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IN T H E FIELD F EAT U R E
16 IN THE FIELD
An anthropological rarit y
Cerro Bal is a unique mesa formation in south-
ern Peru looming 600 meters above the valley
floor.Today it is an apu, or sacred place, that serves
as a pilgrims destination for making offerings
to th e m ountain spirit. In Wari times, a small city
rested on its sum mit w ith palace com plexes, temp les
and ritual feasting facilities for entertaining digni-
taries. D espite the fact that th e Wari and T iwanaku
apparently shared a 500-kilometer border between
Mo quegua and C uzco, C erro Bal is the only
place where evidence of direct interaction has
been discovered thus far. It is clearly a uniqu e
com bination of fortress, provincial capital, imper ial
emb assy and sacred city. Since the overlap betwee n
ancient states that never conquered one another is
rare, the M oqu egua frontier is a unique place for
studying the dynamics of imperial confrontation
and ethnic diversity.
Similar faiths, different societies
Although the Wari and Tiwanaku shared similar
iconography and religious practices, they were eco -
nom ically and politically quite distinct.T he
T iwanaku, virtuosos of stone m asonr y, built enor-
mous temple mounds and palaces.They transformed
the windswept altiplano, or high plain, into a network
of groundwater-fed canals and raised field systems
for altitude- tolerant crops such as potatoes, tubers and
quinoa. H erding such anim als as the native Andean
llama and alpaca provided both meat and wool.
H owever, in order to grow temperate crops, such
as corn and coca, two important staples to Tiwanaku
ritual life, they had to ex tend in to the lower valleys
toward th e Amazon or th e Pacific O cean.Th e Wari, on the other hand, centered their
empire along the spine of the Andes.They perfected
high-altitude irr igation ter racing to tu rn the steep
mountain slopes into productive farmland for corn,
peppers, coca and oth er crops.T heir capital was a
thriving city of several square kilometers and tens
of thousands of inhabitants.Throughout their realm,
they erected large, quadrangu lar complexes of tall,
straight-lined buildings that resembled barrack com-
plexes with restricted access. From afar, these did not
look like the temple pyramids of the T iwanaku, but
Clash of the Andean Titans:
Wari and Tiwanaku at Cerro Bal
Patrick R yan W illiams, A ssistant C urator, A rchaeological S cience, and
D onn a J. N ash, A dju nct C urator, S out h A m erican A rchaeology
Between AD 600 and 100 0, t wo great empir es r uled the Andes the Wari fr ommountai nous centr al Per u, and the Tiwanaku f r om the windswept shores of B oli via'sLake Titicaca. In only one place has evidence for direct confrontation been discovered,the Moquegua Valley of southern Peru. Here, the Wari thrust forth their frontier anderected a citadel atop an imposing mesa, Cerro Bal, where they held sway for 400years. A mere five mil es away, t he Tiwanaku t oiled in t heir fi elds and buil t grandiosetemples of stone and adobe. Recent Field Museum research on this majestic peak hasrevealed startling insights into how the Wari and Tiwanaku interacted, and how theirdynamic relationship ultimately contributed to the rise of the Inca Empire.
RYAN W ILLIAMS
ific Ocean
Ecuador
BrazilPeru
Tiwanaku
Wari
Cerro Baul
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were imposing urban intrusions on the landscape.
Wari textiles and pottery show vibrant depictions
of warriors, anthropomor phic beings and Viracocha,
the principal deity.While the Tiwanaku invited
worship through their colossal temp les featur ing
mo num ents carved with Viracocha and o ther super-
natural beings the Wari brought religion to the
people through the mundane material objects of
textiles and pottery.
The superpowers cease
These two vastly disparate civilizations met each
other in the M oquegua sierra.T hrough our
research at C erro Bal, we have been tracing their
intertwined developm ent and ultimate political
demise som etime aroun d 1000. Early interaction
was limited. Th e Wari brought large number s of
settlers to co lonize the region surround ing C erro
Bal (ca. 600), while Tiwanaku settlement was lim-
ited to the lower reaches of the M oque gua river
valley.This hostile standoff was not resolved by vio-
lent exchanges, at least as reflected on T iwanaku
skeletal remains, but rather throu gh radical changes
in Wari and T iwanaku politics.Th e Wari reconstructed their mo untaintop city
to incorporate offices for th e state. Meanw hile, the
Tiwanaku downstream built an immense temple
complex at O mo, the only one o f its kind outside
the Tiwanaku altiplano heartland. Finally, many Wari
colonists left their homes on the slopes of Cerro
Bal, and new comm unities made up of T iwanaku
settlers began to form around the Wari summit.
T hese new alliances between Tiwanaku settlers
and Wari elites may have co ntribut ed to the
T iwanakus decline around 1000. Factions formed
between the Tiwanaku peoples who lived under
Wari rule and those who remained loyal to the
downstream Tiwanaku state elites.The loss of labor
resources and people leaving their political lordship
may have destabilized the T iwanaku status quo. Some
scholars have argued that a severe drought that began
aroun d 1050 led to the Tiwanakus collapse. If our
recon struction o f the social splitting is accurate, theinherent vulnerability in the social system may have
impeded an effective respon se to the drought.
N ot long after 1000, both Tiwanaku and Wari had
abandon ed their M oquegua settlements, and rever-
berations spread througho ut the ir realms. By 1100,
the sister states had ent irely collapsed. Smaller regional
kingdoms ensued, building on the developmen ts of
the W ari and T iwanaku. O ne o f these eventually
became the Inca Empire, the m ost powerful and
extensive n ative state the Am ericas had ever seen.
Investigating these ancient Andean
supremacies is giving us new insights into
how com mun ities integrate, how they copewith the power of the empire and how they
ally themselves with competing polities to
achieve local auto nomy. In todays world,
where national priorities and security reach
beyond our traditional borders and force
us to interact with o ther nations, often
aggressively, it is imperative to examine
these interactions their effects on people
and communities.While government
administrations com e and go, it is the peo ple
who endure and u ltimately judge the inter-
pretation of history.
T he C erro B al E x pedition h as been sponsored
by the G . A . Bruno Foundation, the H einz
Family Foundation, the N ational S cience
Foundation, the A sociacin C ontisuyo, the
U niversity of Florida and T he Field M useum.
V isit www.fieldm useum .org and for m ore infor-
mation on D rs. W illiams and N ash.
How did they find that?Buried remains may be invisible on the ground surface, but using techniques related to x-ray imaging,archaeologists can see what s underneath to understand how ancient societi es developed and flour -ished. In one instance, we used geophysical survey technologies at Cerro Bal to map out remains ofthe ancient cit y. Si nce excavati on is ti me consuming and expensive, we are l im it ed i n the amount ofarea we can expose. With ground-penetrating radar, we transmit a radar wave into the groundabout the same fr equency as a television broadcast antenna and measure i ts r efl ecti ons off ofburied objects. This way we can distinguish hidden archaeological features, such as ancient buildings,tombs or buried agricultural fields. The Field Museums Laboratory for GIS & Remote Sensing nowmanages an array of techniques and equipment for this type of research.
R yan W illiam s uses a gradiometer to sense dif ferences in th e E arth s magnet ic field th at represent buried
archaeological features.
D onn a N ash and K irk C ostion not e
the depths of the first excavation layer.
C lassic W ari ritual
drinking vessel from
C erro B al. T he first
is modeled as a
human foot.
R Y A N W I L L I A M S
ROBIN
COLEMAN
RYANWILLIAMS
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