Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2001. 30:41–64 Copyright c  2001 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved THE ORIGIN OF STATE SOCIETIES IN SOUTH AMERICA Charles Stanish Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095–1553; e-mail: stanish@ucla.edu Key Words state formation, cultural evolution, Andes, chiefdoms, states ■ Abstract The earliest states developed in the central Andean highlands and along the central Pacific coast of western South America. The consensus in the archaeological literature is that state societies first developed in the central Andes in the early part of the first millennium C.E. A minority opinion holds that first-generation states developed as early as the late second millennium B.C.E. in the same area. The Andean region constitutes one of a few areas of first-generation state development in the world. This area therefore represents an important case study for the comparative analysis of state formation. This article outlines the arguments for state formation in South America, presents the evidence, analyzes the underlying assumptions about these arguments, and assesses the South American data in terms of contemporary anthropological theory of state evolution. SOUTH AMERICA South America, a continent approximately 17,870,000 km 2 in size, has been di- vided into as few as three and as many as two dozen different cultural areas by anthropologists (Willey 1971, pp. 17–24). Borrowing on the earlier work of Wissler (1922, pp. 245–57) and Bennett (1946, p. 1), Lumbreras (1981, p. 42) provides the most common cultural geographical division of South America: the Andes, the Llanos, Amazonia, the Chaco, the Pampas, and Patagonia (Figure 1). First-generation states evolved only in the central and south central part of one area, the Andes. This area, referred to collectively as the central Andes, would correspond to parts of Wissler’s Inca area and to all of Willey’s Peruvian cultural area (Willey 1971, p. 4). Bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean, this culturally precocious region stretches from roughly the Peru-Ecuador border in the north, to the low forests of Peru and Bolivia in the east, and south to the southern part of the Titicaca Basin in Bolivia. 0084-6570/01/1021-0041$14.00 41 Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2001.30:41-64. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org by "UNIV. OF CALIF., LOS ANGE" on 05/13/05. For personal use only.