Prehispanic Cultural Development in the Southern Andes of South America

FAIN: FT-13987-78

Gordon Pollard
SUNY Research Foundation, Buffalo State College (Buffalo, NY 14222-1004)

To study late prehispanic cultural development in the southern Andes. Largely neglected by American scholars, the area is viewed as a separate cultural unit which, while it was composed of several similar and interrelated societies, did not develop state-level social and political structures prior to European arrival as did the nearby civilizations of Peru and Bolivia. Data will be collected on several features of prehispanic settlement, including size, placement, spacing of village sites and their relationship to natural resources and production potentials, to try to explain why cultural development reached the level it did.