Abstract
Regional settlement patterns from the formative through Post-Classic Tiwanaku periods (1500 B.C.–A.C. 1100) in the Tiwanaku Valley of Bolivia arc explored. Ecological considerations, rank-size interpretations, and some aspects of central place theory are incorporated into this investigation of the evolution of regional social and political organization of the Tiwanaku polity. Taken together; the analyses point away from reconstructions of the Tiwanaku polity as a highly centralized and monolithic state organized in a “pyramidal” fashion. Settlement patterns indicate the presence of sub-system settlement enclaves with differing relationships to the capital. The identification of sub-system settlement units lends support to suggestions arising from recent study that, by the Post-Classic Period, Tiwanaku society was segmentary in nature and organized into a nested hierarchy. These findings arc consistent with ethnohistorically-derived constructs of indigenous Andean sociopolitical structure.
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