The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas Volume I, II, and III

760 Mario A. Rivera
among heterogeneous and mobile groups with limited economic resources.
In this conjuncture the Tiwanaku sphere of influence, broken
up and reconfigured, assumed a new importance to the South-Central
Andean agropastoral peoples. They show a shared iconography and a net
of economic interchange whose ideological and political concepts still
centered on Lake Titicaca. Atacama groups were influenced by their
experience as hegemonically regulated native lordships under Tiwanaku,
while the more Aymarized farther north had been directly affected by the
presence of Tiwanaku enclaves or colonies.
In northwestern Argentina, the site of Aguada also expresses a regionalization
of the Tiwanaku legacy. It can be thought of as a "reprocesser"
of Tiwanaku culture, favored by a geographic situation allowing reception
of information from the high Andean north and from the eastern
tropical forests. Such sites developed sociopolitical and economic systems
that allowed population growth, metallurgical technology, and artistic
development exploiting the influential Tiwanaku feline icon. This process
made Aguada an important node in a regional network whose exact
operation is still little-known.
One important aspect of archaeological research on the regional developmental
period, in the northwest of Argentina, no less than in the north
of Chile, is the effort to define local chiefdoms preceding Inka rule. This
period is generally characterized by growing populations, the creation of
irrigation networks attached to important productive establishments, major
works of architecture, and the building of strategic defenses. All these
elements contributed to the design of settlements at sites in northwestern
Argentina (Hualffn, Calchaqui, Santa Maria) and in the Atacama Desert
oases and the valleys of Azapa, Tarapaca, and Camarones in northern
Chile. These establishments made up hierarchical structures dominating
networks of exchange. They display a shared type of chiefdom, with signs
of social stratification, industrial manufacturing, and long-distance distribution,
particularly of exotic or prestigious products such as those made
of copper and bronze.
It seems that major transitions correlate with contacts between societies
of different organization. At the period when it developed complex
society, Araucania was in a state of contact with more Andean societies.
In the Chaco-Santiago area and in Uruguay, the later establishment of
agricultural villages may be related to a still-hypothetical influence via
Guarani-speaking migrations out of the eastern tropics into the Pampas
and Araucania. We still do not know the role of agriculture in the growth
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