Lautaro Núñez's book corresponds to his 1984 doctoral thesis for the University of Tokyo, published without revision after 38 years. Evaluating a work written almost four decades ago runs the risk of being an unfair exercise. However, the work's impact on dominant issues of Andean archaeology, such as caravanning, merits this review.
This extensive book is made up of 21 chapters divided into four sections, plus 10 appendices containing detailed supporting archaeological, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic data. It seeks to explain the nature of caravan traffic on the western slope of the South Central Andes (SCA), mainly in northern Chile, with a long-term perspective from the Archaic to the present. Although the author emphasizes this is not a study of economic anthropology, it is framed within its general considerations. The economy is understood as a process, with its major phases of production, distribution, and consumption, whose connections are embedded in a network of intersettlement relations that integrate political, socioreligious, kinship, and other institutions (p. 18). The author rejects an understanding of traffic based on contemporary economic theory; he focuses on the social and historical conditions, understanding the economic process as rooted in social relations and ideology, emphasizing the role of reciprocity and redistribution.
One of the most remarkable contributions is the broader, relational approach in which he addresses caravan traffic. From the SCA as the center of analysis, connections among the SCA and the rest of the Andes are constantly being examined. In the evolution of caravan traffic over time, nothing is contingent, but its dynamics are understood from the historicity of socioeconomic processes. A comparative perspective with phenomena in the Americas (e.g., Mesoamerica) and the Old World (Europe, Africa, and Asia) provides a better understanding of the uniqueness of traffic in the SCA. The book is a masterful treatise on the literature of the time with a comprehensive worldwide review.
In Section A (Chapters 1–5) the author discusses the theoretical and methodological frameworks structuring the book. His definition of the SCA as distinct from previous subdivisions of the Andean area is a cornerstone of this work. The ecological features and the socioeconomic and political dynamics of the SCA, dramatically different from the Central and Northern Andes, are crucial to understand caravan traffic. In the SCA, the lack of urbanism, centralization, commerce, and markets constitute a crucial axis of the argument. Thus, the author distinguishes between centralized commercial operations based on markets (exchange) and transactions conducted by ethnic leaders, independent of centralized systems and in the absence of markets (barter).
Several models of complementarity in the Andes are critically evaluated (Chapter 2): trade (pp. 30–37), Murra's verticality (pp. 37–59), Browman's altiplano mode of trade (pp. 60–71), Rostworowski's coastal trade or “Chincha model” (pp. 71–77), Wallace's diffusionist explanation (pp. 77–78), and Harris's ethnic strips of interaction (pp. 78–80). Nuñez discusses the existence of such patterns across the Andes as independent variables based on ecological conditions and the sociopolitical developments in each area. Starting from this point, he draws on ethnohistoric sources, ethnographic accounts, and archaeological data. Three models stand out: (1) the trade model for the Northern Andes, used as a permanent counterpoint and as opposed to what happened in the SCA (the contrast is a resource used by the author to stress the peculiarities of the phenomenon under study); (2) verticality in the Western Valleys from Majes to Camarones; and (3) territorial strips as a proposal for the latter case of Pica Tarapacá Complex in northern Chile.
A market-based commercial strategy existed in the Northern Andes and some northern valleys of the Central Andes. This zone was shaped by two sociopolitical poles that counterbalanced caravan flow: on the one hand, stable, strongly centralized polities located in rich coastal valleys and, on the other, agropastoral centralized polities in the highlands. Conversely, in the SCA, Nuñez analyzes the possible role of exchange and colonies. It is remarkable how the author analyzes in detail early written sources, providing abundant information and subtly delineating the material side of historical information; it is a formidable methodological exercise of data squeezing, or translating historical information into archaeological terms.
Chapter 3 shows how caravan traffic cannot be separated from the entire economic process; production, distribution, and consumption are strongly intertwined and embedded in social relations. The differentiated ecologies in the Andes stimulated diversified production, specialization, and surplus, while the consumption needs of resources from other zones stimulated mutual dependence and interaction between communities along the Andean gradient. In the SCA, the absence of trade and markets is strongly emphasized due to the absence of highly centralized political power and the dispersed settlement pattern. Chapter 4 defines the methodology somewhat too vaguely. Chapter 5 explains the main propositions of the book, which will be the guiding thread of the following sections.
In Section B (Chapters 6–8), the author analyzes the nature of resources and interaction across the SCA. In Chapter 6, he analyzes characteristics of the coast-highlands transect in the SCA using the Central Andes as a counterpoint. In Chapter 7, he explores the relationships between agropastoralists and farmers in the Andes, reviewing pastoralism worldwide, and finally addressing the nature of agropastoralism in the SCA. One of the most striking themes of this chapter, a key and high-impact topic in contemporary SCA archaeology, is the ideological underpinning of Andean caravan traffic informed by immobile archaeological features observed across the desert such as rock art, geoglyphs, landmarks, caravan tracks, rest stops, among others, complemented by ethnographic and ethnohistoric information.
Chapter 8 provides the methodological design that is absent in Chapter 3, which comprehensively encompasses the material expectations of caravan traffic. It is thoroughly informed by ethnographic and ethnohistoric sources and archaeological data from the Andes: ways of identifying surplus production; individualization of transported goods (an extensive list of status goods, foodstuffs, manufactures, natural goods and raw materials, discussed in the light of archaeological evidence from the SCA); the management of the caravans in the desert; and, importantly, the material culture of caravan movement, which has subsequently been extensively studied in the Andes and other regions of the world (see, for example, Persis B. Clarkson and Calogero M. Santoro [editors], Caravans in Global Perspective: Contexts and Boundaries, Routledge, 2022).
Section C (Chapters 9–18) analyzes archaeological data for the entire sequence along the western slope of the SCA, from the Archaic period (where he places the seeds of the later caravan traffic) to the Late Horizon (Chapters 9–14). In addition, he devotes two chapters to items of the archaeological record particularly significant for traffic in the SCA: transport of metals and minerals (Chapter 15) and immobile archaeological features (Chapter 16). Chapter 17 explores the case of Pica-Tarapacá Complex (northern Chile), using the concept of territorial strips. Chapter 18 refers to the implementation of trade with markets centralized from the Inca state, thus breaking for the first time the constant of the SCA. The author constantly insists that traffic in the SCA was harmonious in nature, regardless of conflicts or tensions.
Section D (Chapters 19–21) evaluates information derived from ethnohistorical and ethnographic accounts. Consistent with a long-term perspective, Nuñez explores evidence for posthispanic caravanning using llamas, mules, and horses. Notwithstanding the dramatic structural transformations first by the colonial regime and then by the republics of Peru, Bolivia, and Chile, caravan traffic remained with variations. Núñez reads colonial historical sources through an archaeological lens, extracting unique information not directly available in the archaeological record. He highlights its framing in the new socioeconomic context of European markets from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, and the deep transformations undergone by these practices. In reviewing ethnographic information on contemporary caravans, the “caravanning cycle” constitutes a true ethnoarchaeology of caravanning.
The main conclusions (Chapter 21) emphasize the socioeconomic flow sustained by a network of complementary resources whose nature was influenced by the sociopolitical structures developed within the SCA, with low population density and settlements geographically separated, as well as by high ecological and productive diversity. Despite spatial and temporal variations, the caravan traffic system, understood as a relational process, provided coherence and internal identity to the SCA while it was supported by an ideology materially manifested in the immovable features representing the ritual dimension of the caravan system. Overall, SCA caravanning constitutes an adaptation to the desert. Its long-term perspective is an overcoming of the limiting concepts of prehistory versus history. Nevertheless, the overemphasis on social harmony is perhaps excessive, something that is today recognized self-critically by the author.
In sum, while today we have access to increasingly detailed archaeological data, the general processes of caravan traffic proposed in the book are still valid. It is a source of hypotheses as well as theoretical and methodological models of caravan traffic that we can test today in the light of current data and methodologies.
