ABSTRACT
Linguistic and iconographic evidence suggest that the cultures of Tiwanaku had important Amazonian links, perhaps even regular trade. A gamut of historical studies has also examined these Andean-Amazonian links and their possible warfaring connections further north. Moreover, there are strong suggestions that ongoing interregional trading relations between key Andean regions and their Amazonian hinterlands may at times have erupted into warfare. The author thesis that practices surrounding heads were a major principle of channeling power in different Andean societies implied that these practices centered on heads were directed toward political reformulation. The study of the power of the head as a symbol in these sequences of head taking and head curation also underlines the interrelations between bodily, political, and moral domains in a premodern world. Finally the early management of heads evidently gave rise to many of the specific and unique material and textual forms of the Andean region.
