An Investigation into the Decline of the Tiwanaku Polity: Exploring the Role of Salinization

The decline and collapse of the Tiwanaku state, based in the Lake Titicaca Basin of Bolivia, occurred during what scholars call the Tiwanaku V Phase (A.D. 800-1200), a period of great environmental stress induced by prolonged droughts and various other natural hazards. It was during this period that raised field (waru waru) agriculture—long considered the linchpin that held together the Tiwanaku polity—gradually fell into widespread disuse and considerable changes occurred with regards to the overall health, demographics, and subsistence strategies of the Tiwanaku people. As of late, the dependence of Tiwanaku peoples on raised field systems as well as the fundamental productivity of those systems has come under scrutiny. Matthew Bandy speculates that raised field systems were never overly productive and that dense potato cyst nematode populations may have decimated the subsistence systems of ancient indigenous farmers. The current research elabortates upon Bandy’s innovate and compell

Published as part of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Journal of Undergraduate Research, Volume 9 (2006)