What did Tiwanaku do? Assembling the Taypikala Machine

RODDICK, ANDREW P.; MARSH, ERIK J.

San Francisco

Congreso; 86th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology; 2021

Society for American Archaeology

Over the last fifty years, we have seen significant research into the nature of Tiwanaku. Researchers have imagined Tiwanaku as an empty pilgrimage center, a conquering Inca-like empire, or much more commonly, as some variant of a state (with a small S). Yet archaeologists have yet to agree on a definition of the state, a political entity that is still an elusive bugbear (Pauketat 2007:143?146). Problems with state typologies have been also highlighted in the Andes. Bawden (1989) argued that good research was being ruined by the "albatross of the state" and Isbell (2004) critiqued attempts to make data fit neo-evolutionary expectations for states and empires. In 2013, an important symposium that asked the broad question: "What was Tiwanaku?" Here too, the state snuck back in (Routledge 2014:13), often as a fully-formed entity driven by elite choices and economic intensification. (SLIDE) One exception was Bandy?s (2013) exploration of kinship networks, work feasts, and hospitality. Despite the chapter´s title, which calls Tiwanaku a hospitality state, Bandy concludes that the Tiwanaku state never existed. Another exception are Janusek?s last several articles, which argue that Tiwanaku was the Taypikala, or "center stone" in Aymara. It anchored an expansive eco-regime and was an "ongoing project of cultural production" (Janusek 2013:198). These approaches highlight the potential of the ontological turn as a "bomb" (Latour 2009) ? in this case, it casts a harsh light on statist narratives that do not track with material patterns. Bandy and Janusek began an important pivot from asking "what WAS Tiwanaku" to "what did Tiwanaku DO?". We believe this new question is the way forward.In this paper, we build on this approach to explore the centuries-long process of interactions and negotiations for consent and authority. We explore Tiwanaku as a political "machine" (Smith 2015), a dynamic assemblage of humans, non-humans, practices, and things. Inspired by Smith, we have recently begun a kind of reverse-engineering of the Tiwanaku assemblage. In this talk, we briefly map out this ongoing effort, a first step in a theoretical "ground-clearing". Today we touch on a new fine-grained chronology, which is crucial for tracking earlier assemblages. We then consider how political authority emerged through relations between humans and non-humans and most prominently, through work feasts. We touch on the architecture and infrastructure of the city, which was the "central stone" of an expansive eco-regime, an assemblage that united water, spirits, raised fields, mountains, and monuments. This was an unending construction project that underwrote political authority at Tiwanaku and other affiliated communities. We conclude with new questions to frame a more nuanced and historically grounded vision of Tiwanaku.