Aymara lordships

The Aymara lordships, also known as the Aymara kingdoms or lake kingdoms, were rival native polities on the high Andean plateau around Lake Titicaca, in today's Peru and Bolivia. They emerged after the collapse of Tiwanaku, flourished from roughly the 12th to the 15th century, and were conquered by the Incas in the mid to late 15th century. Their peoples are among the ancestors of the Aymara, who number about two million today.

Around 1000 CE the Tiwanaku state broke down, perhaps because of environmental change, and between about 1050 and 1150 people spread from the Titicaca basin across the altiplano and towards the Pacific coast. The centuries that followed, which archaeologists call the Late Intermediate Period, were politically unsettled. Where people came from, and how the Aymara language spread, is debated: some scholars link the period to Aymara-speaking migrants, others argue that Aymara speakers were already present in Tiwanaku times, or that the Incas spread the language later. Before the Spanish arrived, these societies did not call themselves Aymara; that collective label came from European chroniclers.

Sources list about a dozen major lordships, among them the Canas and Canchis near Cusco, the Collas and Lupacas around Puno, the Pacajes near La Paz, the Carangas and Soras of Oruro, the Charcas, Quillacas, Caracaras and Chichas further south, together with smaller lordships such as the Kallawaya. Besides Aymara, many of their people spoke Puquina or Uru. The largest were the Colla, with their traditional capital at Hatunqulla north of Puno, and the Lupaca, whose rulers probably lived at Cutimbo.

A shared feature was dual government: each society had two leaders, one for each of its two halves. Among the Lupaca, an upper half was led by a lord named Qari and a lower half by one named Kusi. Elites were often buried in tower tombs called chullpas, built in a different style by each people. Wealth lay mainly in herds of llamas and alpacas, since little of the cold plateau could be farmed. The anthropologist John Murra argued that highland peoples such as the Lupaca held scattered colonies at lower altitudes, on the Pacific valleys and the Amazonian slopes, to obtain maize, cotton, chili peppers and coca, a pattern he called the "vertical archipelago". Others, such as Mary Van Buren, think this system was mainly a late Inca and early Spanish phenomenon.

Archaeology has complicated the picture of strong unified kingdoms given by colonial chroniclers. From about 1300 hilltop forts called pukaras multiplied across the Colla lands, and the anthropologist Elizabeth Arkush sees the Colla as a set of allied groups and local confederations rather than one centralised state. Conflict was frequent, perhaps driven by drought and by war leaders who gained status through booty.

The Incas exploited the rivalry between the Colla and the Lupaca. Accounts differ in detail, but under Viracocha Inca the Incas promised support to both sides while secretly allying with the Lupaca; the Colla ruler attacked first, and a battle near Paucarcolla followed. Later Pachacuti, who reigned from about 1438, invaded the Colla lands, defeated their ruler, known as the Colla Capac, in battles at Ayaviri and Pucara, and took him prisoner. The Collas rebelled several times and were subdued again under Tupac Inca Yupanqui. The Incas then called all the Aymara peoples "Collas" and made their lands part of the province of Collasuyu.

The lordships kept much of their land and structure under the Inca Empire and into the first years of Spanish rule. The Lupaca were still described as remarkably wealthy in 1567, but by the end of the 16th century they had disappeared from Spanish records, worn down by forced labour in the Potosí mines, resettlement, loss of land and epidemics.

Our 1279, 1300 and 1400 maps label this region "Aymara kingdoms", spanning parts of today's Chile, Bolivia, Peru and Argentina; the outline is approximate. Our maps from 600 to 1000 show Tiwanaku in much of the same area.