Chich�n Itz�: Temple of the WarriorsTemple of the Warriors, Chich�n Itz�, Yucat�n, Mexico.� Ron Gatepain (A Britannica Publishing Partner)Also in support of the identification of Tula as the Toltec capital are the architectural characteristics and stylistic features of the sculpture of a large site in northern Yucat�n called Chich�n Itz�. The resemblance between the two sites is extraordinarily close. At Chich�n are found flat beam and masonry roofs (contrasting sharply with the typical Maya corbeled vault), serpent columns, colonnaded halls attached to the bases of temples, altars with Atlantean figures, sculptured representations of skulls and crossbones, marching felines, canines and raptorial birds devouring human hearts, and depictions of warriors with typical Toltec accoutrements. Furthermore, there are even scenes showing Toltec and Maya warriors in combat. The Temple of the Warriors at Chich�n Itz� looks like an attempt to duplicate Structure B at Tula.

One of the puzzling aspects of the relationship between the two sites is that the public architecture of Chich�n Itz� is actually more monumental than that at Tula, leading at least one Meso-American specialist to believe that Tula�s style was derived from Chich�n. Many of the stylistic features themselves, however, have prototypes in Classic Teotihuac�n, whereas there is little in Classic Maya culture that could be considered as the source. What is more probable�and this agrees with the Toltec version of the relationship�is that the Toltec state in Yucat�n was politically independent from Tula and was larger in area and population. The presence of rival states in central Mexico such as Xochicalco and Cholula may have kept the core of the Toltec polity relatively restricted in space. The much larger area and population controlled by the Toltec state at Chich�n would explain the differences in the scale of architecture. The superior military organization and equipment of the Toltec perhaps explains their apparent success in Yucat�n.

Chich�n Itz�: El CastilloEl Castillo (�The Castle�), Chich�n Itz�, Yucat�n, Mexico.� Ron Gatepain (A Britannica Publishing Partner)Archaeological unity of the Postclassic

The Postclassic period of Meso-American archaeology generally is a period characterized by considerable regionalism combined with a certain degree of uniformity. To a great extent, the latter was the product of the large states and extensive trade networks centred in the central plateau region. The Early Postclassic in some areas may be described as a continuation of the Late Classic; on the Gulf coast, for example, sites like El Taj�n continued to be occupied, while in the Valley of Oaxaca (although Monte Alb�n was abandoned) the Zapotec tradition continued with the new centre at Mitla. In other areas, new styles either began or reached their climactic development, such as the Mixteca�Puebla style in painting, ceramics, and metallurgy, which evolved either in western Oaxaca or, more probably, at Cholula in Puebla. On the Guatemalan Pacific piedmont and in Tabasco, two specialized ceramic traditions (both of which began in Late Classic times) evolved: (1) plumbate (so called because of its slip, which had an unusually high iron content in the natural clay that fired to a lead-colour glaze); and (2) Fine Orange (so called because of its fine-grained, temperless paste). Wares of these two styles were widely traded.

The unity of the Postclassic consisted primarily of the diffusion of religious ideology, particularly the sun god�warfare�sacrificial complex and of the related institutional development such as the military orders (the latter probably originated at Classic Teotihuac�n). This ideology clearly originated in central Mexico, at either Cholula or Tula or both. The specific artistic style of representation of the themes in painting and sculpture spread as well. Along with this was diffused a specific style of representation of the social calendar and writing generally and much greater emphasis on the 52-year cycle. The specific style most probably originated at Cholula.

In the highland areas of Meso-America the Late Postclassic was a period of maximum population growth. The Early Postclassic was, however, the period of maximum expansion of sedentary peoples on the northern frontier, probably the product of minor changes in climate as a result of increased rainfall. This frontier retracted substantially in Late Postclassic times, possibly because the rainfall decreased. This was perhaps the major factor in the precipitate arrival of barbarous tribes into the plateau, as the annals state.

The Postclassic, over large areas of the lowlands, on the other hand, was strikingly different. One of the most intriguing problems of Meso-American archaeology is the peculiar sequence of events in the lowland Maya area. At the time of European contact much of the northern portion of Yucat�n was well settled. A narrow band of densely settled country also extended along the east coast south to modern Belize City and along the entire length of the west coast (where it joined another area of substantial settlement in the south Gulf coast). Most of the heart of the peninsula, the department of Pet�n in Guatemala, and large portions of the states of Campeche and Quintana Roo in Mexico (the most densely settled portion of the Classic Maya territory) were virtually abandoned.

One of the major problems of Meso-American archaeology is the explanation of this massive population decline. The immediate causes are clear: it must have been the product of migrations out of the area or a set of internal factors that caused a decline in situ or both. Various hypotheses as to processes and causes have been suggested. These may be grouped in the following categories: natural disasters (earthquakes, famines, epidemics, and hurricanes have all been suggested); ecological processes (primarily the deterioration of the natural environment by overintensification of land use in response to population pressure); and sociopolitical processes (internal warfare, invasion from outside, peasant revolts, breakdown of critical trade networks). Some of these hypotheses are clearly derivations from others or are not explanations but rather are descriptions of events that were produced by other processes. It seems certain that the causes were multiple and in some way related. Of great interest is the fact that at least one other lowland area, the Pacific Coastal Plain of Guatemala, experienced a comparable Postclassic decline. William T. Sanders Aztec culture to the time of the Spanish conquestThe nature of the sources

At the time of the Spanish conquest the dominant people of Meso-America were the Aztec. This description is based primarily on written documents from the 16th century but also includes some archaeological data. The literature, both published and unpublished, of the 16th century is enormous and takes in all aspects of Aztec culture. Much of it covers the period within a few decades after the conquest, and it is uncertain how much change had occurred because of the introduction of Spanish culture. Some Aztec institutions, such as the military orders, were immediately abolished by the Spaniards; and the sources, therefore, give only the barest outline of their organization. This information, however, combined with archaeological data, gives a fairly detailed picture of Aztec culture at the time of the Spanish conquest. The sources can be classified by content and purpose into five categories, each of which is described below. Accounts written by the conquistadores

Eyewitness accounts of Aztec culture on the eve of the conquest are, of course, the most directly pertinent sources because they describe Aztec culture before it became transformed by the Spanish conquest. Important among these are the Cartas de Relaci�n (�Letters of Information�), sent by Hern�n Cort�s to the Holy Roman emperor Charles V, and the Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva Espa�a (1632; The True History of the Conquest of New Spain) by Bernal D�az del Castillo. Religious rites and ceremonies, temples, and paraphernalia of the cults are often described in these accounts. Their value, however, is lessened by the writers� ignorance of N�huatl (the Aztec language at the time of the conquest), their lack of understanding of the Indian way of thinking, and their deep hostility to the native religion, which they considered to be inspired by the devil. These documents, therefore, have been interpreted with utmost caution.

Roman Catholic missionaries also wrote accounts of the Aztec. Paradoxically, the priests generally showed more understanding and tolerance than did the laymen. Thanks to their training and theological knowledge, they were able to analyze the Indian mind and to gain insight into the meaning of the myths and ritual. The missionaries, as a rule, learned the native languages, especially N�huatl. Postconquest histories of the Aztec written in Spanish

Within a few decades of the conquest, a series of histories had been written in the Spanish language, based in part on Aztec books and in part on information supplied by the upper class. Among the most detailed of these is the three-part Historia de las Indias de la Nueva Espa�a e Islas de Tierra Firma (�History of the Indies of New Spain�), written in about 1580 by the Dominican friar Diego Dur�n. Postconquest ethnographic accounts written in Spanish and N�huatl

These works are comparable in methodology and subject matter to the kinds of studies of native peoples conducted by present-day anthropologists. Probably the finest of them was written by Bernardino de Sahag�n. Sahag�n was a Franciscan priest who arrived in Mexico very early (1529), learned the N�huatl tongue, and spent his life building a wonderful monument, a real encyclopaedia called the Historia general de las cosas de Nueva Espa�a (�General History of the Things of New Spain�). His work covers virtually all aspects of Aztec culture. It contains particularly detailed accounts of religion, ethnobotany, folk medicine, and economics, dictated to him in N�huatl by Aztec noblemen and priests. As a source, it has the added value of being written in both N�huatl and Spanish. One of the most complete versions of this work, written in N�huatl, is called the Florentine Codex.

�Siguense veynte y seis addiciones desta postilla� (1560�79; �A Sequence of Twenty-six Additions to the Admonitions�) by Franciscan Bernardino de Sahag�n. The 26 additional admonitions to the appendix of Sahag�n's doctrinal writings exhort the Aztecs to pursue Christian virtues. The writings preserve a record of the Aztec culture and Nahuatl language.The Newberry Library, Gift of Edward E. Ayer, 1911 (A Britannica Publishing Partner)The codices

Aztec sacred books and works, which were kept in the temples, and other native books have become known in Western scholarship as codices. Sacred books were written (or rather, painted) on deerskin or agave-fibre paper by scribes (tlacuiloanime), who used a combination of pictography, ideograms, and phonetic symbols and dealt with the ritual calendar, divination, ceremonies, and speculations on the gods and the universe. Because of their religious content only a small fraction of these escaped destruction by the Spaniards; the few specimens that have survived�such as the Codex Borbonicus, the Codex Borgia, the Codex Fej�rv�ry-Mayer, and the Codex Cospi�usually come accompanied by Spanish notations. These sources are limited in scope and subject matter but nevertheless are valuable documents. Their interpretation is far from easy. Only a few of them, such as the Borbonicus, are truly Aztec, while others, such as the Borgia, seem to emanate from the priestly colleges of the �Mexica-Puebla� area, between the central highlands and the Oaxaca Mountains.

An illustration from a reproduction of the Codex Magliabecchi depicting an Aztec priest performing a sacrificial offering of a living human heart to the war god Huitzilopochtli.Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC-USZC4-743)

Other native books, either pre-Cortesian or post-Cortesian, also afford valuable material. Examples include such manuscripts as the Codex Telleriano-Remensis, the Azcatitlan, and the Codex of 1576, which describe the history of the Aztec tribe and state and occasionally depict religious scenes and events; the Codex Badianus, an herbal with magnificent drawings of medicinal plants; and the Codex Mendoza and the Matr�cula de tributos, both tax documents of the Aztec empire. A number of books were written in the Latin alphabet�either in N�huatl or in Spanish�by learned Aztec chroniclers, who used ancient pictographic manuscripts as their basis. Among those that were prepared in central Mexico are the Codex Chimalpopoca (also called the Anales de Cuauhtitl�n; �Annals of Cuauhtitl�n�), in N�huatl, and the Codex Ram�rez (also called the Historia de los mexicanos por sus pinturas; �History of the Mexicans Through Their Paintings�), in Spanish; both are anonymous compilations. Official ecclesiastical and government records

Much of this literature is unpublished. Its purpose was administrative rather than intellectual, but it has provided an extraordinarily rich source of information for all 16th-century ethnic groups. The documents vary from tax lists, censuses, and marriage and baptismal records to broad geographic-economic surveys. Among the most valuable of the last type are the Relaciones geogr�ficas of 1579�85, a series of surveys ordered by Philip II of his overseas possessions. Formal questionnaires were drawn up that demanded information from each town in the empire on virtually all aspects of Meso-American life: questions on the natural environment and resources, crops, population history, settlement patterns, taxes paid, markets and trade, the language, native history and customs, and progress of the missionization program. William T. Sanders Jacques Soustelle Agriculture

The homeland of the Aztec, from which they ruled their vast domain, was a large (about 3,000 square miles), mountain-rimmed basin with a floor at approximately 7,000 feet above sea level. The surrounding ranges reached a maximum elevation of 18,000 feet in the volcano of Popocat�petl. The annual rainfall varied from 20 to 35 inches (500 to 900 millimetres) in the valley floor to a maximum of 50 inches on the southern escarpment. Approximately 80 percent of the rain fell between May 1 and October 1. Because of the high elevation, the area suffered from severe winter frosts that normally began in mid-October and lasted until the end of March. Normally, the rainfall was adequate for corn, even in the drier portions of the basin, but a major problem was the timing of the rains and the frosts. A delay of the rainfall to mid- or late June, accompanied by early autumn frosts, could produce crop disasters.

Another major problem for the pre-Hispanic cultivator was the paucity of level land. Much of the land surface is sloping, and the problem of soil erosion was acute. Furthermore, of the 1,600 square miles of relatively level land, 400 square miles were occupied by a chain of lakes; and much of the immediate lakeshore plain was waterlogged.

Because of the effect of elevation on the growing season, the areas above 8,300 feet were also unsuitable for cultivation, removing an additional 400 square miles from the agricultural resource. Even within zones of cultivation, the presence of steep slopes and thin soil further reduced the area of cultivation. It is doubtful that more than 50 percent of the basin was suitable for labour-intensive methods of cultivation. Yet in 1519 it supported a population of 1,000,000 to 1,500,000; i.e., a density of 500 people per square mile (200 per square kilometre), the densest population in Meso-American history. This was achieved by an extraordinarily intensive system of farming that involved a number of specialized techniques. Soil fertility was maintained by plant and animal fertilizers, by short-cycle fallowing, and by irrigation. In gently sloping terrain, erosion was controlled by earth and maguey terraces, in steeper areas by stone terracing. The problem of humidity was solved by canal irrigation of both the floodwater and permanent type. Much of the irrigation was done just before planting in April and May in order to give crops a head start and hence avoid the autumn frosts. Terracing functioned also as a method of conserving moisture. There is also evidence that dry-farming techniques were applied to store moisture in the soil. The most significant achievement of Aztec agriculture, however, was that of swamp reclamation, even including colonization of the lakes. This system of farming, called chinampa, was first applied to Lake Chalco. The lake covered approximately 60 square miles and apparently varied in its character from swamps to ponds of fairly deep, open water. By a process varying from digging drainage ditches to artificial construction of land from lake mud and vegetation, most of the lake was converted to highly productive agricultural land. A series of masonry causeway dikes were constructed across the lake to control flooding. By a system of dikes and sluice gates the Aztec even managed to convert a portion of saline Lake Texcoco, the largest and lowest lake in the basin, to a freshwater bay for further chinampa colonization.

The total area colonized was probably in the neighbourhood of 30,000 acres, and Tenochtitl�n, the Aztec capital, depended on these lands for much of its food. By a comparable method, much of the waterlogged lakeshore plain was also converted into agricultural land. Particularly notable is the fact that all of these techniques of food production were achieved by human power and simple hand tools.

Aside from agriculture, the basin had a number of major resources, some of which were exploited not only for local consumption but also to supply other areas of Meso-America. Obsidian, natural glass of volcanic origin, was a superb material for a great variety of stone tools; and the northeastern ranges of the basin contained one of Meso-America�s major deposits. Basalt for manos and metates (milling stones) was also abundant. Lake Texcoco was a major source of salt, and the lakes generally provided waterfowl, fish, and other aquatic foodstuffs. The great pine forests above the limits of agriculture were a major source of lumber. On the other hand, the basin, because of its high elevation, was unsuitable for a great variety of tropical products, including cotton, paper, tropical roots and fruits, tobacco, copal incense, rubber, cacao, honey, precious feathers and skins, and such prized goods as metal, jade, and turquoise. The major motivation of Aztec conquest was to obtain control of these resources. Social and political organization

Aztec technology differed little from that of other Meso-American groups. One of its distinctive aspects was differentiation by status levels. The use of most of the extra-local resources noted above was limited to a small upper and middle class; and there were striking differences in dress, housing, and diet by social class. Commoners, for example, wore clothing woven from maguey fibre, while the upper classes wore cotton garments. The use of imported foods, at least on a regular basis, was limited to the upper and middle classes. Commoners lived in small adobe or stone and mud huts, the upper and middle class in large multiroomed palatial houses of cut stone, lime plaster, and concrete.

Aztec social and political organization can be divided into a number of levels of increasing size and complexity of organization. The nuclear family�that is, a pair of cohabiting adults and their unmarried children�formed the lowest level of organization. The nuclear family functioned in procreation, education of children, and as a unit of food preparation and consumption, with a well-defined division of labour between husband and wife. Among the Aztec, however, a number of nuclear families usually resided together in a single cooperating household, or extended family. Such a family usually consisted of a man, his married sons or brothers, and their families. The average peasant household of this type was small. Up to three nuclear families occupied a small multiroom house divided into apartments for each family. The houses were usually placed within a courtyard fenced with organ cactus or adobe walls, forming a compound. The extended family household probably functioned as a unit of land use and food production. In the towns, however, some households could be considerably larger, and the household of Montezuma II included several thousand people.

A number of households, varying from a few score to several hundred, were organized into an internally complex corporate group referred to as a calpulli by the Aztec and translated as barrio (�ward�) by the Spaniards. Questions about the structure and function of this level of Aztec organization have caused a great deal of debate among Meso-American specialists. It is clear, however, that it was a physical and territorial unit as well as a socially organized one. It was a unit of land tenure. Calpulli lands were owned communally but were distributed among various households. The household retained the right of usufruct, but only the calpulli as a whole could sell or rent lands.

The calpulli rural communities varied considerably in physical appearance. Some were isolated, tightly nucleated physical settlements surrounded by their agricultural land, whereas in others houses were dispersed through the land holdings. In a few cases, they were physically attached as wards to one or more other calpulli. These differences corresponded to ecological, economic, and political factors. Rural, dispersed settlements were found on terraced hillsides in which houses were tightly integrated with the terrace; in the chinampa area, each house was placed on its chinampa holding. On the other hand, nucleated, isolated calpulli were found in areas of level land, and the ward type was usually found in the towns and cities. In the latter case, many lost their agricultural character and became units of craft specialization. The calpulli was a unit of political administration within the larger unit that will be referred to here as the state. It was ruled by a council of household heads presided over by a chief selected by the council from within a particular lineage. The calpulli functioned as a unit of taxation to the central government, as a unit of corv�e labour, and as a military regiment.

The structure of the calpulli is open to question. Some sources call it a kin group, �a lineage� with a common ancestor; and as a result some anthropologists have referred to it as a clan, or sib. There is no evidence, however, of either exogamy or unilineal descent; in fact, marriage records from the post-conquest period show a strong tendency toward endogamy. There is some evidence of internal ranking and significant status differentiation, another non-clanlike feature. The sources also mention smaller territorial subdivisions, referred to as barrios peque�os, or �little wards.� If these are descent lines, then the calpulli resembled quite closely a type of kin group called by anthropologists a ramage, or a conical clan. This is a group with a myth of common descent, divided into ranked senior and junior lineages based on the seniority of older versus younger brother in the group genealogy. In support of this reconstruction is the statement that the calpulli god was a deified ancestor.

The calpulli also functioned as a unit of education, for each possessed a school for young men�the telpuchcalli�primarily for military and moral instruction.

Above the level of the calpulli was the state. With the exception of those historical periods when larger polities, such as the Aztec empire, emerged, such states in Meso-America, including the Basin of Mexico, were small. Just prior to the Aztec expansion there were 50 or 60 such states in the basin, with an average size of about 50 to 60 square miles. In 1519 these once independent domains had an average population of 25,000 to 30,000 people. In less densely settled areas, the territories were larger and populations smaller. The range of size was from a few thousand up to 100,000.

The average small state included a central town with a population of several thousand, the balance of the population consisting of the rural calpulli. The central town was divided into wards that corresponded in size and to a certain degree in structure to the rural calpulli but were clearly different in function; they in turn were divided into barrios peque�os. At the head of the state was an official called the tlatoani, to whom all household heads owed allegiance, respect, and tax obligations. The tlatoani�s position was fixed within a particular lineage, the particular choice varying from state to state. In some areas, succession passed from father to son; in others, the succession went through a series of brothers and then passed to the eldest son of the eldest brother. In still other states, the office was elective, but the choice was limited to sons or brothers of the deceased ruler. The office was accompanied by all of the trappings and sumptuary behaviour typical of despotic states. The ruler resided in a large, multiroom masonry palace inhabited by a great number of wives, servants, and professional craftsmen. He was carried in a sedan chair in public and treated with exaggerated respect by his subordinates. The tlatoani held considerable power: he appointed all lesser bureaucrats, promoted men to higher military status, organized military campaigns, and was the distributor of booty and tribute; he collected taxes in labour, military service, and goods from his supporters; he owned private estates manned by serfs; he was the final court of appeal in judicial cases; and he was titular head of the religious cult and head of the town market.

Many of these functions were delegated to a large staff of professional administrators: priests, market supervisors, military leaders, judges, tax collectors, and accountants. The tax collectors, or calpixque, were especially important administrators because they acted as the rulers� agents in collecting goods and services from the calpulli chiefs.

Most of these positions were appointed and selected from two classes�the pipiltin (plural of pilli), and the professional warriors. Society was divided into three well-defined castes. At the top were the pipiltin, nobles by birth and members of the royal lineage. Below them was the macehual class, the commoners who made up the bulk of the population. At the base of the social structure were the mayeques, or serfs, attached to private or state-owned rural estates. Within these three castes, a number of social classes could be differentiated, according to wealth, occupation, and political office. The Aztec system made a distinction between ascribed and achieved status. By a system of promotions, usually as a reward for military deeds, commoners were appointed to such political offices as calpixque and judges. Many pipiltin held no political office and, unless they had inherited private estates, were forced to live off the largess of the ruler. Commoners who had captured four enemy warriors in combat were promoted to the rank of tecuhtli, entered one of the military orders, were assigned a private estate with serfs for their maintenance, and acted as an elite professional army. The children of both pipiltin and tecuhtli could enroll in the religious college, or calmecac, where they could be trained as priests or political administrators. The calmecac apparently was also open to certain other commoners, such as wealthy and influential merchants and craftsmen.

Aside from the commoner-warriors, the macehual class was further differentiated into class levels. Certain occupations were accorded higher prestige than others (merchants, lapidarians, goldsmiths, and featherworkers are mentioned, and the list probably included stone sculptors); and all urban occupations were assigned higher status as compared with rural farming. Since occupations were restricted to calpulli membership and since the calpulli were kin groups, it follows that crafts tended to be hereditary. In small towns the craft specializing group would have to be the barrio peque�o. In the cities it was definitely the larger unit, but in either case crafts would be found within hereditary corporate groups.

The system of social stratification emphasized ascribed status but also permitted considerable vertical mobility. The land-tenure system was an important aspect in maintaining both processes, as could be expected in a basically agrarian society. Although most of the land was held in common by the calpulli, private estates with serfs helped to maintain the prestige of the pilli class and similar estates assigned to political office; and the tecuhtli positions freed able commoners from the necessity of subsistence procurement.

The taxation system also helped to maintain the social system. All heads of households owed military service to the tlatoani. For the pipiltin and tecuhtli, this was the only tribute demanded. Urban craftsmen also paid tribute in their craft products but were exempt from corv�e labour. That obligation, plus taxes in agricultural products, were the burdens of the rural peasants, and the mayeques owed their labour and agricultural produce to their overlord.

Two other elements in the Aztec social system were pawns and slaves. The former were poor men who could sell themselves or members of their household for a specified period of time. Their rights were carefully defended by Aztec law, and they were not slaves but more like indentured servants. True slaves did exist and in some parts of Meso-America were used as workers or servants. Among the Aztec, the mayeques were their counterpart. Slaves were bought in lowland markets and used primarily for human sacrifice.

The high development of craft specialization�much of it full-time�in Aztec towns has been noted above. But many rural communities also had part-time specialities, a feature due in part to the heterogeneity of the highland environment, with its highly local distribution of resources. Foreign goods were brought into the Aztec homeland by great caravans of professional merchants called pochteca, who frequently undertook journeys exceeding a year in length. As a group the merchants enjoyed very high prestige and even had their own tribunals. Various merchant wards of a great number of towns and cities in central Mexico were organized into one great trading guild that had its centre at Tenochtitl�n. They also organized and administered the town markets, another highly evolved aspect of Aztec institutions. These markets were held in great open plazas�in smaller towns every fifth day, in larger towns and cities daily, although in the latter case the market population reached a peak every fifth day.

The centres and the political organization of large states such as the Aztec empire were fundamentally similar in character to small ones; but the vast differences in size (Tenochtitl�n, the Aztec capital, may have had 140,000 to 200,000 inhabitants in 1519) demanded some changes. Generally, when one central Mexican state conquered another, the ruler of the conquering town extorted an annual tribute, but there was little attempt at political integration. In the case of the Aztec, this policy was generally maintained, but many conquered states were given Aztec governors. Furthermore, conquest was usually accompanied by an exchange of women from the two ruling lineages (conqueror and conquered), and successors to the throne of the conquered states were through these women, from the royal lineage of Tenochtitl�n. As a result, the ruling class gradually tended toward a single kin group. Because of the great number of states conquered by the Aztec (400 to 500), some form of intermediate-level territorial and administrative organization became imperative. The states conquered by the Aztec were grouped into 38 provinces. One town in each province served as capital, and an Aztec tax collector-governor was placed there to supervise the collection, storage, and disposition of the tribute. In many provinces, the Aztec established garrisons. These consisted of warriors and their families culled from all of the towns of the Valley of Mexico, and they were assigned lands in the conquered province. Since they supported themselves, they were colonists as well as troops. The planting of colonists, combined with such factors as the merchant guild and royal family intermarriage, suggests that the Aztec elite were attempting to integrate more closely the population of the Valley of Mexico as a kind of core nationality for the empire. Other indications that the Aztec were in the process of achieving further political integration are statements in several relaciones that the tax collectors served as courts of appeals in serious judicial cases and also that the Aztec introduced the cult of their national god Huitzilopochtli to conquered provinces. Tenochtitl�n

Tenochtitl�n itself was a huge metropolis covering more than five square miles. It was originally located on two small islands in Lake Texcoco, but it gradually spread into the surrounding lake by a process, first of chinampa construction, then of consolidation. It was connected to the mainland by several causeway dikes that terminated in smaller lakeside urban communities. The lake around the city was also partly covered with chinampas with numerous rural settlements. Together, the complex of settlements�the city, the chinampa villages, and the settlements along the lakeshore plain�must have appeared from the air as one gigantic settlement. The population in 1519 was about 400,000 people, the largest and densest concentration in Meso-American history.

The majority of people in the city were non-food-producing specialists; i.e., craftsmen, merchants, priests, warriors, and administrators. In Tenochtitl�n, as in other larger towns, the larger calpulli formed craft guilds. Guild organization was internally complex, an economic development related to the higher level of political integration and the greatly expanded trade and tax base that accrued from it. The great market in the barrio of Tlatelolco was reported by the Spaniards to have had 60,000 buyers and sellers on the main market day. The Spaniards also described the enormous canoe traffic on the lake moving goods to the market. There is even evidence that many chinampa cultivators, in response to the expanded market, were shifting from the production of staple crops to truck gardening.

The Aztec capital was originally two separate cities, Tlatelolco and Tenochtitl�n, which merged into one through the conquest of Tlatelolco. The division was maintained for administrative purposes, however, and with further growth it became necessary to divide Tenochtitl�n into four great wards (also referred to as calpulli). Each ward contained 12 to 15 calpulli, some 50 to 60 in all. Tlatelolco must have had 10 to 20 calpulli as well, bringing the total up to perhaps 80.

With this enormously expanded tax base, the central government became internally complex. The Spaniards described the palace of Montezuma II as containing 300 rooms grouped around three courts. Land titles dating from after the conquest give it an area of 10 acres. Aside from the private apartments of the king, the palace included libraries, storehouses, workshops for royal craftsmen, great halls for justice and other councils, and offices for an army of accountants. The sources even describe a royal zoo and aviary and a number of country retreats. The internal organization of the taxation, military, and judicial departments must have been far more complex than in small states; but precise data is lacking.

Within the city there were literally hundreds of temples and related religious structures. There were at least two large complexes, religious centres of the dual cities of Tenochtitl�n and Tlatelolco. Each of the four great wards of Tenochtitl�n, as well as each calpulli, had smaller temple complexes, so that the total number must have run into the hundreds. The great temple complex of Tenochtitl�n consisted of three large pyramid temples (the principal temple platform, dedicated to Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc, was 100 feet high and measured 300 feet on a side at its base). There were also six small pyramid temples, three calmecac buildings (dormitories and colleges for priests), a ball court, a great wooden rack for the skulls of sacrificed victims, a sacred pool, a sacred grove, and several large open courts. All of these structures were placed within a vast walled enclosure, 1,200 feet on a side. The temple complex at Tlatelolco was at least half as large. Aztec religion

Perhaps the most highly elaborated aspect of Aztec culture was the religious system. The Aztec derived much of their religious ideology from the earlier cultures of Meso-America or from their contemporaries. This was particularly true during the final phase of their history, when their foreign contacts broadened. Indeed, much confusion about Aztec religious ideology stems, in part, from the fact that Aztec civilization was still in a process of assimilation and reorganization of these varied religious traditions. Moreover, as the empire expanded and Tenochtitl�n evolved into a heterogeneous community, the religious needs correspondingly changed from those of a simple agrarian society. The ruling class, particularly, demanded a more intellectual and philosophical ideology.

The Aztec approach to contact with the supernatural was through a complex calendar of great ceremonies, which were held at the temples and were performed by a professional priesthood that acted as the intermediary between the gods and human beings. Many of these were public in the sense that the populace played the role of spectators. Elements in all the ceremonies were very similar and included ritual ablutions to prepare the priests for the contact; offerings and sacrifices to gain the gods� favour; and theatrical dramas of myths by masked performers in the form of dances, songs, and processionals. Each god had his special ceremony that, considering the richness of the pantheon, must have filled the calendar. These ceremonies must have played a significant recreative function, as do ceremonies held in honour of patron saints in present-day Mexico.

Aztec religion heavily emphasized sacrifice and ascetic behaviour as the necessary preconditions for approaching the supernatural. Priests were celibate and were required to live a simple, spartan life. They performed constant self-sacrifice in the form of bloodletting as penitence (by passing barbed cords through the tongue and ears). This pattern of worship reached its climax in the practice of human sacrifice; it was in this aspect of Aztec culture that religion, war, and politics became closely related. Ideologically at least, Aztec warfare was waged for the purpose of obtaining sacrificial victims. The tribute lists, of course, demonstrate that there was a more mundane purpose as well, and it would be a serious mistake to think of Aztec warfare as functioning primarily in the religious sphere.

The cult of the gods required a large professional priesthood. Spanish documents indicate that the priesthood was one of the most elaborate of Aztec institutions. Each temple and god had its attendant priestly order. At Tenochtitl�n the high priests of Tlaloc and Huitzilopochtli served as heads of the entire priestly organization. Within the orders were priests in charge of ceremonies, of the education of novices, of astrology, and of the temple lands. (These consisted of specific rural communities assigned by the state to particular temples.) Furthermore, there were several grades of priests. As noted above, the priests maintained a number of schools, or calmecacs, where sons of the nobility and certain commoners were given instruction. Most of the novices ultimately left the priesthood and carried out economic and political functions; others remained, joined the priesthood on a permanent basis, and lived at the calmecac.

Much of Aztec religion probably was practiced at home at special household altars. Common archaeological artifacts are small baked-clay idols or figurines, representing specific gods apparently used in these household ceremonies, along with incense burners. William T. Sanders Cosmogony and eschatology

The Aztec believed that four worlds had existed before the present universe. Those worlds, or �suns,� had been destroyed by catastrophes. Humankind had been entirely wiped out at the end of each sun. The present world was the fifth sun, and the Aztec thought of themselves as �the People of the Sun.� Their divine duty was to wage cosmic war in order to provide the sun with his tlaxcaltiliztli (�nourishment�). Without it the sun would disappear from the heavens. Thus the welfare and the very survival of the universe depended upon the offerings of blood and hearts to the sun, a notion that the Aztec extended to all the deities of their pantheon.

The first sun was called Nahui-Ocelotl, �Four-Jaguar,� a date of the ritual calendar. Humankind was first destroyed by jaguars. The animal was considered by the Aztec as the nahualli (�animal disguise�) of the creator god Tezcatlipoca.

At the end of the second sun, Nahui-Eh�catl, �Four-Wind,� a magical hurricane transformed all people into monkeys. That disaster was caused by Quetzalc�atl (the Feathered Serpent) in the form of Eh�catl, the wind god.

A rain of fire had put an end to the third sun, Nahuiquiahuitl, �Four-Rain.� Tlaloc as the god of thunder and lightning presided over that period.

The fourth sun, Nahui-Atl, �Four-Water,� ended in a gigantic flood that lasted for 52 years. Only one man and one woman survived, sheltered in a huge cypress. But they were changed into dogs by Tezcatlipoca, whose orders they had disobeyed.

Present humanity was created by Quetzalc�atl. The Feathered Serpent, with the help of his twin, X�lotl, the dog-headed god, succeeded in reviving the dried bones of the old dead by sprinkling them with his own blood. The present sun was called Nahui-Ollin, �Four-Earthquake,� and was doomed to disappear in a tremendous earthquake. The skeleton-like monsters of the west, the tzitzimime, would then appear and kill all people.

Two deeply rooted concepts are revealed by these myths. One was the belief that the universe was unstable, that death and destruction continually threatened it. The other emphasized the necessity of the sacrifice of the gods. Thanks to Quetzalc�atl�s self-sacrifice, the ancient bones of Mictlan, �the Place of Death,� gave birth to men. In the same way, the sun and moon were created: the gods, assembled in the darkness at Teotihuac�n, built a huge fire; two of them, Nanahuatzin, a small deity covered with ulcers, and Teccizt�catl, a richly bejeweled god, threw themselves into the flames, from which the former emerged as the sun and the latter as the moon. Then the sun refused to move unless the other gods gave him their blood; they were compelled to sacrifice themselves to feed the sun. Cosmology

According to the Aztec cosmological ideas, the earth had the general shape of a great disk divided into four sections oriented to the four cardinal directions. To each of the four world directions were attached five of the 20 day-signs, one of them being a Year-Bearer (east, acatl, �reed�; west, calli, �house�; north, tecpatl, �flint knife�; south, tochtli, �rabbit�), a colour (east, red or green; west, white; north, black; south, blue), and certain gods. The fifth cardinal point, the centre, was attributed to the fire god Huehuet�otl, because the hearth stood at the centre of the house.

Above the earth, which was surrounded by the �heavenly water� (ilhuic�atl) of the ocean, were 13 heavens, the uppermost of which, �where the air is delicate and frozen,� was the abode of the Supreme Couple. Under the �divine earth,� teotlalli, were the nine hells of Mictlan, with nine rivers that the souls of the dead had to cross. Thirteen was considered a favourable number, nine extremely unlucky.

All of the heavenly bodies and constellations were divinized, such as the Great Bear (Tezcatlipoca), Venus (Quetzalc�atl), the stars of the north (Centzon Mimixcoa, �the 400 Cloud-Serpents�), the stars of the south (Centzon Huitzn�ua, �the 400 Southerners�). The solar disk, Tonatiuh, was supposed to be borne on a litter from the east to the zenith, surrounded by the souls of dead warriors, and from the zenith to the west among a retinue of divinized women, the Cihuateteo. When the night began on the earth, day dawned in Mictlan, the abode of the dead. Deities

The ancient tribes of central Mexico had worshiped fertility gods for many centuries when the Aztec invaded the valley. The cult of these gods remained extremely important in Aztec religion. Tlaloc, the giver of rain but also the wrathful deity of lightning, was the leader of a group of rain gods, the Tlaloques, who dwelt on mountaintops. Chalchiuhtlicue (�One Who Wears a Jade Skirt�) presided over fresh waters, Huixtoc�huatl over salt waters and the sea. Numerous earth goddesses were associated with the fertility of the soil and with the fecundity of women, as Teteoinnan (�Mother of the Gods�), Coatlicue (�One Who Wears a Snake Skirt�), Cihuac�atl (�Serpent-Woman�), and Itzpap�lotl (�Obsidian-Butterfly�). Their significance was twofold: as fertility deities, they gave birth to the young gods of corn, Cent�otl, and of flowers, Xochipilli; as symbols of the earth that devoured the bodies and drank the blood, they appeared as warlike godheads. Tlazolt�otl, a Huastec goddess, presided over carnal love and over the confession of sins.

Xipe Totec, borrowed from the faraway Yopi people, was a god of the spring, of the renewal of vegetation, and at the same time the god of the corporation of goldsmiths. Human victims were killed and flayed to honour him.

The concept of a supreme couple played an important role in the religion of the old sedentary peoples such as the Otom�. Among the Aztec it took the form of Intonan, Intota (�Our Mother, Our Father�), the earth and the sun. But the fire god Huehuet�otl was also associated with the earth. In addition, Ometecuhtli (�Lord of the Duality�) and Omecihuatl (�Lady of the Duality�) were held to abide in the 13th heaven: they decided on which date a human being would be born, thus determining his destiny.

Among the fertility gods are to be counted the �400 Rabbits� (Centzon Totochtin), little gods of the crops, among which are Ometochtli, the god of octli (a fermented drink), and Tepozt�catl, the god of drunkenness.

The Aztec brought with them the cult of their sun and war god, Huitzilopochtli, �the Hummingbird of the Left,� who was considered �the reincarnated Warrior of the South,� the conquering sun of midday. According to a legend probably borrowed from the Toltec, he was born near Tula. His mother, the earth goddess Coatlicue, had already given birth to the 400 Southerners and to the night goddess Coyolxauhqui, whom the newborn god exterminated with his xiuhcoatl (�turquoise serpent�).

Tezcatlipoca, god of the night sky, was the protector of the young warriors. Quetzalc�atl, the ancient Teotihuac�n deity of vegetation and fertility, had been �astralized� and transformed into a god of the morning star. He was also revered as a wind god and as the ancient priest-king of the Toltec golden age: the discoveries of writing, the calendar, and the arts were attributed to him. Mythology of death and afterlife

The beliefs of the Aztec concerning the other world and life after death showed the same syncretism. The old paradise of the rain god Tlaloc, depicted in the Teotihuac�n frescoes, opened its gardens to those who died by drowning, lightning, or as a result of leprosy, dropsy, gout, or lung diseases. He was supposed to have caused their death and to have sent their souls to paradise.

Two categories of dead persons went up to the heavens as companions of the sun: the Quauhteca (�Eagle People�), who comprised the warriors who died on the battlefield or on the sacrificial stone, and the merchants who were killed while traveling in faraway places; and the women who died while giving birth to their first child and thus became Cihuateteo, �Divine Women.�

All the other dead went down to Mictlan, under the northern deserts, the abode of Mictlantecuhtli, the skeleton-masked god of death. There they traveled for four years until they arrived at the ninth hell, where they disappeared altogether.

Offerings were made to the dead 80 days after the funeral, then one year, two, three, and four years later. Then all link between the dead and the living was severed. But the warriors who crossed the heavens in the retinue of the sun were thought to come back to earth after four years as hummingbirds. The Cihuateteo were said to appear at night at the crossroads and strike the passersby with palsy. Worldview

The world vision of the Aztec conceded only a small part to man in the scheme of things. His destiny was submitted to the all-powerful tonalpohualli (the calendrical round); his life in the other world did not result from any moral judgment. His duty was to fight and die for the gods and for the preservation of the world order. Moreover, witchcraft, omens, and portents dominated everyday life. That such a pessimistic outlook should have coexisted with the wonderful dynamism of Aztec civilization is in itself a remarkable achievement. Aztec ritual calendar

Tonalpohualli, an Aztec term meaning �the count of days,� was the name of the ritual calendar of 260 days. It ran parallel to the solar calendar of 365 days, which was divided into 18 months of 20 days and five supplementary unlucky days. The word tonalli means both �day� and �destiny�: the 260-day calendar was mainly used for purposes of divination. The days were named by the combination of 20 signs�natural phenomena such as wind and earthquake, animals like rabbit and jaguar, plants such as reeds, and objects like flint knife and house�with the numbers 1 to 13. Thus the calendrical round included 20 series of 13 days.

Specialized priests called tonalpouhque interpreted the signs and numbers on such occasions as birth, marriage, departure of traders to faraway lands, and election of rulers. Each day and each 13-day series were deemed lucky, unlucky, or indifferent according to the deities presiding over them. Thus Ce-Coatl (�One-Snake�) was held as favourable to the traders, Chicome-Xochitl (�Seven-Flower�) to the scribes and the weavers, and Nahui-Eh�catl (�Four-Wind�) to the magicians. The men who were born during the Ce-Ocelotl (�One-Jaguar�) series would die on the sacrificial stone, those whose birth took place on the day Ometochtli (�Two-Rabbit�) would be drunkards, and so on. The tonalpohualli dominated every aspect of public and private life. Jacques Soustelle Andean civilization

For several thousand years before the Spanish invasion of Peru in 1532, a wide variety of high mountain and desert coastal kingdoms developed in western South America. The extraordinary artistic and technological achievements of these people, along with their historical continuity across centuries, have encouraged modern observers to refer to them as a single Andean civilization.

Principal sites of Andean civilization.Encyclop�dia Britannica, Inc.

A look at a modern map reveals that no single South American state encompasses all of the territories controlled by the Inca (Inka) before the coming of the Spanish; rather these territories were spread over parts of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina, and in 1532 they were all part of a single Inca state called Tawantinsuyu, the �Realm of the Four Parts.� Earlier, local hegemonies�some coastal, others centred in the mountains, and still others bridging these geographic barriers�had risen, expanded, and eventually collapsed.

The Inca of Cuzco (Cusco) were themselves newcomers to most of the regions that they came to dominate. Such rapid expansion did not allow for complete consolidation; and the Spanish were able to take advantage of what had been a recent incorporation of numerous regional ethnic groups and the resentments that the Inca victory had created among the ethnic lords. Some of these, like Don Francisco Cusichaq, lord of Xauxa, the earliest colonial capital, lived long enough after 1532 to testify before a Spanish court of inquiry that he regretted having opened the country to the Europeans. For 30 years his bookkeepers had recorded on their knotted quipu (khipu) accounts not only everything the Spanish had received from Xauxa warehouses but also, on separate knot-strings, everything that had been considered stolen.

The outsider visiting the Andes perceives two overwhelming geographic realities: the Pacific coastal desert stretching for thousands of miles and the high Andes rising parallel to the coast. These contrasting regions�utter desert on the coast and high, looming mountains to the east (where the bulk of the pre-Columbian population lived above 10,000 feet [3,000 metres])�could, and at several times in Andean history did, coalesce into a single political entity. Thus, it is possible to speak of a single Andean civilization, even if at times, early and late, there was no political integration. One indicator of this social unity is extant even now: Quechua, one of the Andean languages, is still spoken by some 10,000,000 people from northern Ecuador to northern Argentina, a distance of thousands of miles. The nature of Andean civilization

The coastal desert was inhabited for millennia by fishermen, and many of their settlements have been studied by archaeologists. The people in these communities were familiar with the sea and depended heavily on its products, but from very early times they also used and possibly cultivated native varieties of cotton. Textiles have been the major art form in the Andes for thousands of years. It is known that these textiles�found preserved in the coastal sands�have woven into them a wealth of information on Andean peoples; and, while the information in the textiles still cannot be read, it is believed that they will eventually be as revealing as have been the Meso-American codices.

In modern Peru irrigation eventually may permit the cultivation of the lower reaches of most rivers. Still, it is useful to note that of some 50 rivers descending from the Andean glaciers to the Peruvian coast, only three have water flowing through them year-round. Such an ambitious irrigation scheme would be most productive only if the waters were tapped quite high on the western slope and if several rivers were connected through canals high in the Andes, thus allowing the scarce waters of three or four valleys to be pooled into a single one as needed. Rumours of such a project reached the first Spaniards in Peru: in the final decade before the invasion, the Inca were said to be planning to bore through a mountain in what today is northern Chile, so that water from the Amazonic watershed would flow westward to the deserts and thus alter the continental divide.

Archaeologists, particularly non-Peruvian scholars, have concentrated on the study of coastal peoples: they have found that sites are more accessible along the Pan-American Highway; that the hot and dry climate presents none of the challenges of the high altitudes; and that the remains, mummified in the desert sands, are immediately rewarding. Pottery finds have portrayed such things as fishing or warfare, diseases, weapons, cultivated plants, and differences in rank and in sexual habits among the Andeans. Usually this evidence has been recovered by professional grave looters but sometimes also by archaeologists themselves. One of the most remarkable of the latter type of finds is the grave of a Moche leader that was discovered near the village of Sipan on the northern coast of Peru in the mid-1980s. Since the mid-20th century architectural studies of ceremonial and political centres have allowed researchers to follow changes in the location and the architectural features of important Andean cities. Distance from the sea and the degree of dependence on maritime products, the proximity to irrigation waters from the highlands, and the repeated efforts to control militarily more than a single irrigated valley have all received attention from archaeologists.

A major question remains: did these coastal polities extend upward to the Andean highlands to control areas beyond the slopes where the irrigation works tapped the rivers? The Peruvian historian Mar�a Rostworowski has pointed to similarities, found in colonial administrative papers, between coastal places-names and personal names in the Cajamarca Highlands, an area due east and above the coastal political entities. The colonial papers have not explained the presence of such distant colonies, but they have introduced a topic fundamental to understanding Andean success: given the apparently inhospitable environments of both the desert coast and the nearby high Andes, how could so many separate societies have fed such enormous populations and constructed highways, palaces, and temples in what were clearly urban centres for so many centuries? Agricultural adaptation

One answer to this question was suggested in the 1930s by the German geographer Carl Troll. His solution took into account a unique aspect of Andean ecology: the greatest population concentration (more than 1,000,000 people) and the highest agricultural productivity occurred around Lake Titicaca, which is some 12,500 feet above sea level. Nowhere else in the world�not even in Tibet or Nepal�has cultivation been so successful at such a high altitude. The effort to understand the ramifications of this paradox is far from complete, but Troll�s insights have proved fertile: (1) The fields and terraces clustered around the lake were located just a few degrees south of the Equator, where daytime temperatures are truly tropical. (2) At this altitude climatic contrasts are not so much seasonal as diurnal, i.e., summer by day and winter by night. Contrasts of 55 to 70 �F (30 to 40 �C) within a single 24-hour period are not uncommon, and nearly 300 nights of frost per year have been recorded on the high, windy plateau (puna) surrounding the lake. (3) Populations settled in such circumstances seem to have endured as others have survived in the Arctic, the Kalahari, and the Gobi, but it is clear that in the Andes a far denser population fared much better than have groups in other environmentally harsh regions, acquiring with time an intimate familiarity with the agricultural and pastoral possibilities of high altitude.

These peoples cultivated many varieties of tubers, of which only the potato has achieved widespread use in the world. But since the soils at this altitude were easily exhausted, �second- and third-year� tubers had to be domesticated to take advantage of the nutrients left unused in the soil. Then, as now, it was usual to allow the ground to rest�for 6, 8, or even 10 years�after which some of the �rested� acreage was returned to cultivation annually, a rotation pattern that is still familiar to the local people.

The upper elevation limit of cultivation has varied throughout the centuries, as the climate has fluctuated. Thus, considerable effort was invested in the development of ever more frost-resistant varieties of tubers. Modern observers have noted that tubers grown close to and above about 13,000 feet were mostly of the pentaploid varieties, bitter hybrids resulting from selection and crossing by the grower. Although they usually required additional nurture and processing that were beyond the procedures familiar today, the bitter varieties represented a gain in total productivity.

A significant improvement in agriculture was the construction of massive terraces, which not only extended the cultivated area but also created protected microclimates where particular varieties could flourish. It has been suggested that an �amphitheatre� found in the Cuzco region was actually an experimental field where the concentric terraces reproduced tiny variations in the upland environment. When the use of highland irrigation and raised-ridged fields are taken into account, it becomes clear that these upland populations were highly familiar with, and respectful of, the potential for high-altitude agriculture and were intent on gaining additional acreage in circumstances that elsewhere would not have seemed worth the effort.

Another incentive for settlement at high altitudes was the presence of glacier-fed pastures for alpaca herds. The llama�it and the alpaca were the two camelids domesticated by the Andean peoples�could live at altitudes ranging from sea level to those in the high mountains. The alpaca�s habitat, however, was much narrower; it did best above 13,000 feet, and its preference for a swampy range was catered to by pastoralists. It has been found that even today alpaca-herding is a full-time occupation, almost impossible to combine with agriculture. While Andean herders did belong to wider ethnic groups, they tended to be specialists, relying for their food staples on their kinsmen closer to Lake Titicaca.

Present-day distribution and use of these animals (known collectively as camelids) tends to mask their importance in pre-Columbian times. A European inspector, reporting in the 1560s on the camelid wealth of a single Aymara chiefdom near Lake Titicaca, claimed, �I have heard of an Indian who is not even a lord, one don Juan Alanoca of Chucuito, who has more than 50,000 head.� Such control of vast herds, combined with the hundreds of varieties of high-altitude tubers and grains, helps to explain the density of Andean populations. The cold as a resource

Beyond such skilled manipulation of the natural geography there lay an awareness of frost. As noted above, in the high Andes frost can occur almost every night of the year. Elsewhere people have endured the cold; in the Andes the cold was transformed into a positive and even creative factor.

It is not known when this step was taken. For at least 1,000 years people in the Andes have been aware that the sharp alternation between tropical noon and arctic midnight can be utilized. Any animal or vegetable tissue exposed to this daily contrast can be processed into nutritive products that keep for decades, and the process can be achieved either at the household or the state level.

Chu�o is the name popularly used for processed tubers, but a rich vocabulary for tubers exists in the Quechuan (Andean) languages: there is a separate term for each plant and for each mode of preparation. Chu�o cannot be made where a diurnal temperature extreme is absent; thus, north of modern Cajamarca in northern Peru no chu�o is prepared, since nocturnal frosts are rare or absent. Animal tissues also can be handled in this manner. After 1532 European meats were added to those of local birds, fish, and camelids. The name for these preserved meats is charqui, or jerky (ch�arki in Quechua), the one Andean word that has made its way into common English usage.

Such food reserves allowed both the peasants and the state to compensate for natural and man-made calamities. They filled thousands of warehouses�many of which are still extant�that were built in ways and places so as to use the tiny differences of exposure to the sun, winds, and humidity. Those built by the state or by the ethnic lords along the more than 15,500 miles of roads provided food for both human and camelid porters, for the armies, and for priests traveling to the many shrines.

The presence of such large stores made possible the incredible forays of Spaniards like Diego de Almagro, who reached Chile from Cuzco across thousands of miles of deserts and snow-covered mountains. As late as 1547, 15 years after the Spanish invasion, one Spaniard, Polo de Ondegardo, reported that he had fed 2,000 soldiers for seven weeks with the food still stored above Xauxa, which had been the first European capital. A detailed archaeological study of an Inca storage system was made by the American anthropologist Craig Morris, who found almost 500 warehouses at Hu�nuco Pampa. There were some 1,000 warehouses at Xauxa and many more near Cuzco, the Inca capital. The highlands and the low countries

The cultivators of high-altitude tubers and lowland crops�the plants of which seem botanically far apart at first glance�were actually in continuous contact. This point was stressed by the pioneer Peruvian archaeologist Julio C. Tello and was later verified by foreign scholars. The inhabitants all along the Andean highlands were aware of the diverse populations and climates of the Pacific coastal deserts to the west and of the Amazon lowlands to the east. The Chilean researcher Lautaro N��ez has traced the several societies who inhabited a single valley: products and settlement patterns changed through the centuries, but at all times each successive ethnic group accumulated resources from diverse ecological niches into a single system.

By adding written Spanish sources to the information provided by archaeologists, it is possible to explain further the density of the Andean population and its great productivity. Throughout the Andes, south of Cajamarca, political units large and small were characterized by a dispersed settlement pattern. The preferred location of the seat of power frequently was at very high altitudes, almost at the upper limit of cultivation, and kinsmen of these highlanders were settled permanently at 3, 5, or even 10 days� walk from the political centres. The German anthropologist J�rgen Golte has stressed that the agricultural calendar permitted such absences, since crops matured at different dates according to altitude; but many outliers were too far away from the political and demographic nucleus to permit seasonal migrations. The outlier communities could be large or small and could be established on the dry Pacific shore or in wet Amazonic enclaves. The Lupaca (Lupaqa), an Aymara-speaking polity whose political centre was located on the puna on the shores of Lake Titicaca, controlled outliers on both slopes.

Other ethnic groups reached in only one direction. For example, the two lords of the Karanga (Caranga), on what today is the highest part of the Bolivian High Plateau, do not seem to have controlled any outliers of their own on the Amazonic slope. Their main puna farms and most of their subjects lived above 12,000 feet, and their camelid herds were pastured even higher. The Karanqa also controlled corn (maize) fields at less lofty altitudes in what today is Chilean territory, several days� walk away. Farther west and closer to the coast were their fruit and coca-leaf gardens. Finally, even farther north, across the Atacama Desert near the modern city of Arica, the Karanqa had their �own� fishers.

One unexpected feature of such outliers is that they were usually multiethnic: several political centres shared settlements of salt miners, fishers and seaweed gatherers, cultivators of hot peppers and coca leaves, and timber cutters and honey gatherers. The political mechanisms by which conflicting groups could reach truces, even if temporary, or the means by which caravans moved with safety when connecting the central settlements with their multiple outliers are still not known.

This diverse pattern of settlement and political control and of pooling dispersed resources and populations has been named �Andean ecological complementarity� or the �vertical archipelago.� Such complementarity went beyond the efficient control of the nocturnal cold and of the high altitude. Even if many details of how it worked still escape understanding, it is obvious that each ethnic group was able to diversify the risks that would have existed if each had been concentrated in any of the separate Andean ecological tiers. Beyond defensive strategies, in ecological complementarity it is possible to detect new opportunities that would permit massive storage of a wide range of foods going beyond those grown locally. Eventually there emerged dense populations and large polities like the Inca. It is notable that the foci of Andean civilizations across the centuries�Chav�n, Huari (Wari), Tiwanaku (Tiahuanaco), Cuzco�were all located on the high puna. The pre-Inca periods

The names the several prehistoric populations called themselves are not known, and archaeologists have come to distinguish the various peoples and civilizations by descriptive terms�the Late Preceramic, the Initial (or Lower Formative) Period, the Early Horizon, the Early Intermediate Period, the Middle Horizon, the Late Intermediate Period, and the Late Horizon (also called the Upper Formative, or Inca, Period). Each of the periods lasted for centuries, some for millennia. These designations stress the differences between the peoples who inhabited the coast and those who lived in the highlands, although contacts between the two areas were frequent at all times in prehistory. What have been termed �horizons� in Andean studies were much shorter periods of time when wide areas of the central Andes were united culturally and politically with one another and with sections of the Pacific coast. The Late Preceramic

There is ample evidence of human occupation by 3500 bc, at which time there was already considerable diversity along the Pacific. In the central and northern coastal areas lived people who cultivated beans, squash, cotton, and chili peppers and who exploited the sea, catching fish with cotton nets and shell or composite hooks, collecting shellfish, and hunting sea mammals. One group at Chilca, south of modern Lima, built conical huts of cane thatched with sedge. The dead were buried wrapped in twined-sedge mats and the skins of the guanaco, a wild camelid. Some people camped in winter on the lomas, patches of vegetation outside the valleys that were watered at that season by fogs. In summer, when the lomas dried up, they built camps along the shore. The lomas provided wild seeds, tubers, and large snails; deer, camelids (probably guanaco), owls, and foxes were hunted. The lomas had long been shrinking, and the winter camps were abandoned (c. 2500 bc) in favour of permanent fishing villages. Nowhere are the deposits thick enough to show stratification, but they have been arranged in chronological order by comparing the implement types and noting their distribution within the shrinking patches of vegetation. Some small patches still survive.

In the far south, the lomas were and still are more extensive than in the centre, and projectile points are abundant in them and in caves in the valleys. Deer can still be seen on the lomas, and it appears that hunting of them and of guanaco was the main activity in Late Preceramic times.

In the far north, in the Talara region and extending north into Ecuador, are stone tools and mangrove-dwelling mollusks, left by people who enjoyed a wetter climate than that now prevailing, and one inland site at El Estero, provisionally dated somewhat earlier (c. 5000 bc), has well-made polished stone axes and mortars that indicate the exploitation of forests and grasslands yielding seeds.

Much longer periods of occupation have been postulated for the highlands: the American scholar Richard S. MacNeish has suggested a human presence as early as 15,000 bc in the Ayacucho Basin, which would correspond to the traditional �first wave� of immigrants into the New World. Since there has been much less research in the highlands than on the coast, little is known of the highland Late Preceramic. The caves at Lauricocha at about 13,000 feet in the central Andes, which had been occupied by deer and camelid hunters since nearly 8000 bc, were still used, at least as summer camps, by hunters who employed small leaf-shaped points. Gourds, squash, cotton, and lucuma, with seed plants such as quinoa and amaranth, were cultivated in the Ayacucho Basin before 3000 bc; corn and beans came within the next millennium. There were also ground stone implements for milling seeds. It has been claimed that llamas and guinea pigs long had been domesticated.

After about 2500 bc came a great increase in the speed of development, which is best known on the coast. Population increased, and stable settlements were established in many places. By 2000 bc there were perhaps 100 villages on the coast with populations of 50 to 500 people, with a few of up to 1,000, indicating a total population of about 50,000. This was a far cry from the thinly scattered bands and occasional villages of about 1,000 years before. Considerable variation has been observed from place to place, but most sites have shown a predominance of seafood, including fish, shellfish, sea lions, and sea birds.

On the north central coast, the stretch between the Casma and Huarmey rivers was heavily populated. One site, at Culebras, was a large village on a terraced hillside, with semi-subterranean houses whose underground parts were lined with basalt blocks and whose upper parts were built of lighter materials such as adobe blocks. They originally had hard clay floors, and some had guinea-pig hutches consisting of stone-lined tunnels connecting two rooms at floor level. The guinea pig, normally vegetarian, appears to have been taught to feed on small fish. A site at Huarmey has provided the earliest known instance of corn on the coast, and it also occurred in the top Preceramic levels at Culebras.

Burials at Culebras were tightly flexed, wrapped in twined mats and cotton cloth, and accompanied by gourd vessels and beads and pendants of stone, shell, or bone. The skulls of these people were deformed by having been bound to cradleboards in infancy. There was a cemetery, but many burials were under house floors. No ceremonial buildings are known in this area.

Farther north, at the mouth of the Chicama River, is Huaca Prieta, which was the first Preceramic site to be excavated. A thick midden, it contains some subterranean houses lined with cobblestones and roofed with earth supported by whalebones and wooden beams. The twined textiles found there were the vehicle for a peculiar art style, showing highly stylized crabs, double-headed snakes, birds, and human beings, expressed by warp manipulation designed to bring groups of warps of one colour to one face. The dyes have faded, and the only way to recover the designs is by examination under a microscope. Such textiles were not confined to this area, but they have been more fully studied there. Woven textiles were rare, and weaving was combined with twining in a way that shows that a loom was not used.

Unlike the area farther north, sites along the central coast had ceremonial buildings, of which the most remarkable is El Para�so in the Chill�n Valley. This is an imposing stone-built structure on an artificial mound, with a central stairway leading up to a group of rectangular rooms. The central block, which occupied a commanding position in a side valley, has been partly reconstructed, but there were extensive wings that may have been residential, though they now appear as little more than piles of stones. Floodwater farming may have been practiced there, but definite signs of it have been obliterated by modern cultivation. At R�o Seco, a few miles to the north, are two pyramids, constructed by filling a group of preexisting rooms with boulders, building adobe-walled rooms on top of them, and finally filling these up also.

Apart from one site, Kotosh, near modern Hu�nuco in the central Andes, little is known of the highland final Preceramic. A Japanese research team has found structures of undressed stone chosen to present flat wall surfaces, set in mud, covering an area of at least 200 by 100 yards (180 by 90 metres), in some parts of which was a succession of buildings piled up to a considerable height. Among these were two superimposed temples, the lower being a rectangular structure on a stepped platform about 26 feet high. The floor was surrounded by a broad, low bench, and each outside wall had two or three rectangular niches. The walls and floor were covered with two coats of mud plaster, and beneath the central niche at one end was a pair of crossed forearms modeled in the same material. This temple was later buried in boulders surrounded by a retaining wall and covered by a new floor on which a second temple was built, of which little remains. The burial of the first temple to act as a raised foundation for the second recalls the construction at R�o Seco. The Initial Period

The next epoch, called the Initial Period by the American scholar John H. Rowe, and the Lower Formative by the Peruvian archaeologist Luis G. Lumbreras, began with the introduction of pottery. The earliest ceramics have yielded radiocarbon dates of about 1800 bc, although Rowe has suggested that even a date of 2100 bc is plausible. Ceramics from this period have been found on the central coast between Las Haldas, in the Casma-Huarmey region, and Lima. These are considerably later than the earliest pottery finds at Puerto Hormiga on the northern coast of Colombia near Panama (before 3000 bc) and Valdivia in Ecuador (c. 2700 bc). The period ends with the spread of the Chav�n cult (also called the Early Horizon; see below).

Lumbreras has stressed agriculture as a more telling indicator: while no single starting date has been cited for this achievement, beans may have been cultivated for centuries if not millennia before the date of the earliest pottery. Bottle gourds and squashes were other cultivated species. Potatoes and other tubers, so important in later times, did not keep well in highland circumstances; but some researchers believe that Andean peoples were reliant on wild tubers and rhizomes 10,000 years ago, although these groups had not yet domesticated them. It has been demonstrated that on the coast virtually all the crops that were important in 1532 (with the notable exception of corn) were already known and in daily use during the Initial Period.

The introduction of pottery at first made little difference to the general pattern of life; cooking continued to be done by roasting on hot stones. On the coast, there was a gradual increase in the consumption of cultivated plants, grown mainly in the lower reaches of the valleys; but the basic reliance on seafood continued. An important innovation was the development, or possibly the introduction, of the heddle loom, but, if it was introduced, its origin is not known. At first it seems only to have been used for making plain-weave cotton cloth. Village life and temple buildings spread over the country, except to the far south, where conditions favoured the continuance of hunting and gathering. Corn spread from the centre over most of the coast, and cassava, or manioc (an edible root), and peanuts (groundnuts) appeared there for the first time, their ultimate source being the Amazonian lowlands.

New ceremonial centres showed considerable diversity. Examples include La Florida, a huge pyramid in Lima that formed the nucleus of a yet-unmapped building complex. The Tank site at Anc�n consists of a series of stone-faced platforms on a hill. Las Haldas has a platform and three plazas; two smaller similar sites are also known. The old centres at El Para�so and R�o Seco had been abandoned, but, in the highlands, Kotosh continued to be occupied. Any constructions at Yarinacocha in a wet, stoneless area would have been of wood or other perishable materials.

The variety of the pottery suggests that it was derived from several different sources. In the Lima area, the earliest examples are neckless jars and incurved bowls with thickened rims and rounded bottoms, very uneven in shape. Some later types are pebble polished and the jars thinner. Other later types include bottles with straight spouts, which may have simple incised or applied decoration, and open bowls. Finally, as the period drew to a close, tan-coloured decorated wares, with punctate or red-painted areas outlined by incised lines, as well as orange ware with black stripes, were produced. A type found on the south coast is a small, double-spouted bottle with simple negative-painted decoration, the first appearance of a form long-lived in that area and of a decorative technique that later spread widely over the country.

In the highlands, the earliest pottery at Kotosh consists predominantly of simple bowls with somewhat constricted mouths, and bowls with gently rounded bases meeting the vertical to outsloping concave walls at a sharp angle. There are rare double-spout-and-bridge bottles, closed vessels with two tubular spouts connected by a solid bridge. The ware is mainly dark gray, black, or dark brown to sombre red, and it may have a red slip. The decoration�which was either applied to a broad zone covering most of the walls or, on the neckless jars, formed a ring around the mouth�consists of linear incision, hatching, stamped circles, punctation, or excision. Postfired painting in red, yellow, and white frequently covers excised, hatched, and stamped areas. Despite the fact that Kotosh was on the eastern side of the Andean watershed, its pottery had little in common with that of Yarinacocha, save some similar decorations and the double-spout-and-bridge bottle.

The first known pottery of Yarinacocha is far from primitive. It consists mainly of bowls, mostly with complex outlines. Large open bowls with a broad labial flange, concave sides, and in some cases a second flange where side meets base, could have been cooking pots. Small bowls with inward-sloping sides meeting the rounded base at a sharp angle could have served for drinking; and a shallow bowl, with rounded base meeting the low, slightly outsloping concave sides at a lesser angle, may have been a plate for solid food. There are shards from large urns that may have served for brewing cassava beer. Decoration of finely hatched or cross-hatched geometrical areas, outlined by broad incised lines, occurs on most vessels, and one has a similarly executed feline face. In spite of severe weathering, postfired red paint, later so characteristic of the south coast, is found on some vessels. The Early Horizon

The Early Horizon emerged after the appearance and rapid spread of the Chav�n art style, ending the regional isolation of the Initial Period. The Chav�n art style derives its name from the ruined temple complex of Chav�n de Hu�ntar in the Andean highlands of central Peru. The dates suggested for the emergence of the style beyond the environs of the temple, however, vary among scholars. Rowe dated it from 1400 bc, while Lumbreras suggested 850 bc; and the very designation of Chav�n as a horizon has been challenged. But even those who have most favoured dropping the concept of horizon for this period have noted that in about 1000 bc there was an invasion of highlanders into the coastal Casma Valley who brought with them radically different architectural styles, ceramics, and food plants and animals that supplanted those in the valley; such a penetration was clearly a unification of the coast and the highlands into a single polity.

Chav�n came to cover most of the north and centre of Peru, and its influence affected a good part of the south coast, excluding only the southern highlands. The art style, which is regarded as the expression of a cult, is expressed in painted textiles (of which few have survived), in pottery, and chiefly in stone carvings. Archaeologists at one time generally agreed that the chief object of worship was a cat, probably the jaguar, but this has been questioned, although many natural bird, animal, and human forms had feline mouths and other attributes. Feline representations were widespread, whereas some unquestioned deities were confined to the immediate neighbourhood of Chav�n. Chav�n monuments and temples

Most Chav�n temples seem to have been ceremonial centres without people living around them, although the complex at Chav�n itself seems to have been accompanied by a considerable town. The remainder appear to have been focuses for scattered settlements. The most elaborate temple known is that at Chav�n, which lies at an elevation of 10,530 feet on a tributary of the Mara��n River, east of the Callej�n de Huaylas district of the Santa River. The temple consists of a group of stone platforms formed of rubble faced by walls of coursed masonry in which two thin courses alternate with one thick one. They are honeycombed with galleries running parallel to the walls at different levels and ventilated by shafts. The oldest part of the temple is a U-shaped structure, with the open top of the U facing east; the rectangular central arm contains a cruciform gallery, at the crossing of which stands a remarkable prismatic shaft of white granite, some 15 feet high, carved in low relief to represent a standing human figure with snakes typifying the hair and a pair of great fangs in the upper jaw.

This figure, which has variously been called El Lanz�n, the Great Image, and the Smiling God, is thought to have been the chief object of worship in the original temple. The southern arm of the temple was subsequently twice widened by rectangular additions, into which some of the original galleries were prolonged. After the second addition, the two were joined by a freestanding facade having a central portal with a lintel supported on two cylindrical columns. The lintel bears 14 eagles in low relief, supplied with feline jaws with prominent fangs behind the beak, and each column is entirely covered by a mythical bird bristling with feline fangs and faces. These have been interpreted as attendants of the god worshiped in that part of the temple, who had perhaps superseded the Smiling God and could have been the god shown on the Raimondi Stone, now in Lima. The stone shows the Staff God, a standing semihuman figure having claws, a feline face with crossed fangs, and a staff in each hand. Above his head, occupying two-thirds of the stone, is a towering, pillarlike structure fringed with snakes and emerging from a double-fanged face, which Rowe interpreted as a symbolic treatment of his hair as a tongue coming out of a mouth. Unlike the Smiling God, this figure has been found in areas as far from Chav�n as the northern and southern coasts of Peru. Except for the columns, which are of black slate, the stones of the facade are light in colour on the south side and dark on the north. East of the facade is a small sunken court of the same period, which contained a number of slabs with carvings in low relief, and to the east of this is a much larger court surrounded by platforms. Within this court is a square, slightly sunken area, in which was found the Tello obelisk, a rectangular pillar carved in low relief to represent a caiman and covered with Chav�n symbolic carvings, such as bands of teeth and animal heads. This is considered to be an object of worship like the Smiling God and Staff God. Carvings found on and around the temple include a cornice of projecting slabs, on the underside of which are carved jaguars, eagles, and snakes, and a number of tenoned heads of men and the Smiling God; they are thought to be decorations or the attendants of gods rather than objects of worship.

On the coast, the temples were built mostly of adobe. In the Nepe�a Valley, two temples�Cerro Blanco and Punkur�differ so much that they must also differ in age, but it is not known which is the earlier. Cerro Blanco is a massive platform of conical adobes and stones, supporting rooms with walls bearing Chav�n decoration, including eyes and feline fangs, modeled in mud plaster in low relief and painted red and greenish yellow. Punkur� has a low, terraced platform with a wide stairway on which stands a feline head and paws, modeled from stone and mud, and painted. By the paws was buried a woman, believed to have been sacrificed. At Moxeke and Pallca in the Casma Valley to the south, there are terraced, stone-faced pyramids with stone stairways. The first has niches containing clay-plastered reliefs of mud, stone, and conical adobes showing felines, snakes, and human beings of Chavinoid character painted in polychrome. Also in Casma is a temple at Cerro Sech�n, consisting of a series of superimposed platforms with a central stair, on either side of which, at the bottom level, stands a row of irregularly shaped flat stones with incised designs showing standing men carrying clubs, severed heads, and other designs. Lacking Chav�n characteristics, these have been interpreted variously as ancestral Chav�n or derived from it, the latter being the more plausible. There is a Chav�n ceremonial centre at Garagay in the Chill�n Valley but none to the south. The pottery of Chav�n and Paracas

Chav�n pottery is best known from the decorated types found in the galleries in the temple at Chav�n and in graves on the northern coast, where it is called Cupisnique. Until the end of the period, the ware was monochrome�dull red, brown, or gray�and hard and stonelike. Vessels were massive and heavy, especially in the early part of the period. The main forms are open bowls with vertical or slightly expanding sides and flat or gently rounded bases, flasks, and stirrup-spouted bottles. The surface may be modeled in relief or decorated by incision, stamping, brushing, rouletting, or dentate rocker-stamping, all of which may be applied to particular zones in contrast with other smooth ones. Some bowls have deeply incised designs on both the inside and outside faces. Many of the forms and decorative features, apart from specifically Chavinoid designs (particularly feline fangs), were already present at Kotosh in the previous phase.

Considerable time changes are represented in Chav�n pottery; for example, the earliest stirrup spouts were relatively small and very thick and heavy, and the spout had a thick flange. As time went on, the stirrups became lighter and the spouts longer; the flange was reduced and finally disappeared. The necks of the flasks underwent similar changes. The decoration on some of these is extremely striking; one has incised flower designs, and another has a roughened surface in which there are a number of concave circular depressions with a notably high polish. The Cupisnique stirrup-spouted vessels, some of which were modeled in the form of human beings, animals, or fruits, were the beginning of a north-coast tradition of naturalistic modeling, which persisted throughout its history. Toward the end of the period, a bichrome (dark red on cream) pottery came into use.

There is a considerable area on the south Peruvian coast with its focus in the Ica Valley, where strong influences from Chav�n have been found in the Paracas pottery style, and two painted textiles in pure Chav�n style have survived from the same valley. Paracas pottery was very different from that of Chav�n, but various motifs have enabled the two to be correlated closely. Paracas began at practically the same time as Chav�n, about 1000 bc, and lasted throughout its span and beyond it, perhaps to about 200 bc. The most characteristic form of Paracas pottery was a closed globular vessel with a somewhat flattened base, which had two narrow spouts connected by a flat bridge, or more frequently, with one spout replaced by a human or bird head. Simple round-based bowls were very common. The ware was most commonly black or very dark brownish, and much of the surface was covered with decoration outlined by incision and painted in polychrome with hard, shiny, resinous colours after firing. A panel bearing a feline face on one end of a spout-and-bridge vessel was one of the most frequent forms of decoration. Paracas is also distinguished for its gorgeous embroidered textiles, generally found in the mummy bundles of the important dead. Embroidery had a popularity at this time that it afterward lost, but a surprisingly wide range of weaving techniques were also used in various parts of the coast. The Early Intermediate period

The Early Horizon was succeeded by what has been termed the Early Intermediate Period. The onset of the Early Intermediate marked the decline of Chav�n�s cultural influence and the attainment of artistic and technological peaks in a number of centres, both on the coast and in the highlands. The southern coast

The beginning of the period is best determined by the evolution of the Paracas pottery style into that of the Nazca (Nasca) area on the southern coast; this is traditionally estimated to have occurred about 200 bc, but Rowe�s date of 400 bc is probably more reliable, since this is the area where his detailed succession was worked out. Nazca ware is marked by the introduction of slip painting applied before firing, which took the place of the resin painting applied afterward; but the style evolved continuously, and the polychrome tradition continued. The most common forms were bowls and beakers, all with rounded bases, but double-spout or head-and-spout jars were also characteristic. In contrast to the Moche area on the northern coast, figure modeling played a very minor role. Designs were painted in up to eight colours and fell into two main groups: one characterized by stylized but recognizable life forms, such as birds, fish, or fruits, with some humans; the other depicting mythical subjects such as complex demons. Between approximately middle and late Nazca, mythical figures became increasingly angular and elongated and developed a tangled mass of appendages. Trophy-head representations, which were modeled as complete vessels as well as painted in profile on simple vessels, increased greatly at the same time. Because Nazca art was less realistic than that of Moche, little can be learned of the appearance and life of the people.

In the time of the Nazca style what has been described as a small city was located in each of the south-coast valleys of Pisco, Ica, Nazca, and Acar�. At Cahuachi, in Nazca, this included a ceremonial centre consisting of six pyramids, which were terraced and adobe-faced natural hills associated with courts. Tambo Viejo in Acar� was fortified, which supports inferences drawn with some difficulty from late Nazca art that a concern with warfare developed at that time. The northern coast

A cultural peak was reached in the valleys of Pacasmayo, Chicama, and Moche on the northern Peruvian coast. A large proportion of this area has been grouped by archaeologists into a Moche culture, although some of the territory encompassed by these valleys was not part of the polity called Moche. The Japanese archaeologist Izumi Shimada has referred to this kind of control as �horizontally discontinuous territoriality.� The coast�highland �vertical� type of polity described above appears to have emerged later in coastal history. Thus, this �horizontal discontinuity� may have been related to coastal trade, as products were sought north of the desert coast, while at a later time it may have coexisted with �verticality.�

The Moche culture is distinguished by a ceremonial pottery style, commonly covered with a white or red-and-white slip, which may have had decoration painted on it, chiefly in red on the white parts. Some pots are molded in forms that include figures, animals, plants, and weapons; and some have molded designs in low relief. Molding and painting both convey highly realistic impressions of the people, things, and scenes they represent and are a vivid source of information about the life and activities of the people, though some important aspects, such as agricultural processes, are not represented. Moche pottery has been divided into five phases that were originally defined mainly by differences in the stirrup-spouted jars, but this has been extended to other forms�for example, bell-shaped bowls, double vessels, and jars with collars. The prevalence of stirrup spouts and the quality of the modeling connect Moche much more closely with Chav�n�Cupisnique than with the intermediate styles, in which features such as the spout-and-bridge vessels suggest intrusive influences from the south. Among Moche buildings are adobe pyramids, like the enormous Huaca del Sol in the Moche Valley, palaces with large rooms (on terraces in the case of the Huaca de la Luna near the Sol), and fortified structures perched on the sides of valleys. These structures reinforce the evidence, provided by warriors and enthroned dignitaries depicted on pots, for the existence of an aggressive hierarchical state, and it may be inferred that this grew up as the result of dependence on highly developed irrigation systems in the restricted areas available in the valleys.

Mask of copper and gold alloy with eyes of shell, found in the Huaca de la Luna, Moche River valley, c. 400 bc�ad 600; in the Linden-Museum, Stuttgart, Germany.Ferdinand Anton

There were no towns in the northern valleys. Dispersed communities, built in places where they would not use the valuable irrigated agricultural lands, seem to have been situated in ways suggesting dependence on one of the ceremonial centres. The north highlands

In the north highlands, the remarkable pottery style of Recuay has been found in the Callej�n de Huaylas region. This pottery is related to the negative-painted representative of Gallinazo in the Santa Valley and is painted with black negative designs over white and red, one of the most characteristic being a feline in profile with a comb on the head. There is a good deal of lively modeling, but it is much less naturalistic than that of Moche. A typical feature is a broad, nearly horizontal flange surrounding the mouth of a jar, and many jars also have a horizontal spout below the flange. Most of this pottery has come from stone-lined graves, and some stone buildings of two or three stories may have belonged to the people who made it.

The Cajamarca Basin is the site of a pottery style (called cursive) that was entirely independent of known outside influences and that spanned at least the Early Intermediate Period and the Middle Horizon. It has lightly painted running-scroll designs, which vaguely recall writing (whence the name cursive), as well as small animals and faces, in brownish black or red on a cream background, mostly on open bowls with ring bases. It was traded widely in the north, and south as far as Huari, during the Middle Horizon. The south highlands

Large urban and ceremonial centres emerged at this time near the shores of Lake Titicaca. One site, Pucar�, includes a well-built, horseshoe-shaped sanctuary of concentric walls of red sandstone enclosing a slightly sunken terrace lined with white-sandstone slabs. Within the terrace is a sunken court some 50 feet square and seven feet below the surface, also lined with white sandstone and reached by a stairway. This court contains two stone-lined grave chambers, and the outer horseshoe wall has small chambers, each containing one or two altarlike slabs in its thickness. There are also squat stone statues of men carrying trophy heads and stelae (upright sculptured slabs of stone) bearing recessed geometrical carvings and snakes. The pottery includes a reddish-buff micaceous ware painted in red, black, and yellow; cats, human or bird heads, and geometrical figures are all outlined by incision. The faces have the eyes divided vertically, one half of each eye black, the other half the natural colour of the ware. Pucar� occurred early in the period, before the main development of Tiwanaku, and it may have taken shape about 400 bc. It appears to have controlled an area between the site and Lake Titicaca or farther.

Tiwanaku is a well-known ceremonial centre whose stone remains are now a tourist attraction in the Andes second in popularity only to the ruins of Machu Picchu. The occupation of the ceremonial centre is believed to have begun very early in the period, since some of the earliest pottery shows similarity to that found at Pucar�.

The ceremonial buildings�whose exact age is uncertain�include a large stepped pyramid or platform called Acapana (Akapana), with foundations of buildings on the top; a semi-subterranean temple with stone heads tenoned into the walls; and a low rectangular platform called Calasasaya (Kalasasaya), enclosed by a retaining wall of upright stones alternating with smaller rectangular blocks. In one corner of the platform stands a great monolithic doorway, not in its original position, cut from a large block of lava. At the top of the doorway is carved a central low-relief figure attended by three rows of smaller winged figures that appear to run inward toward him (see photograph). The central figure, carrying staves that may represent a spear thrower and darts, has been likened to the Chav�n Staff God and for convenience may be called the Doorway, or Gateway, God. Versions of the Doorway God and his attendants are found almost everywhere within the range of Tiwanaku influence in the subsequent Middle Horizon. Another feature of the site is a number of large and finely finished stone blocks with niches, doorways, and recessed geometric decorations. Tiwanaku masonry is sometimes held together by accurately cut notches, sometimes by copper clamps set in either straight or T-shaped grooves. Several massive monolithic statues have been found in and around Tiwanaku, the largest being 24 feet high. They resemble pillars bearing relief designs, and some carry beakers.

Doorway god and accompanying �angels� on the Gateway of the Sun at Tiwanaku. The main figure has been variously described as a sun god, a thunder god, or Viracocha.Georg Gerster�Rapho/Photo Researchers

Decorated Tiwanaku pottery is a finely polished polychrome, which commonly has a red slip with designs painted in various colours. Felines and hawks in profile, with eyes divided vertically into black and white halves, are common designs, as are geometric figures such as triangles and steps. Like all Tiwanaku art, the designs are stiff and formal. The shapes include a tall, graceful, hollow-sided beaker and various types of bottles and hollow-sided bowls with flat bases, including a form bearing a jaguar head and tail on the rim. The Middle Horizon

Both Pucar� and Tiwanaku were early forms of what became known as the Middle Horizon, an expansion of multiple-valley political rule that had two centres: one in the southern Altiplano, the other centred on Huari (Wari), near the modern Peruvian city of Ayacucho. This development is usually dated about ad 600. Some Tiwanaku effigy vessels have been discovered at Huari, but otherwise they seem to have been independent entities. Subsequent research has located parallel occupations near each other in the vicinity of the modern city of Moquegua.

The American archaeologist William H. Isbell has argued that Huari was a true state which displayed archaeological manifestations of administrative recording, had storage facilities on a scale suggesting major revenues, contained status tombs and palaces, and had other symbols and ornaments of a ruling class. Huari colonies and control also have been detected in the evidence. Attempts to explain what Huari and Tiwanaku were doing outside the areas of their immediate control have pointed toward religious proselytism, as well as to trade. It has also been suggested that, although these polities employed an extensive form of control, they did not attempt to rule all of the intervening territories.

After a period of consolidation, the expansion was intensified, eventually reaching Cajamarca and the Chicama Valley in the north and the Oco�a Valley on the far southern coast, by about 800. The growth of the empire and its nature is shown by a number of features. One was the spread of Huari pottery styles and local copies of them, some bearing the Doorway God and other religious figures but many with neutral or secular motifs such as bands of chevrons. These generally were polychrome wares, and figures appearing on them�mythological, human, or animal�may have the eyes divided vertically into black and white halves, as at Tiwanaku. A result of the increasing dominance of Huari styles was the obliteration of the old pottery styles over the whole coast from Nazca to Moche. The southern burial custom of huddled, cloth-wrapped mummies spread northward along the coast, displacing the older fashion of extended burial. The presence of large groups of storage buildings at Piquillacta in the Cuzco Valley and at Viracochapampa, near Huamachuco far to the north, suggests military activity like that of the later Incas. On the coast, some great cities in the north�of which Chan Chan, near modern Trujillo, is the best-known�originated at this time, apparently under southern influence, and the rectangular Great Enclosure Compounds in the Vir� Valley may be an expression of the same phenomenon. All these changes, taken together, point strongly to military conquest.

Tiwanaku designs, derived through Huari, are seen on coastal textiles as well as on pottery, and they are found particularly on tapestry. Besides recognizable figures like the Doorway God and his attendants, there are many examples, perhaps somewhat later in date, on which only the divided eyes�in black and white or other combinations of colours�can be inferred to belong to human or animal figures.

Pachacamac, on the central coast, which survived until Inca times as a great temple and oracle, was established as a ceremonial centre by the beginning of the Middle Horizon. At that time it also became a considerable town, with a degree of independence in the Huari empire, as is demonstrated by the presence of its own local variety of coastal Huari pottery�distinguished by the frequent depiction of a creature, sometimes called a griffin, with a winged feline body, human hands, and an eagle head, or sometimes the head alone�from Pachacamac north to Chicama, south to Nazca, and inland to Huancayo. Its influence may have been more religious than political, as in Inca times.

The Moche pottery style disappeared from the Chicama and neighbouring valleys under Huari pressure, but it is unlikely to have become entirely extinct because many features of it reappeared later on Chim� pottery. It probably survived, along with a remnant of the Moche state, in some valleys farther north (including perhaps Lambayeque), but the succession there has not been sufficiently worked out to demonstrate this.

When the Huari empire reached its maximum extent, about 800, it collapsed at the centre. Huari was abandoned, as it appears was Cajamarquilla, a large urban centre near Lima. Also at this time, it appears that construction peaked at Tiwanaku�which is estimated to have had 5,000 to 10,000 inhabitants�although the city�s influence on the region continued. Thereafter, few signs of urban life occur in the south, except at Pachacamac, until Inca times. Curiously, the decline of the cities in the south appears to have coincided with the beginnings of urban settlement on the northern coast at Chan Chan, Pacatnam�, and other places.

After Huari fell, signs of new influences from there disappeared in the provinces, but various changes evolved in local pottery styles. Among these was the development of a new style on the north-central coast. One of the most distinctive products of this style was a face-collar jar, in many cases oval, decorated in pressed relief with cats and other Huari-derived designs and painted in washy black, white, and orange on a buff ground (Huari Norte�o B). Other examples are the Epigonal styles of Nazca and Ica, characterized by bowls and flasks with occasional Huari motifs, such as animal heads, carried out in what has been described as �a slovenly, rounded and hasty� manner. The Late Intermediate PeriodThe Chim� state

The Late Intermediate Period began about 1000 (Rowe has said 900) with the dying out of the signs of unity imposed by Huari. The seeds of the Chim� state were probably sown at the same time, but they are not recognizable until considerably later. Elsewhere there were small independent states, which on the central and southern coasts were in most cases no bigger than a single valley, to judge from the distribution of the distinct pottery styles.

There were few new advances in techniques, and perhaps the most notable was the spread of bronze to the Peruvian coast from northwest Argentina and Bolivia, where tin ore was found and where the manufacture of bronze appears to have originated during the Middle Horizon. A hard alloy of copper and arsenic had been used previously in the centre and north. Pottery improved in quality in most areas, though its artistic character was not equal, for instance, to the earlier products of Moche and Nazca. There was a tendency toward standardization and toward reduction in the number of colours, which went with a degree of mass production. The modeling tradition of the north coast revived, but it was dull and lifeless by comparison with that of Moche times and was generally executed in black ware. In other parts, entirely new styles evolved. That of Chancay, on the central coast, was thin, dull red or cream in colour, with rather a dusty-looking cream slip and painted decoration in black. A common shape was an egg-shaped jar with a flaring collar and a pair of small loop handles, which were sometimes turned into a figure by modeling a face on the collar and adding ill-shaped limbs. Bowls and beakers with slightly bowed, almost vertical sides, were other common shapes. The porosity of the ware and the flaky nature of the slip made this pottery inferior in quality to that of other coastal areas. In the south, pottery of an attractive style was made in the Ica Valley. It was hard, well-burnished buff or red ware, covered with painted, textile-derived patterns in black, white, and red, although some vessels also depicted small birds and fish. Highly characteristic are bowls with a rounded base meeting the inward-sloping sides at a sharp angle and a thickened rim of triangular section.

It is difficult to determine whether any new textile techniques were adopted, but it is unlikely since the extreme versatility of the Peruvian weavers appears already to have covered most of the imaginable varieties at one time or another. On the other hand, fashions varied, and a relevant instance is the use of tapestry. Tapestry was known in the Early Horizon, suffered something of an eclipse in the Early Intermediate Period, and grew greatly in popularity in the Middle Horizon, when notable examples were produced. During the Late Intermediate Period its popularity waned again, although it was used for the finest garments on into the Inca Period; but in Chim� textiles it was generally confined to borders and other small areas. Textiles were similar over the whole coast, and to distinguish between those of different areas is a task for specialists. Some of the most characteristic types were garments adorned with regular rows, horizontal or diagonal, of stylized birds or fish, executed in brocade or double cloth.

In most of the northern valleys irrigation systems reached their maximum extent; and the Vir� Valley�which has been the most thoroughly studied�is deceptive in this respect, because much of the land went out of cultivation, possibly owing to removal of part of the population to other valleys by the Chim� rulers. In some cases, the systems of more than one river were connected, and water was taken, for instance, from the Chicama Valley to that of Moche, where Chan Chan was situated.

The legendary Chim� ruler �an�en Pinco, who began to expand the state, is thought to have begun his reign about 1370, and the names of two predecessors are known; so it is a fair guess that the state was taking shape in the first half of the 14th century, when distinctively Chim� pottery forms appeared. Various rather exotic pottery styles dating before this time have been found in the northern area, but insufficient work has been done on their distribution in time and space. An early type consisted of bottles on a ring base with a loop handle and a narrow, tapering spout, decorated with geometric designs and cursive scrolls in black on a red-and-white ground. There were double whistling vessels, with modeled figures on one vessel connected to a tapering spout on the other by a flat, arched bridge; some early examples were of orange ware with a few dark-red stripes on the spout and bridge, but later ones were black. Carinated whistling vessels of black ware with hornlike projections above the ears on a ring base, with a tapering spout connected to a figure by a bridge, also have been found at an early stage. Similar vessels with two spouts connected by a bridge had a considerable range in time. Another form was a bottle, of black ware, with a tapering spout emerging from a modeled figure or head. These vessels had a strap handle and ring base of variable height. Many of the later blackware vessels had panels in pressed relief, a form of decoration that continued through Chim� times; these bore designs such as men holding staves, moons, or cats on a background of raised dots.

The overwhelming majority of Chim� vessels were of black ware. There was a revival of stirrup spouts, either on modeled vessels such as human figures or reed balsas, or on plain ones with or without pressed relief panels, and these normally had a monkey sitting on the stirrup at the base of the spout. Double vessels, often with a bird head to balance the spout and pressed relief panels on the bodies, continued. Many vessels were lentil-shaped. Jugs with strap handles and pressed relief panels sometimes took on a flattened section to become canteens. These are only a few of the forms that have been found, some resembling immediate predecessors, some new, and some, especially the stirrup spout, revivals of earlier types.

�an�en Pinco is believed to have conquered the coast from the Sa�a River, just south of Lambayeque, south to Santa. After him came six rulers before Minchan�aman, who conquered the remainder of the coast from at least as far north as Piura and possibly to Tumbes, south almost to Lima. His triumph was short-lived since he himself was conquered by the Inca in the early 1460s.