UC Davis

This dissertation examines the extent to which emergent complexity entailed inequality in a small-scale society about 5,000 years ago in the South-Central Andean highlands. The Kaillachuro burial mound site in the southwest Lake Titicaca Basin, Peru, is the main case under investigation. I begin with a review of the theoretical models that guide this study and previous studies of the Archaic-Formative transition in the South-Central Andes. I then present three analyses. Analysis 1 presents the results of archaeological excavations, stratigraphy, and radiocarbon dates, which reveal that the Kaillachuro burial mounds were used from 5,300–3,000 cal B.P. and establishes them as the earliest known manifestation of monumental architecture in the Titicaca Basin. For at least 2,000 years, Kaillachuro was a burial place with visible mound construction. This finding reveals a previously unknown architectural history and encourages us to rethink how ritual relates to the emergence of complex socioeconomic organization in the South-Central Andean highlands. Analysis 2 examines the demographics and diets of 17 individuals identified at Kaillachuro. Most individuals interred in the mounds were adults, with a male-biased burial practice. Interestingly, two infants were interred in elaborate stone tombs with ocher deposits, obsidian fragments, charred materials, and large stone slabs, suggesting heavy investment in children. Stable isotope chemistry of human bone collagen demonstrates that all individuals consumed a largely vegetable diet with lesser input from animal protein. None of the individuals showed evidence of a privileged diet. These findings indicate a social structure that lacks institutionalized inequality but reveals a sex bias, where mostly male were eligible for mound burial. Analysis 3 examines Lake Titicaca Basin projectile points, 11–1.0 cal. ka., to investigate the potential role of archery technology during the Archaic-Formative transition. A metric analysis of 1179 projectile points reveals a dramatic decline in size around 5000 years ago, spanning the Late-Terminal Archaic Period boundary and suggesting that archery technology emerged during the Terminal Archaic Period. This technological innovation thus occurred at a time of increasing village size, emergent obsidian exchange, limited inter-group violence, and incipient agropastoralism. These processes would later culminate in the emergence of massive ceremonial sites during the Formative Period. Rather than inciting conflict, archery technology appears to have facilitated regional trade and cooperation, ostensibly by creating new subsistence opportunities or increasing the costs of non-cooperative behaviors, thus permitting new cooperative norms. This study shows that the relatively egalitarian communities of the Titicaca Basin Terminal Archaic Period engaged in complex burial ritual, mound construction, exchange, and community interaction, contradicting the idea that emergent social complexity necessarily entails institutionalized inequality in human societies.