Chapter 6 From Stew-Eaters to Maize-Drinkers The Chicha Economy and the Tiwanaku Expansion

In this paper, I consider the close correlation of dramatic changes in culinary traditions with the political development of one of the New World’s earliest expansive state societies. A comparison of Tiwanaku’s ceramic assemblages with those of its antecedents, as well as settlement pattern and household archaeology and preliminary isotopic data on diet, suggest that the Tiwanaku phenomenon was accompanied by revolutionary new patterns in food, drink, and daily domestic life. In examining these changes in the Tiwanaku core region and in its peripheries my goal is to consider the intersection of shifts in culinary traditions with changes