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IN T H E FIELD F EAT U R E

16 IN THE FIELD

An anthropological rarit y

Cerro Bal is a unique mesa formation in south-

ern Peru looming 600 meters above the valley

floor.Today it is an apu, or sacred place, that serves

as a pilgrims destination for making offerings

to th e m ountain spirit. In Wari times, a small city

rested on its sum mit w ith palace com plexes, temp les

and ritual feasting facilities for entertaining digni-

taries. D espite the fact that th e Wari and T iwanaku

apparently shared a 500-kilometer border between

Mo quegua and C uzco, C erro Bal is the only

place where evidence of direct interaction has

been discovered thus far. It is clearly a uniqu e

com bination of fortress, provincial capital, imper ial

emb assy and sacred city. Since the overlap betwee n

ancient states that never conquered one another is

rare, the M oqu egua frontier is a unique place for

studying the dynamics of imperial confrontation

and ethnic diversity.

Similar faiths, different societies

Although the Wari and Tiwanaku shared similar

iconography and religious practices, they were eco -

nom ically and politically quite distinct.T he

T iwanaku, virtuosos of stone m asonr y, built enor-

mous temple mounds and palaces.They transformed

the windswept altiplano, or high plain, into a network

of groundwater-fed canals and raised field systems

for altitude- tolerant crops such as potatoes, tubers and

quinoa. H erding such anim als as the native Andean

llama and alpaca provided both meat and wool.

H owever, in order to grow temperate crops, such

as corn and coca, two important staples to Tiwanaku

ritual life, they had to ex tend in to the lower valleys

toward th e Amazon or th e Pacific O cean.Th e Wari, on the other hand, centered their

empire along the spine of the Andes.They perfected

high-altitude irr igation ter racing to tu rn the steep

mountain slopes into productive farmland for corn,

peppers, coca and oth er crops.T heir capital was a

thriving city of several square kilometers and tens

of thousands of inhabitants.Throughout their realm,

they erected large, quadrangu lar complexes of tall,

straight-lined buildings that resembled barrack com-

plexes with restricted access. From afar, these did not

look like the temple pyramids of the T iwanaku, but

Clash of the Andean Titans:

Wari and Tiwanaku at Cerro Bal

Patrick R yan W illiams, A ssistant C urator, A rchaeological S cience, and

D onn a J. N ash, A dju nct C urator, S out h A m erican A rchaeology

Between AD 600 and 100 0, t wo great empir es r uled the Andes the Wari fr ommountai nous centr al Per u, and the Tiwanaku f r om the windswept shores of B oli via'sLake Titicaca. In only one place has evidence for direct confrontation been discovered,the Moquegua Valley of southern Peru. Here, the Wari thrust forth their frontier anderected a citadel atop an imposing mesa, Cerro Bal, where they held sway for 400years. A mere five mil es away, t he Tiwanaku t oiled in t heir fi elds and buil t grandiosetemples of stone and adobe. Recent Field Museum research on this majestic peak hasrevealed startling insights into how the Wari and Tiwanaku interacted, and how theirdynamic relationship ultimately contributed to the rise of the Inca Empire.

RYAN W ILLIAMS

ific Ocean

Ecuador

BrazilPeru

Tiwanaku

Wari

Cerro Baul

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were imposing urban intrusions on the landscape.

Wari textiles and pottery show vibrant depictions

of warriors, anthropomor phic beings and Viracocha,

the principal deity.While the Tiwanaku invited

worship through their colossal temp les featur ing

mo num ents carved with Viracocha and o ther super-

natural beings the Wari brought religion to the

people through the mundane material objects of

textiles and pottery.

The superpowers cease

These two vastly disparate civilizations met each

other in the M oquegua sierra.T hrough our

research at C erro Bal, we have been tracing their

intertwined developm ent and ultimate political

demise som etime aroun d 1000. Early interaction

was limited. Th e Wari brought large number s of

settlers to co lonize the region surround ing C erro

Bal (ca. 600), while Tiwanaku settlement was lim-

ited to the lower reaches of the M oque gua river

valley.This hostile standoff was not resolved by vio-

lent exchanges, at least as reflected on T iwanaku

skeletal remains, but rather throu gh radical changes

in Wari and T iwanaku politics.Th e Wari reconstructed their mo untaintop city

to incorporate offices for th e state. Meanw hile, the

Tiwanaku downstream built an immense temple

complex at O mo, the only one o f its kind outside

the Tiwanaku altiplano heartland. Finally, many Wari

colonists left their homes on the slopes of Cerro

Bal, and new comm unities made up of T iwanaku

settlers began to form around the Wari summit.

T hese new alliances between Tiwanaku settlers

and Wari elites may have co ntribut ed to the

T iwanakus decline around 1000. Factions formed

between the Tiwanaku peoples who lived under

Wari rule and those who remained loyal to the

downstream Tiwanaku state elites.The loss of labor

resources and people leaving their political lordship

may have destabilized the T iwanaku status quo. Some

scholars have argued that a severe drought that began

aroun d 1050 led to the Tiwanakus collapse. If our

recon struction o f the social splitting is accurate, theinherent vulnerability in the social system may have

impeded an effective respon se to the drought.

N ot long after 1000, both Tiwanaku and Wari had

abandon ed their M oquegua settlements, and rever-

berations spread througho ut the ir realms. By 1100,

the sister states had ent irely collapsed. Smaller regional

kingdoms ensued, building on the developmen ts of

the W ari and T iwanaku. O ne o f these eventually

became the Inca Empire, the m ost powerful and

extensive n ative state the Am ericas had ever seen.

Investigating these ancient Andean

supremacies is giving us new insights into

how com mun ities integrate, how they copewith the power of the empire and how they

ally themselves with competing polities to

achieve local auto nomy. In todays world,

where national priorities and security reach

beyond our traditional borders and force

us to interact with o ther nations, often

aggressively, it is imperative to examine

these interactions their effects on people

and communities.While government

administrations com e and go, it is the peo ple

who endure and u ltimately judge the inter-

pretation of history.

T he C erro B al E x pedition h as been sponsored

by the G . A . Bruno Foundation, the H einz

Family Foundation, the N ational S cience

Foundation, the A sociacin C ontisuyo, the

U niversity of Florida and T he Field M useum.

V isit www.fieldm useum .org and for m ore infor-

mation on D rs. W illiams and N ash.

How did they find that?Buried remains may be invisible on the ground surface, but using techniques related to x-ray imaging,archaeologists can see what s underneath to understand how ancient societi es developed and flour -ished. In one instance, we used geophysical survey technologies at Cerro Bal to map out remains ofthe ancient cit y. Si nce excavati on is ti me consuming and expensive, we are l im it ed i n the amount ofarea we can expose. With ground-penetrating radar, we transmit a radar wave into the groundabout the same fr equency as a television broadcast antenna and measure i ts r efl ecti ons off ofburied objects. This way we can distinguish hidden archaeological features, such as ancient buildings,tombs or buried agricultural fields. The Field Museums Laboratory for GIS & Remote Sensing nowmanages an array of techniques and equipment for this type of research.

R yan W illiam s uses a gradiometer to sense dif ferences in th e E arth s magnet ic field th at represent buried

archaeological features.

D onn a N ash and K irk C ostion not e

the depths of the first excavation layer.

C lassic W ari ritual

drinking vessel from

C erro B al. T he first

is modeled as a

human foot.

R Y A N W I L L I A M S

ROBIN

COLEMAN

RYANWILLIAMS