The Technology and Organization of Agricultural Production in the Tiwanaku State

Abstract

Utilizing data from six seasons of field research, this article focuses on the question of the technology and social organization of intensive agricultural production in the Andean state of Tiwanaku. Recent literature in Andean archaeology and ethnohistory asserts the dominance of local kin groups in the organization of agricultural production rather than supracommunity state authority. The analysis presented here takes issue with this perspective as applied to the core territory of the Tiwanaku state during the period from ca. A. D. 400 to 1000 (Tiwanaku IV-V). I conclude that in this period: (1) the technology of Tiwanaku intensive agricultural production turned on the creation of an artificial regional hydrological regime of canals, aqueducts, and groundwater regulation articulated with massive raised-field systems, and (2) the organization of agricultural production in this core territory entailed structured, hierarchical interaction between urban and rural settlements characterized by a substantial degree of political centralization and the mobilization of labor by social principles that reached beyond simple kinship relations.