Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 61 (2021) 101267 0278-4165/© 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Unfnished monumental projects and institutional crisis in the early pre-Columbian Andes Hugo C. Ikehara The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028, United States A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Crisis Unfnished buildings Monumental architecture Warfare Andes Formative ABSTRACT The focus of this article centers on monumental ceremonial buildings that were planned but either left partially constructed or were completed in a fashion that differed from their original design. Instead of using these buildings to study the formation of collectivities and the consolidation of authority, I rely on their unfnished or altered character to study the crisis of institutions and organizations. This article uses the case of the middle Nepe˜ na Valley (Peru) during the frst millennium BCE to illustrate the wealth of information that can be obtained from this kind of archaeological remains if archaeologists are able to put them in historical context. Moreover, the studied case, from the transition between the demise of the Cupisnique/Chavín religious complex and the warlike Salinar era, suggests the existence of a legitimation crisis derived from the contradiction between traditional forms of social integration and new priorities emerging within a climate of violence and confict. Resumen: Este artículo se centra en edifcios ceremoniales monumentales que fueron planeados, comenzados a ser construidos, pero que nunca fueron terminados, o al menos no como fueron originalmente planeados. En lugar de utilizar estos edifcios para estudiar la formaci´ on de colectividades o la consolidaci´ on de autoridad, me baso en su car´ acter incompleto para estudiar la crisis de instituciones y organizaciones. Este artículo utilizar el caso del valle medio de Nepe˜ na (Perú) durante el primer milenio a.C. para ilustrar la riqueza de informaci´ on que se puede obtener de esta clase de resto arqueol´ ogico si los arque´ ologos somos capaces de ubicarlos en su contexto hist´ orico. M´ as aún, el caso estudiado, que trata de la transici´ on entre la caída del complejo religioso Cupisnique/ Chavín y la era violenta de Salinar, sugiere la existencia de una crisis de legitimidad derivado de la contradicci´ on entre formas tradicionales de integraci´ on social y las nuevas prioridades emergiendo de un clima de violencia y conficto. 1. Introduction In the archaeological study of the evolution of social complexity, the social implications of the construction of monumental architecture has been a recurrent topic (Burger and Rosenswig, 2012; Childe, 1950; DeMarrais et al., 1996; Moore, 1996; Renfrew, 1973; Trigger, 1990). Monumental buildings nearly always require large amounts of energy and resources (Abrams, 1994; Knapp, 2008; Trigger, 1990). This costly aspect characterizes not only their construction processes, but also their maintenance through time and, in some societies, the ritual renewal or rebuilding of these structures over the course of generations. Consid- ering that the use of machines is a late innovation in history and work animals were not universally available, much of the labor to construct these buildings must have been done by hand in antiquity. Therefore, these monumental buildings seem to refect and materialize peoplé s capacity to organize large labor pools, either channeled through centralizing institutions (DeMarrais et al., 1996; Trigger, 1990) or through collective action (Angelbeck, 2016; Arkush and Ikehara, 2019; Carballo, 2013; Carballo and Feinman, 2016). With some exceptions, most of the research based on monumental architecture follows the assumption these buildings were completed enough to be functional for their intended uses (as habitations, as ceremonial spaces, as monuments, etc.) and that they were in fact occupied and used, sometimes during years, decades and even centuries. The archaeological research focused on the abandonment of buildings, settlements and regions makes this assumption as well (Cameron and Tomka, 1993; Lekson and Cameron, 1995). By contrast, the topic of this article, the study of unfnished monumental buildings, focuses on those projects that were designed, and their construction started but never fnished, or at least were not completed as originally intended. I argue that these abandoned projects refect crises in the institutions respon- sible for the construction of these projects and provide understanding of E-mail address: hugo.ikeharatsukayama@metmuseum.org. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Anthropological Archaeology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jaa https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2020.101267 Received 10 June 2020; Received in revised form 28 September 2020;