Disposal of the dead in early societies frequently involved multiple stages of ritual and processing. At Khonkho Wankane in the Andes quicklime was used to reduce corpses to bones in a special circular structure at the centre of the site. The quicklime was obtained from solid white blocks of calcium oxide and was then mixed with water and applied to disarticulated body parts. A few plaster-covered bones were recovered from the structure but most had been removed from the site, possibly by itinerant llama caravans. Thus, Khonkho Wankane was a ritual centre to which the dead were brought for processing and then removed for final burial elsewhere.

The author shows how pollen and oribatid mites recovered from the small lake of Marcacocha provide a detailed proxy record of agro-pastoralism over the last 4200 years in the central Andes. The introduction of highland maize and weeding practices 2700 years ago corresponds with major settlement development, as well as evidence for large herds of llamas not only facilitating trade but supplying abundant fertilizer and fuel in the form of excrement. Prolonged droughts and pre-Colombian epidemics probably influenced many of the social changes observed.