Cultural Unity and Disunity in the Titicaca Basin

Abstract

In pre-Columbian Peru, conditions favorable for population concentration and cultural development were largely restricted to the coastal valleys and the high structural basins in the mountains. Most archaeologists who have dealt with comparative chronology have grouped adjacent valleys and compared their combined cultural sequences with those of a highland basin. The justification for this procedure has been the assumption that cultural uniformity would be found throughout these regional units in any given time period. For the valleys, such an assumption is based on the limited size of the area and the fact that each has only one major source of water supply to support an economy based on irrigated agriculture. The intensive archaeological work in Viru by the Institute of Andean Research verified the thesis of cultural uniformity for one valley. The situation in the highlands is, however, somewhat different since the basins are comparatively large, have many sources of water supply, and allow economies not totally dependent on irrigation. Only one highland basin, the Lake Titicaca, is sufficiently known archaeologically to allow examination of distributions at different time periods as a basis for evaluating its cultural unity or disunity. The present paper undertakes such a review.