Case Studies:Case study 43

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Neo-environmental determinism and agrarian collapse in Andean prehistory
C. L. Erickson

Abstract
In early anthropology, environmental determinism was used to explain race, human demography, material culture, cultural variation and cultural change. As anthropological interpretation evolved, simplistic reductionist thinking was replaced with more complex socio-cultural explanations. Despite these theoretical advances, environmental determinism continues to be invoked to explain Andean prehistory. In the extreme incarnations of neoenvironmental determinism, humans are considered passive pawns at the mercy of droughts and floods. For farming communities past and present, the climate of the Lake Titicaca basin, on the border of Peru and Bolivia, is risky, unpredictable and chaotic. Peoples inhabiting the lake region have developed a complex indigenous knowledge system that includes a sophisticated agricultural technology and elaborate social strategies to mitigate both short- and longterm climatic fluctuations. This knowledge has been passed down through daily practice and oral history from generation to generation. Historical records and ethnography provide rich information on actual human response to climatic fluctuation. Culture in the Lake Titicaca basin did not collapse after the serious droughts and floods in recent history, or in the post-Tiwanaku times. Pre-Columbian states and urban centres were ephemeral, rising and falling with some regularity in the Lake Titicaca Basin. The timing of these phenomena may relate to actual climatic fluctuations. However, the archaeological record for rural settlement and intensive agriculture during this period demonstrates continuity and expansion. The neo-environmental determinist position views humans as passive and incapable of adapting to the long-term climatic change beyond some presumed environmental threshold. In this case study, humans are considered active and dynamic agents who not only respond to the challenges of fluctuation of climatic in their environments, but also create, shape and transform those very environments.

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Neo-environmental determinism and agrarian 'collapse' in Andean prehistory.

Keywords: Lake Titicaca, Peru, Bolivia, farming, climate change, environmental determinism

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