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nearly 400 , 000 square miles, ranging

from what is now northern Ecuador

to southern Chile. Because their

empire spanned such a huge area,

Stanish says, the Inca understood

the importance of harnessing ideology

and belief to control the people within

their realm.

Perhaps influenced by local oral history,

the Inca also began using the Island of the

Sun and Khoa Reef as places for politically

charged religious performances. In one area of

the reef, Delaere and his team uncovered artifacts,

including sealed stone offering boxes filled with stone

figurines, dating to the period during which the Titicaca

Basin was under Inca control. These artifacts were separated

from the Tiwanaku material by more than a foot of sediment

containing no artifacts. This layer represents the roughly 300

years between the collapse of the Tiwanaku state and the time

the Inca arrived.

Inca rulers were well aware that the region they had con-

quered had a sacred history to those who had lived there. “The

Inca very carefully chose to build temples in places that already

had spiritual significance,” says Stanish. “Even several hundred

years after the last Tiwanaku ritual was performed there, Inca

emperors would come from Cuzco to Tiwanaku—and we know

that they would stop on the Island of the Sun.” n

Marley Brown is associate editor at Archaeology.

they were able to create by exploiting them, were

almost surely prime factors. Despite being

located at an elevation of 12 , 500 feet,

Lake Titicaca—a rich ecosystem of more

than 3 , 000 square miles—creates a

temperate environment with seasonal

rains and a shoreline highly suitable

for agriculture. “You have all these

resources—fish, llamas, quinoa, and

potatoes,” says archaeologist José

Capriles of Penn State Univer-

sity. “The abundance of these things

makes this region the kind of place

where it was inevitable that eventually

something interesting would happen.”

The Tiwanaku were able to harness the sur-

plus agricultural products and, over time, amass

great wealth, which they lavishly displayed in rites

such as the one performed at Khoa Reef.

These rites were part of a well-choreographed circuit of

religious performances and pilgrimage routes that produced

a kind of Tiwanaku soft power. The Tiwanaku did not neces-

sarily have the military might to conquer people over such a

wide area outright. Instead, they drew communities into their

orbit by projecting their religious authority, exhibiting their

wealth, and creating a nexus of goods and cultural practices.

“First, they established settlements with areas dedicated to

rituals,” Stanish says, “and then they engaged in a reciprocity

arrangement whereby they provided exotic goods that weren’t

available locally. In turn, people were willing to give them their

labor and commodities such as food and textiles.”

Delaere points out that while the Tiwanaku spread their

religious beliefs throughout their territory, their sacred

practices were most likely the domain of a select group

of priests controlled by a centralized author-

ity. “The Tiwanaku leadership really invented

the idea of the pilgrimage destination in

the central Andes,” Stanish says. The

pilgrimage routes were crucial to their

ability to spread their influence to

the far reaches of their territory. “You

can look at all the great states of the

ancient world, both Western and non-

Western, and they almost all do this,”

says Stanish. “Pilgrimages reinforce

the power of the state, and they also

help people become part of that entity.”

C

enturies after the collapse of the Tiwanaku

civilization, which scholars often attribute to political

fragmentation exacerbated by prolonged drought, the

Inca conquered their former territory. Unlike the Tiwanaku,

however, there is little doubt about the military might of the

Inca, or of their rulers’ ability to administer a vast expanse

of territory from their capital, Cuzco. At its height, the Inca

Empire, which was described by Spanish explorers, covered

A Spondylus shell imported to the Titicaca Basin

from the warmer waters of coastal Ecuador

nearly 1,000 miles away was part of the

artifact cache at Khoa Reef.

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A gold plaque in the shape of either a puma or

a llama is among the offerings given by

Tiwanaku priests during the ceremonies

performed off the Island of the Sun.

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