User:Jennyfayfay/Tiwanaku Empire

Article Draft
My plan for this article is to really improve the section that has to do with agriculture and irrigation practices. I also want to touch on a bit about the collapse of the Tiwanaku and maybe relate this back to the agriculture and irrigation practices. I am thinking of also adding more information about certain archaeological cites that talk about canals and the societies that lived there.

Agriculture
Tiwanaku's location between the Lake Titicaca and dry highlands provided key resources of fish, wild birds, plants, and herding grounds for camelids, particularly llamas. Tiwanaku's economy was based on exploiting the resources of the Lake Titicaca, herding of llamas and alpacas and organized farming in raised field systems. The Tiwanaku consumed llama meat, potatoes, quinoa, beans and maize. Because of the variabe climate in the high altitude regions, the storability of food became important, prompting the development of technologies for freeze-dried potatoes and sun-dried meat.

Covering approxiately 200 km, the Titicaca Basin is the most productive environment in the area, with predictable and abundant rainfall due to the presence of Lake Titicaca. This body of water provides a warmer temperature and more humid environment. To the east, the Altiplano is an area of very dry arid land. The Titicaca Basin also provides a unique landscape with many sources of water ranging from natural springs, to large rivers like the Tiwanaku River. The abundance of water resources were crucial to the development of the Tiwanaku since they provided lage areas of fertile land that the Tiwanaku culture developed and expanded into farming spaces using large irrigation projects like raised fields, terraces, and qochas.

Raised Fields
The Tiwanaku developed many distinctive farming techniques. Known as "flooded-raised field" agriculture (suka qullu), these fields were used widely in regional agriculture, together with irrigated fields, pasture, terraced fields and artificial ponds. Water from Katari and Tiwanku rivers was used to water raised fields, that covered up to 130 square km. In the Titicaca Basin, these fields were large planting platforms ranging from 5-20 meters in width, and 200 meters in length.

Artificially raised planting mounds were separated by shallow canals filled with water. The canals supply moisture for growing crops, but they also absorb heat from solar radiation during the day. This heat is gradually emitted during the bitterly cold nights and provided thermal insulation against the endemic frost in the region. Traces of similar landscape management have been found in the Llanos de Moxos region (Amazonian flood plains of the Moxos). Over time, the canals also were used to farm edible fish. The resulting canal sludge from small aquatic plants was dredged for fertilizer, contirnously providing nutrient-rich soil for crops.

Though labor-intensive, a suka qullu produces impressive yields. While traditional agriculture in the region typically yields 2.4 metric tons of potatoes per hectare, and modern agriculture (with artificial fertilizers and pesticides) yields about 14.5 metric tons per hectare, suka qullu agriculture yields an average of 21 tons per hectare. Modern agricultural researchers have re-introduced the technique of suka qullu. Significantly, the experimental suka qullu fields recreated in the 1980s by University of Chicago's Alan Kolata and Oswaldo Rivera suffered only a 10% decrease in production following a 1988 freeze that killed 70-90% of the rest of the region's production.

While impressive yields are possible in experiments, these fields are vulnerable to potato parasites and if used continuously, are actually less efficient than traditional rain-fed fields. This led independent researchers like Bandy (2005) to suggest that raised fields were not in fact hyper-productive, noting that local people did not continue using them once experiments and development programs ended in the 1990s. Instead, they were used on a larger scale planting since they could be planted and harvested before other fields. This essentially allowed for two harvests per year: one for hosting feasts and the other for daily consumption. Coordinating this labor schedule was a key activity for leading families at Tiwanaku, because they had to attract volunteers to work the raised fields in addition to their own fields.

As the population grew, occupational niches developed, and people began to specialize in certain skills. There was an increase in artisans, who worked in pottery, jewelry and textiles. Like the later Incas, the Tiwanaku had few commercial or market institutions. Instead, the Tiwanaku relied on elite redistribution. In this view of Tiwanaku as a bureaucratic state, elites controlled the economic output, but were expected to provide each commoner with all the resources needed to perform his or her function. Selected occupations include agriculturists, herders, pastoralists, etc. Such separation of occupations was accompanied by hierarchichal stratification. The elites gained their status by control of the surplus of food obtained from all regions, which they then redistributed among all the people. Control of llama herds became very significant to Tiwanaku. The animals were essential for transporting staple and prestige goods.

Terraces
Another technique used by the Tiwanaku was the usage of terrace strucutres on hills and mountainsides. These terraces were good at providing water year-round from reservoirs at higher elevations in the mountains. These terraces modified hill slopes into step-like structures that were good at inceasing the amount of space for agriculture in a smaller, more limited area, were less vulnerable to frost in higher altitudes, and most importantly, were good at retaining water. Today, these fields have been modified by modern agriculture. The walls of the step-like structure have been removed for plowing and the building of adjusted property lines. This has lead to an increase in erosion and a sloping terrain.

Qocha
One other technique used by the Tiwanaku were the qochas. These are sunken regions of land also known as minibasins connected by a system of canals. These were used as agricultural fields, grazing areas, and water reservoirs and are often still found as clusters in the landscape today. Their sunken nature, allowed for the pooling of water to occur. This was especially useful during seasons of drought since these minibasins would retain some of their moisture. Sometimes these features were used for mulitple purposes at the same time.