This first volume in the series Investigaciones arqueológicas en Bolivia, edited by Sonia Alconini, seeks to advance archaeological knowledge on the eastern valleys of the Andes, situated between the Andean high plateau and the Amazon and Chaco plains. Partly because of the lack of systematic archaeological research in this area, scholars have tended to see the valleys as an “empty,” marginal transit zone between the highlands and the lowlands. Traditionally, much more emphasis has been given to the Tiwanaku state and the Inca Empire as they sought to extract products from this so-called yungas region than to autochthonous cultural development in the eastern valleys. Alconini's edited volume, in contrast, highlights how the Andean eastern valleys were “strategic spaces of social and economic interaction” (p. 335; translation by reviewer) and sites of important cultural processes. While those processes were to a large degree endogenous, they also drew from the Andean and the Amazonian and/or Chacoan areas, leading to hybrid identities and multiethnic social settings.
Entre la vertiente tropical y los valles has 15 research chapters. It also has a three-page introduction and a slightly longer concluding chapter, both by Alconini. Before taking their final form, the individual contributions were presented and discussed in a workshop held in Sucre, Bolivia, in July 2013. In the book, the chapters are organized geographically so that the focus moves from north to south from the areas east of Lake Titicaca through Cochabamba and Chuquisaca (Bolivia) to northwest Argentina.
Chapter 1, written by Carla Jaimes, is an outlier in the context of the volume, because it focuses on the Beni region, a lowland setting. Still, this chapter is important, as it questions the degree to which the earlier posited barrancoide influence can actually be seen in the pottery of lowland Bolivia and, more specifically, in the material that Erland Nordenskiöld excavated at the site of Chimay. In Chapters 2 and 6, respectively, Alconini discusses two long-lasting ceramic traditions of the eastern valleys: the yunga género tosco and the estampada e incisa de bordes doblados traditions. Both were widely distributed and show features clearly adopted from the lowlands.
Several chapters discuss the varying nature and timing of the influence of Tiwanaku (ca. AD 500–1100) in distinct valley settings. Chapter 3 by Juan Carlos Chávez and Sonia Alconini presents excavation data from the site of Kalla Kallan, in Charazani Valley. Patrizia Di Cosimo in Chapter 4 discusses survey results from the Chungamayu Valley, where the Tiwanaku presence was apparently earlier than in the Cohoni region, the subject of Juan Villanueva's chapter that follows. Based on his excavations at Chullpa Loma, Villanueva argues that this site was founded by altiplano people around the time of the collapse of the Tiwanaku state. In Chapter 9, Claudia Rivera compares the interaction between the Tiwanaku people and local groups in three areas: the La Paz Valleys (strong and continuous contact with the Tiwanaku heartland), the Tacaparí Valley of Cochabamba (adoption of Tiwanaku traits through trade networks and social ties), and the Cinti Valleys of Chuquisaca (weak, indirect Tiwanaku influence).
Chapter 7, the first of Walter Sánchez's two chapters, analyzes the Paracti, Tablas Monte, and Nina Rumi Punta archaeological complexes of Cochabamba. Tiwanaku pottery was present in all three, but so too were local and Amazonian ceramics. In this and Chapter 8 on the agricultural technology of Tablas Monte, Sánchez emphasizes the creativity and agency of the local inhabitants of his research area. Chapter 10, by Orlando Tapia and José Capriles, presents survey data from the Mojocoya municipality of Chuquisaca. These results are very interesting, especially regarding the Mojocoya (AD 1–900) and Late Yampara (AD 1300–1550) phases and the notable differences in the use of space between the two.
Of the five chapters on northwest Argentina, the first two treat the San Francisco Valley of Jujuy. In Chapter 11, María Beatriz Cremonte and colleagues present a petrographic study of the pastes of 20 ceramic vessels of the San Francisco tradition (700 BC–AD 500). In the next chapter, Gabriela Ortiz and Violeta Killian inspect the San Francisco diet through stable isotope analysis, arguing for a mixed economy in which specialized agriculture played only a small role.
Chapter 13 is written by Beatriz Ventura and María Ester Albeck, and Chapter 14 by Ventura alone. Both treat the Inca occupation of the Nazareno, Iruya, and Bacoya Valleys of Salta. To gain access to this region's mineral riches and to protect the empire's eastern frontier, the Incas planted mitmaqkuna people in the zone. This process required the creation of an extensive agricultural infrastructure. The volume's last research article, Chapter 15 by Cremonte, deals with Inca strategies in Salta, with a focus on the San Antonio department, particularly, the Agua Hedionda archaeological site.
The volume succeeds in collecting important information on recent archaeological research in the eastern Andean valleys and presenting it in an easily digestible manner. The book's 45-page bibliography guides the interested reader onward, and the plentiful figures (one page per chapter in color and other figures in grayscale) are an asset to future scholarship. Several chapters would have benefited from deeper theoretical discussion regarding center–periphery relations, local agency, and identity. I also would have liked to see more intertextuality between the chapters. Furthermore, the two-chapter sets by Sánchez (Chapters 7 and 8) and Ventura (Chapters 13 [with Albeck] and 14), have a good deal of overlapping content, including figures that are the same or very similar. In addition, many Bolivian sites and regions apparently lack radiocarbon dates, and so the interpretations advanced in the volume rely heavily on relative (ceramic) chronologies. Still, Entre la vertiente tropical y los valles is undoubtedly a valuable contribution to the archaeology of the eastern valleys of the Andes.
