People on the move: Examining Tiwanaku state expansion in the Cochabamba Valley through strontium isotope analysis

Various strategies for incorporating and influencing outlying communities exist for archaic expansive states. Even today, modern states such as the United States influence communities around the globe and act as a place of amalgamation for diverse populations. At the outset, parallels between expansion strategies in the past and present may seem tenuous, but underpinning factors guiding state expansion such as economic interest, territory gain, or political prestige are likely to be common across time. In this thesis, the Andes region of South America serves as an important area to examine state strategies, since it is the location of the rise of some of the earliest states in antiquity, one of which was the Tiwanaku. Research aimed at investigating the origins and identity of populations in peripheral state-influenced settlements such as Piñami can provide insight into strategies of state integration in the past and present.;In this thesis, I use strontium isotope analyses to examine how population mobility articulates with Tiwanaku state expansion strategies into outlying regions during the Andean Middle Horizon (A.D. 500–1000). Strontium isotope analyses of archaeological human skeletal remains identified the geographic origins of six individuals from the burial population of Piñami, a Tiwanaku-affiliated site in the Cochabamba Valley of central Bolivia. Data from individuals interred at the site indicate that most were local inhabitants rather than migrants from the Tiwanaku heartland or another regional community. Two of six individuals displayed strontium isotope ratios different from the established local range for Piñami, denoting that they may have originated from another geologic area in the south-central Andes. Comparisons to regional strontium ratios indicate that an adult male migrant could be from the Tiwanaku heartland, whereas an adult female migrant may be from the Cuzco highlands. This finding is consistent with interpretations of population mobility and trade networks of the Tiwanaku during the Middle Horizon. The high occurrence of Tiwanaku material culture and low appearance of Tiwanaku migrants at Piñami supports the idea that Piñami was connected to the highland polity through trade rather than direct state influence.