ABSTRACT

Urban renewal in Tiwanaku and settlement expansion in the hinterland mark changes that were transforming the polity and much of the south-central Andes. Overall, in Early Tiwanaku V, the region witnessed the consolidation of a centralized state in which leaders promoted transformative policies of integration on a major scale. Not all areas once considered integral to Tiwanaku’s spheres of influence were under Tiwanaku political authority. In fact, direct political and cultural hegemony in the Lake Titicaca Basin itself was selectively distributed, and even more selectively in distant, temperate valley regions. Tiwanaku was not a contiguous territorial state with hard national boundaries, but was rather a centralized polity characterized by discontinuous nodes of authority and strategic interaction or influence.