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Lack of relation between technology and social complexity: I lift this point bodily from Webster 2002:77. See also Ihde 2000.

Osmore Valley geography: I am grateful to Mike Moseley and Susan DeFrance for guiding me through this area, and to Patrick Ryan Williams and Donna Nash for showing me Moquegua and Cerro Baúl.

Wari and Tiwanaku: A succinct overview is La Lone 2000. Surprisingly little has been written about Wari. Among the few recent books are Isbell and McEwan eds. 1991 and Schreiber 1992. The most widely cited recent works on Tiwanaku are Kolata 1993 and Kolata ed. 1996–2003. William Isbell has pointed out that the two names refer simultaneously to cities, states, and religions. He has suggested that the Spanish names Tiahuanaco and Huari be used for the physical ruins and the Aymara and Runa Suni spellings Tiwanaku and Wari be used for these polities’ political and cultural styles (Isbell 2001: 457).

Sixth-century climatic disaster: Fagan 1999:Chap. 7. The major apparent victims were the Moche, who flourished in a three-hundred-mile strip along the northern coast after 100 A.D. Drought put Moche society in crisis; El Niño rains led to floods that destroyed entire villages and canal systems. El Niño also changed ocean current patterns to deposit river sediments on the shore. These quickly turned to dunes, which winds blew toward the Andes, threatening farmland. The Moche tried to regroup—and failed.

Potato’s advantages and status vis-a-vis maize: McNeill 1991, Murra 1960.

Wari religion: It should be emphasized that the common image of the Staff God did not mean that the deity meant the same thing in every culture (Makowski 2001).

Terracing, arable land, abandonment: Peruvian ecologist Luis Masson has estimated that 1.2 to 1.4 million acres was terraced on just the west side of the Andes, 75 percent of which is now abandoned (pers. comm., cited in Denevan 2001:173–75); Cobo 1990:213 (“flights of stairs”); Moseley 2001:230–38 (“patenting and marketing,” 233; prospering of Wari despite climatic assault, 232).

Isbell-Vranich article: Isbell and Vranich 2004 (“repetitive,” 170).

Wari and Tiwanaku in Cerro Baúl: Interviews, DeFrance, Moseley, Nash, Williams; Williams, Isla, and Nash 2001.

Geertz’s four states: Geertz 1980:121–22.

Chiripa: The major recent work on Chiripa is described in Hastorf 1999. A summary is Stanish 2003:115–17.

Pukara: Stanish 2003:138–48, 156–60, 283–84. Stanish suggests that a drought that began in about 100 A.D. may have induced Pukara’s collapse (157). But the drought may not have occurred—its existence has been deduced from a study of Lake Titicaca bottom sediments (Abbott et al. 1997). But the lake-sediment data, as the authors noted, conflicted with previous ice-core studies; in addition, the depositional processes were sufficiently poorly understood that one could not judge when the putative dry periods began and ended.

Rise of Tiwanaku: Stanish 2003:chap. 8, 2001.

Tiwanaku as predatory state: Kolata 1993:81–86, 243–52 (“predatory,” 243; “lower cost,” 245).

Akapana: Interviews, Nicole Couture, Michael Moseley, Alexei Vranich; author’s visit; Cieza de León 1959:282 (“how human hands”); Kolata 1993:103–29. Wendell Bennett excavated at Akapana in the 1930s, but the first major excavations at Tiwanaku in general did not occur until the late 1960s, with the work of researchers from the Instituto Nacional de Arqueología de Bolivia, led by Carlos Ponce Sanginés. Ponce’s work has come under fire, because he published little of his data and because he “restored” Tiwanaku landmarks inaccurately. In the 1980s Alan Kolata of the University of Chicago led a large team that produced the first comprehensive overview of the city and its environs.

Kalasasaya and Gateway of the Sun: Author’s interviews, Couture, Vranich; Kolata 1993:143–49.

Isbell-Vranich vision of city: Isbell and Vranich 2004.

Lack of markets: Kolata 1993:172–76 (“a city was,” “symbolically,” 173).

Vranich picture of Tiwanaku: