Social adaptive responses to a harsh and unpredictable environment: insights from a pre-Hispanic andean society

Abstract

The scarcity or unpredictability of natural resources is a threat to cooperation within human societies. Exacerbated competition between individuals could affect social cohesion and collective action, generate conflicts over natural resources, and compromise their sustainable use. Yet, our in-depth archaeological study of the arid Andean highlands of Bolivia reveals the sustainable development of a complex agrarian society in a harsh environment marked, moreover, by a prolonged climatic degradation from the 13th to the 15th centuries. The 49 community settlements studied comprised independent family households that managed their own economic resources. A detailed study of the granary and housing structures of 549 of these households provided a strong quantitative data set for an analysis of Gini coefficients for grain storage capacity and housing area. This agro-pastoral society flourished with neither notable inequalities of wealth between villagers nor apparent long-lasting conflicts between villages. By sharing local knowledge, labor, and natural resources, this society succeeded both in limiting power and wealth concentration, and in sustainably producing food surpluses to be exchanged with neighboring populations. These results indicate a high degree of social cohesion and low levels of social and wealth inequality, similar to other well-established horticultural and agricultural societies around the world. We propose a conceptual model of low inequality in agrarian societies subject to extreme or unstable environments, where the sharing of knowledge, resources, and labor are the adaptive social responses to cope with the uncertainty in natural resources. The sustainability of the society is then guaranteed by a balance between collective action and family-based social organization.

Growing in Scarcity: Pre-Hispanic Rain-Fed Agriculture in the Semi-Arid and Frost-Prone Andean Altiplano (Bolivia)

“…Several indicators suggest that the pre-Hispanic inhabitants of the Carangas region had a similar model of a non-centralised society with relatively low levels of inequality, which is particularly evident mainly in the large number of house-tombs (chullpas), as well as in the known habitation sites [68,69]. Indeed, low inequality is also pointed out by the Gini coefficient calculations based on the areas of 218 dwellings from three LRDP sites yielding an average of 0.232, which is very close to the average Gini of 0.234 obtained from 12 sites in the Intersalar region [33]. However, there were notable differences between the pre-Hispanic Carangas and their Intersalar neighbours.…”

“…In Carangas, the ethnic group from which the region takes its name, and in the Intersalar, the Aullagas-Huruquillas populations became part of the Quillacas-Asanaque ethnic federation [32]. The study of several Intersalar dwelling sites from this period has shown that the local populations had a non-centralised form of social organisation with relatively low levels of inequality, resulting from mechanisms of cooperation and social cohesion [33]. In the mid-fifteenth century, the region was colonised by the Inkas and incorporated into Qullasuyu, the southern quadrant of the Empire.…”

“…In a recent work, we related the adaptive capacities and resilience of the pre-Hispanic population that flourished in the Intersalar region during the 12th-15th centuries CE, with a sustainable model of non-centralised society, with low levels of inequality and where mechanisms of social cohesion prevailed [33].…”

A Review of Archaeological and Paleoecological Radiocarbon Dating in Bolivia

“…Work in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Patrice Lecoq (1999) involved research in the region between the Coipasa and Uyuni salt lakes as well as in village settlements from a series of highland valleys including dating sites that extended our understanding of early village life and social interaction towards the southern inter-Andean dry valleys (Lecoq & Céspedes, 1997). Following up on this work, recent research involving more radiocarbon dating and quantification of sites containing dozens of storage facilities suggests that quinoa farming became increasingly sophisticated even as environmental conditions deteriorated starting during the XIII century CE (Cruz et al, 2022;Cruz et al, 2017). Towards the east, Ann Helsley-Marchbanks (1993) conducted valuable research that involved dating sites in areas that still remain poorly investigated.…”