The timing of Tiwanaku’s collapse remains contested. Here we present a generational-scale chronology of Tiwanaku using Bayesian models of 102 radiocarbon dates, including 45 unpublished dates. This chronology tracks four community practices: residing short- vs. long-term, constructing monuments, discarding decorated ceramics, and leaving human burials. Tiwanaku was founded around ~AD 180 and around ~AD 600, it became the region’s principal destination for migrants. It grew into one of the Andes’ first cities and became famous for its decorated ceramics, carved monoliths, and large monuments. Our Bayesian models show that monument building ended ~AD 720 (the median of the ending boundary). Around ~AD 910, burials in tombs ceased as violent deaths began, which we document for the first time in this paper. Ritualized murders are limited to the century leading up to ~AD 1020. Our clearest proxy for social networks breaking down is a precise estimate for the end of permanent residence, ~AD 1010 (970–1050, 95%). This major inflection point was followed by visitors who used the same ceramics until ~AD 1040. Temporary camps lasted until roughly ~AD 1050. These four events suggest a rapid, city-wide collapse at ~AD 1010–1050, lasting just ~20 years (0–70 years, 95%). These results suggest a cascading breakdown of community practices and social networks that were physically anchored at Tiwanaku, though visitors continued to leave informal burials for centuries. This generation-scale chronology suggests that collapse 1) took place well before reduced precipitation, hence this was not a drought-induced societal change and 2) a few resilient communities sustained some traditions at other sites, hence the chronology for the site of Tiwanaku cannot be transposed to all sites with similar material culture.

Marsh, Erik J., Alexei Vranich, Deborah Blom, Maria Bruno, Katharine Davis, Jonah Augustine, Nicole C. Couture, Santiago Ancapichún, Kelly J. Knudson, Danijela Popović, and Gianni Cunietti. The Center Cannot Hold: A Bayesian Chronology for the Collapse of Tiwanaku. PLoS ONE 18, no. 11 (2023): e0288798. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288798

Copyright: © 2023 Marsh et al.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Maria Bruno is a professor of Anthropology and Archaeology at Dickinson College.

This published version is made available on Dickinson Scholar with the permission of the publisher. For more information on the published version, visit PLoS ONE's Website. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0288798

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