Introduction

The central Andes is one of the centres where civilisation developed in situ with only minimal input from complex societies in other parts of the world. The final expression of Andean civilisation, the Inkas, incorporated huge populations, probably in excess of twelve million people, and was able to sustain them at standard of living equal to or better than that found in the Old World at the same time (see Chapter 2.26). Nonetheless, Andean civilisation was dissimilar from most civilisations elsewhere in the world, lacking such basic technologies as the wheel, writing and money. The success of the Inkas drew on developments stretching deep into prehistory, and completely unknown to the keepers of knowledge in the Inka court.

One of the challenges to modern archaeologists working in the central Andes has been to discover when and where the first Andean civilisations occurred and to try to explain the reasons for these early developments. Max Uhle, a German archaeologist, was the first scholar to appreciate the substantial time depth of Andean culture history, and his excavations of deep stratigraphy and cemeteries in Peru permitted him to construct a cultural chronology going as far back as the elaborate Moche and Nasca cultures dating to the Early Intermediate Period (1–600 ce) (Rowe 1954; Kaulicke 1998). Uhle also studied the shell mounds of Ancón on the central coast and Puerto Supe on the north-central coast and encountered the remains of a much simpler “fisherfolk” who used monochrome black incised pottery and occasionally engaged in cannibalism (Uhle 1910, 1925). Uhle argued that these sites represented a culture that was older than the more complex Nasca and Moche civilisations.