Nonstate complex cultures are one of the most widespread types of ancient human societies. The complex society, or chiefdom, as some call it, was a successful way of life that hardly exists today. Accounting for the existence of such societies encourages us to look at their beginnings, florescence, and demise. We can ask what were the conditions that brought them into being? How were these cohesive and stable societies supported and integrated? What kinds of economies did they have, and how were people organized and resources used? What were the concepts embedded in their rituals and arts? And what led to their eventual replacement by other types of societies? This chapter describes the rise and development of indigenous complex cultures in South America from the late Ice Age through the Holocene, or Recent era.

THE RISE OF COMPLEX SOCIETY

Explanations of the rise of complex societies up to now have focused on five factors: patterns of environment, the impetus of human population growth, economic growth, as well as cultural diffusion, and the interaction of polities. Some theories hold that population growth in diverse, arid, circumscribed environments fostered conflict over agricultural land and ultimately led to military conquest and state organization. Statehood is thought a necessary, rational solution to living in dense, sedentary populations. Such organization came into being because central rulers and hierarchical organization were needed to run regional agricultural economies and redistributive systems. These environments possessed the rich agricultural soils to support large, sedentary populations and diverse material resources, whose exploitation and exchange were an impetus for cultural complexity. State organization is also thought to have permitted the establishment of stable societies and expansive cultural traditions; it both inspired and enabled the development of high art and monumental architecture. Finds of such cultural achievements in an archaeological culture, therefore, would be evidence of early state organization, by this reasoning.

Conversely, complex societies could not develop in tropical lowland environments, whose soils are too poor for agriculture to support population growth and whose resources are too uniform to require redistribution. The nonstate societies that could exist in the lowlands would be unstable, unable to support and organize dense, sedentary populations, and unable and indisposed to create high art and monumental architecture.

The common assumptions about the environmental and economic associations of early complex societies have been difficult to demonstrate empirically.