Pacajes

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Wiñaymarka Lake basin of Lake Titicaca with Taraco Peninsula in the center and south of subsequent Tiwanaku plane

The Pacajes culture was the predominant culture in the region on the southern edge of Lake Titicaca from 1100 to 1450 and replaced the previously dominant Tiwanaku culture.

On the basis of archaeological investigations, especially on the Taraco Peninsula in Lake Titicaca, three periods of the Pacajes culture can be distinguished from one another:

  • Early Pacajes Culture (1100-1450 AD)
  • Pacajes Inca culture (1450-1540 AD)
  • Late Pacajes Culture (1540-1600 AD)

Early Pacajes culture (1100–1450)

After the decline of the Tiwanaku culture, urban settlements and structures disappeared from the Titicaca Basin for nearly 400 years. Central organization, intensive agriculture, handicraft production, long-distance trade and other sources of wealth came to an abrupt end. Scientists such as Abbott (see sources) suspect that one of the reasons for this development was the drop in lake water levels by up to 12 m, as well as a significant decrease in rainfall during this period. Evidence for the region south of Lake Titicaca in the early Pacajes period was a dissolution of village communities and a change to scattered individual farms .

The reasons for this change are still under discussion among scientists. Some scholars, especially linguists (e.g. Bouysee-Cassagne ), see an immigration of pastoral cultures from the southern Altiplano , the so-called "Aymara invasion" , as the cause . Other scientists, especially archaeologists (such as Graffam ), see the intensification of agriculture as the cause of the break-up of the village communities in the early Pacajes culture and, as a result, the need to relocate the farms from the village to the field .

Pacajes Inca culture (1450-1540)

In the middle of the 15th century, the Inca invaded the Pacajes settlement area under the ruler Pachacuti . This was preceded by the subjugation of the Ayaviri region by Pachacuti in the northern Titicaca plain at the beginning of the 1440s.

The population in the Pacajes region increased again significantly during this period, new village settlements and regional hierarchical structures were formed, while on the other hand the existing scattered settlements largely remained. The increase in population went well beyond a natural population development, so that significant immigration can be assumed during this period; In addition, the focus of settlement on the southern edge of the Titicaca Basin shifted more and more towards the lake shore.

Archaeological finds on the Taraco Peninsula from this period show some similarities between the ceramic culture and ceramics of the Inca culture and influences from the Taraco region on the northwestern edge of Lake Titicaca.

Late Pacajes culture (1540-1600)

The Spanish invasion ended Inca rule in 1532, a first Spanish vanguard explored the Titicaca Basin in 1534, and in 1538 the Desaguadero region saw one last armed uprising against the Spanish by the Lupaca .

The settlement structures of the region continued from the previous Pacajes-Inca period, although some of the previous Inca villages were abandoned and new settlement centers were established. Above all, there seems to have been a redistribution of population from the Tiwanacu region to the Taraco peninsula in the late Pacajes period, possibly due to different administrative structures that favored the oppression of the indigenous population in the Tiwanacu region and thus forced their emigration. The rest of the Pacajes have merged into the Aymara .

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  • M. Abbott, M. Binford, M. Brenner, K. Kelts: A 3500 14C yr High-Resolution Record of Water-Level Changes in Lake Titicaca, Bolivia-Peru. In: Quaternary Research. Volume 47, 1997, pp. 169-180.
  • T. Bouysee-Cassagne: La Identidad Aymara: Aproximación Histórica (Siglo XV, Siglo XVI). Hezbol, La Paz 1987.
  • J. Janusek: State and Local Power in a Prehispanic Andean Polity: Changing Patterns of Urban Residence in Tiwanaku and Lukurmata. Unpublished ph.d. dissertation. Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, Chicago 1994.
  • A. Kolata: The Tiwanaku. Blackwell, Cambridge 1993.
  • Charles Standish: Ancient Titicaca. University of California Press, Berkeley / Los Angeles 2003.

Web links

Coordinates: 16 ° 32 ′ 0 ″  S , 68 ° 45 ′ 0 ″  W.