to an urbanizing world.

Finally, the dissertation also demonstrates that some of these urban design features mirrored or pre-dated similar ideas that occurred in other parts of the world, particularly ideas brought to South America by Spanish colonialism.

Cette dissertation doctorale propose de réexaminer l’étude de l’occupation du basin lacustre du lac Titicaca durant la période Tiwanaku (500-1150 PCN) en développant le concept de paysage culturel lacustre. Souvent considérées comme des ‘cultures de la terre’ (agriculture, pastoralisme, etc.), les sociétés préhispaniques du lac Titicaca ont, en réalité, développé, de nombreuses pratiques propres aux ‘cultures de la mer’ (navigation, offrandes, etc.). Que ce soit sur le plan politique, socioculturel ou rituel, le lac a eu une incidence sur l’évolution de ces populations et a favorisé l’émergence de pratiques indissociables à un espace lacustre. Les discussions proposent une nouvelle ‘vision’ de l’archéologie au lac Titicaca en intégrant le facteur lacustre dans l’interprétation des cultures Tiwanaku, et en conciliant nos connaissances actuelles des ‘archéologies’ du lac Titicaca, qu’elles soient ‘terrestres’ ou ‘subaquatiques’.

The emergence of first generation states is among anthropology’s most enduring points of research. Such a state emerged around A.D. 500 in the southern Lake Titicaca Basin, at Tiwanaku. This state shares many characteristics with other early states, but the process of its formation was distinct. Traditional state origins models do not adequately explain the preceding centuries, when there was an unprecedented historical rupture in social organization. This dissertation follows a perspective of emergent practice, which locates the cause and production of social change in practices, traditions, and interactions, from which social groups and institutions emerge. This perspective outlines general processes of social change, while detailed genealogies of practices are necessary to document specific historical trajectories.

During the Late Formative, the southern Lake Titicaca Basin was dotted with ceremonial centers with earthen mounds, sunken temples, carved monoliths, and residences. These centers and their communities were larger and qualitatively different than anything prior, but little is known about their builders, residents, and visitors. Residents’ domestic practices at Khonkho Wankane and Kk’araña, Tiwanaku provide data on the social groups that formed the communities at each site. Residents shared many cultural practices and traditions. Walled compounds were home to large, powerful social groups. There is little evidence of status differences, trade specialization, or competition. The fundamental process to increasing complexity was organizing gatherings and work-parties, which framed dense networks of interactions. Residents hosted events in walled, outdoor spaces, and served food or drink in red-rimmed Kalasasaya small jars and bowls. The populations of these ceremonial centers was relatively low, and temporary visitors were recruited, generating labor forces that built many large construction projects. Interactions at these centers generated large communities focused at ceremonial centers, and were central to the emergence of the state at Tiwanaku. Despite this radical change in social organization, many domestic practices and traditions first established during the Late Formative would be continually reproduced for hundreds of years."

Prehispanic Andean iconography communicated ideology and structures of power. On the coast, iconography depicting violence and fertility legitimized elite power. In Tiwanaku (A.D. 400–1100), such iconography is considered to have been absent. We re-examine the theme of the Sacrificer in Tiwanaku iconography that originated during the Formative period in the south-central Andes. This figure, which we term Tiwanaku Camelid Sacrificer (TCS), takes on a new appearance: a human-camelid body carrying a a trophy head or axe. The TCS imagery is often depicted on portable prestige objects, many of them found in the Tiwanaku hinterlands that relied economically and socially on caravans.We propose that the TCS represents aspects of Tiwanaku ritual and ontology, by which camelids and humans shared acts, essence, and form. The states of being (camay) and becoming (tucoy) embodied by the TCS testify to the unique positions
of power camelids held over life in Tiwanaku’s agropastoralist society.