Neo-Environmental Determinism and Agrarian "Collapse" in Andean Prehistory

Introduction: neo-environmentalism in Andean archaeology In early anthropology, environmental determin-ism 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. The rise and fall of Andean civilizations are 'mapped onto' sediment cores, pollen diagrams and ice cores and somehow this 'explains' cultural change. In the extreme incarnations of neo-environmental determinism, humans are considered passive pawns at the mercy of droughts and floods. I will evaluate a recent hypothesis proposed to explain the collapse of the Tiwanaku State and raised-field agriculture from a landscape perspective informed by a 'bottom-up approach' to Pre-Columbian farming systems, the ethnography of wetland peoples and insights from the New Ecology.