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The Hydraulic Hypothesis Revisited: Lake Titicaca Basin Raised Fields in Theoretical Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Charles Stanish
Charles Stanish*
Affiliation:
Field Museum of Natural History, Roosevelt Road at Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL 60605
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Abstract

Archaeological research over several decades has documented extensive areas of relict raised fields throughout the Americas. The existence of huge tracts of fields utilized in a context of complex political evolution has fostered a debate similar to the “hydraulic hypothesis” controversy, originated by Julian Steward and Karl Wittfogel over a generation ago. In this paper I assess recent research and offer a model that is tested with settlement and demographic data from the Juli-Pomata area of Lake Titicaca in southern Peru. The key variables of the model are differential levels of surplus production, the control of domestic labor by elite groups, and opportunistic economic strategies by the elite. The Juli-Pomata data support a causal link between complex political organization and the existence of labor-intensive raised-field systems. The simplistic explanations of the hydraulic hypothesis remain untenable, but I argue that more subtle causal relationships exist between political centralization and agricultural intensification.

Varias décadas de investigaciones arqueológicas han documentado extensas áreas de campos elevados antiguos en toda América. La existencia de estas enormes extensiones de campos elevados utilizados en un contexto de compleja evolución política ha estimulado un debate semejante a la controversia sobre la teoría hidráulica, planteada por Julian Steward y Karl Wittfogel hace más de una generación atrás. Este artículo evalúa la investigación reciente y ofrece un modelo que se prueba con datos de patrón de asentamiento y demografía del área Juli-Pomata a la orilla del lago Titicaca al sur del Perú. Las variables clave del modelo son: los niveles diferenciales de producción de excedentes, el control de trabajo doméstico por grupos de la élite, y las estrategias económicas oportunistas de la élite. Los datos de Juli-Pomata indican una relación causal entre la organización política compleja y la existencia de sistemas de campos elevados de trabajo intensivo. Las explicaciones simplistas de la hipótesis hidráulica continúan sin soporte, pero yo arguyo que existen relaciones causales más sutiles entre la centralización política y la intensificación agrícola.

Type
Articles
Information
Latin American Antiquity , Volume 5 , Issue 4 , December 1994 , pp. 312 - 332
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1994

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