4 Power, Fairness, and Architecture: Modeling Early Chiefdom Development in the Central Andes Charles Stanish UCLA and Kevin J. Haley UCLA ABSTRACT This chapter models the development of complex architecture in simple chiefly societies in the Central Andes. We employ a theoretical framework that draws from evolutionary game theory, economic anthropology, evolutionary psychology, and comparative behavioral science. In this theoretical framework, the evolution of culture equates with the evolution of human cooperation in ever-larger groups. As “conditional cooperators,” humans will create complex labor organizations under the appropriate conditions. Taking into account recent research in evolutionary game theory, we demonstrate how these conditions were met for the first time on the Peruvian coast and then spread to the highlands using examples from both the coast and the altiplano. Keywords: chiefdoms, cultural evolution, early architecture, Late Preceramic Period, Initial Period F or several millennia, people lived in the central Andes as nonagriculturalists in small, politically egalitarian groups. Sometime at the beginning of the third millennium B.C.E. and throughout the second, a few groups on the Pe- ruvian coast started to build permanent, centrally located corporate architecture in their communities. 1 Corporate ar- chitecture is that which is built and designed to be used and seen by the community as a whole (Moseley 1975). 2 In con- trast to many of the architectural constructions in later state societies, corporate architecture is not designed for the ex- clusive use of a subgroup of people in a society (Flannery 1998). Rather, flat-topped pyramids, open plazas, and the like were designed to accommodate the entire community and to be seen and used by all members of the villages in which they were built. From a long historical perspective, the relatively rapid emergence of corporate architecture demands explanation for a variety of reasons. First, there is no evolutionary bio- logical explanation that can account for this phenomenon. Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association, Vol. 14, pp. 53–70, ISBN 1-931303-20-7. C  2005 by the American Anthro- pological Association. All rights reserved. Permissions to photocopy or reproduce article content via www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm. The people of the tenth millennium B.C.E. were not intel- lectually or biologically different from those in the early third millennium B.C.E. The development of corporate archi- tecture is a cultural phenomenon that must be explained in cultural terms. Second, once corporate architecture emerged, it spread rapidly over a large area in both the coastal areas and the highlands. In many cases, within perhaps a genera- tion or in their living memory, people incorporated corpo- rate architecture and adopted the cultural concomitants that went along with it. Third, there is a clear correlation between the emergence of corporate architecture and evidence of a more complex form of sociopolitical organization. Finally, and perhaps most important, this process occurred indepen- dently around the world in many places and among widely different cultures. In this chapter, we refer to nonegalitarian, nonstate societies as chiefdoms, encompassing a number of other terms such as “bigman” societies, simple chiefdoms, non- state ranked societies, intermediate societies, and so forth. In