Tiwanaku expansion and the collapse of regional settlement systems

Record summary

Tiwanaku research in the 1970s and 1980s addressed the expansion of a highland political and religious center, its agricultural infrastructure, regional colonies, and eventual disintegration. Archaeologists compared ceramics, settlement patterns, raised fields, monumental architecture, and climatic evidence to explain whether drought, political fragmentation, economic limits, or changing regional relationships drove the transformation. The case is useful for catastrophe comparisons because environmental stress is only one proposed factor. Chronologies and models of centralized control varied, and later paleoenvironmental work has refined earlier drought narratives.