For more than a century, the iconography of the Southern Andes—a geographical setting of rugged highlands, extensive mesetas, glacier mountains, deserts, and tropical forests—during the first millennium AD has attracted public and scholarly interest to the archaeology of that region and has contributed to placing that field of research in an outstanding position within precolumbian studies. This volume—edited by William H. Isbell, Mauricio I. Uribe, Anne Tiballi, and Edward P. Zegarra—is the outcome of a colloquium held in Santiago de Chile that focused on the visual culture associated with the Tiwanaku style, designated in this book as the Southern Andean Iconographic Series (SAIS). The long-term development of those stylistic and artistic expressions contributed to establishing a profound relationship among the Titicaca Basin (the center of Tiwanaku society), the central and southern parts of Peru, northern Chile, the eastern valleys of Bolivia, and the northwest sierra of Argentina—a geographic space comparable not only in extension and ecological complexity but also in its sociocultural articulation to Mesoamerica, the Aegean, or Mesopotamia.

The creation and appropriation of images occur in a continuous process of elaborating values and meanings usually entangled with the construction of hierarchies and senses of social belonging and exclusion. Furthermore, the forms of shared ideologies or festive communality transmitted by the icons may serve to hide political and socioeconomic disparities. In the introductory chapter of the book, Isbell examines the features that help define a history and an ethos that were progressively shared by different polities. From this point of departure, the first section of this richly illustrated volume examines the early part of the SAIS. The origins of iconography in the Yaya-Mama Tradition (900–200 BC) from the Titicaca area are treated in the first two chapters. Sergio Chavez, in Chapter 2, reviews his decades-long work in the basin and discusses two Yaya-Mama characters: Woman with Alpaca and Feline Man. The site of Pukara, on the north side of the lake and a potential rival or partner of an incipient Tiwanaku site, is explored in Chapter 3 by Elizabeth Klarich and Cecilia Chávez Justo, who present the materials and settings of that notable religious and feasting center of the altiplano.

The next chapters analyze the production of two sets of images that are representative of the early SAIS. The elaboration and chronological ordering of the stone stelae in the Pajano/Yaya-Mama, Kjonkho, Mocachi, and Tiwanaku styles, from the south section of the Titicaca Basin, are the themes of John Janusek and Arik Ohnstad's chapter. In Chapters 5 and 6, Ann Peters and Joerg Haeberli, respectively, discuss the Rayed Head or Front-Face god(s), a typical sign of the Tiwanaku presence in the area and beyond. They analyze the meaning, diversity, and mutual stylistic influences—from Ica and Siguas to the “Provincial Pukara” and Azapa styles—of the depictions of radiant deities, recognizing in the process several problems (and consequent resolution points) in the identification of styles, iconography, and media.

Dedicated to the later part of the SAIS, Section 2 shifts the focus to the Tiwanaku central territory and related regions. The offering caches from Isla Pariti are presented in Chapter 7 by Antii Korpisaari, director (along with Jedú Sagárnaga) of an excavation project that revealed unusual facets of Tiwanaku techné and art. Chapters by Karen Anderson, Carolina Agüero and Mauricio Uribe, and Christina Torres-Rouff and Mark Hubbe approach from different perspectives the stylistic tendencies and the flow of materials—two aspects commonly assumed to index Tiwanaku colonialism—in Cochabamba, the western valleys of Tarapacá, and Atacama, focusing attention on the local processes of interaction with Tiwanaku. At Atacama, the use of sacred plants in ceremonies intended for healing (and communication with divine beings and ancestors) is discussed in Chapter 11 by Constantino Torres, who examines an extensive set of objects used in ritual encounters.

The visual “diaspora” of the Southern supernatural beings is presented by Paul Goldstein, who traces the regional distribution of gods and goddesses that, in his view, refer to concepts of gender complementarity/opposition, patriarchy, and local resistance reflected in ceramic production. Researchers not only of agency in ancient societies but also of contemporary feminism will find of special interest Goldstein's input on the religious and ideological expressions of women in Tiwanaku and their association with “utilitarian” pottery rather than with fine materials (like those from Pariti). Emily Stovel and Michael Diebel explore the evolution of the SAIS from outside the Altiplano area, presenting a welcome and needed approach to Atacama domestic ceramics (without including, however, images of the objects themselves). The coetaneous occupation of the Humahuaca valley is attended to by Myriam Tarragó in her exploration of the links between local materiality and the SAIS, encompassing a remarkable group of metal artifacts.

Section 3 explores the relations between the Southern Andes and Wari, the macro-polity that flourished between 600 and 900 AD in Ayacucho, 700 km to the north of Tiwanaku in the central Peruvian highlands. The development of Wari (as reflected in the famous Conchopata site) and its relationship with the Titicaca zone and the southern sierra are analyzed by Isbell, who in Chapter 15 returns to the iconography of the Staff God and places it against the distinctive late Nasca and Ayacucho visual traditions. Donna Nash examines the rhetorics of political authority of the period from the perspective of Cerro Baúl, a Wari settlement in the vicinity of Tiwanaku in Moquegua. The art of governing in the Middle Horizon is further discussed by Rommel Falcón and Peter Eeckhout, who focus on images from the Peruvian central coast. Textiles were, as Falcón demonstrates for Huaca Malena, a primary product associated with gender and social hierarchies. In a contribution that includes the north-central Peruvian coast, Eeckhout assesses the Nievería, Pachacamac, Casma-Supe, and “Three-Color” styles of the Middle Horizon in a context of ethnic identities in interaction with the Wari. Hélène Bernier and Claude Chapdelaine leap even farther to the north, to review the presence of supernatural beings and conventional compositions similarly constructed in the Wari and Moche styles, a resemblance that, in their view, originated from image-making norms inherited from earlier Formative societies.

The final part of the book includes general interpretations of the SAIS rooted in archaeology, Inca ethnohistory, and anthropology. The embodiment of Tiwanaku and Wari women is addressed by Jo Ellen Burkholder in her study of depictions of mothers, young women, and feminine agency in the Southern societies. In dialogue with Isbell's contribution in the previous section, Krzystof Makowski examines the SAIS from Wari and other areas of the Peruvian Middle Horizon and their relations (or distinctions) in iconography and political organization with Tiwanaku. Martti Pärssinen explores the nonhuman animated world of Tiwanaku images (and its long-term meaning) in a chapter dedicated to the water beings that pervade the vessels used in the rituals of propitiation and social engagement conducted at Pariti. Patricia Knobloch analyzes instead the foundational histories of the Wari empire, focusing her study on a set of political “agents” (identified in figurative ceramics and textiles) that she considers responsible for introducing the SAIS in Ayacucho. Textiles make an additional appearance in the chapter by Mary Frame, who analyzes the logics of the physical and symbolic creation of Middle Horizon tunics and seeks to develop the cognitive structures that helped model a “social geometry” through the teaching and learning of graphic codes. A counterpoint to Torres is offered by Helena Horta, who evaluates the images used in ceremonies of shamanic visions in the high-altitude Circum-Puna area of Argentina and Chile. The closing chapter by Isbell highlights the contributions of SAIS studies to research in precolumbian South America.

Debate in Southern Andean archaeology about whether precolonial empires, states, and other political formations observed in that region were created through diverse, rather than homogeneous, processes remains dynamic and challenging. The advance (or retraction) of Tiwanaku or Wari influence likely met with both resistance and acceptance in different regions. The richness of graphic information presented to the reader should not seduce us to look only at their aesthetics; rather, as several chapters of the book emphasize, imagery should be used to examine the complex realities that accompanied the rise and fall of expansive polities through diplomacy, rituality, and violence. Altogether, the chapters reflect and update theories, correct long-held misconceptions, and generate new positions in the study of Southern Andean icons. However, given the number of chapters in the book, some arguments are necessarily compressed. The vast amount of data and the number of works cited do not interfere with the general understanding of the volume but do make it necessary to cross-check primary and complementary sources to fill gaps and answer questions that emerge while reading it. A larger number of comparative chronological charts would have made the reader's task easier. Images in less-than-ideal resolution are rare but not absent. I am also surprised by the emphasis of some authors on the concept of “prehistory”—a term (and a political construct) that is uncommon in Andean academic communities.

Several differences in focus between Andean archaeologies are also evident throughout the volume. “Stylistic horizons,” a cherished term in the regional archaeological literature, do not always reflect the heterogeneity that prevails for a single period (as for the Omo and Chen Chen styles). The use of terms like “Southern” or “Middle Horizon” sometimes can create superimposed indexes of temporal and sociocultural belonging. No less important is the fact that the works gathered in this volume mostly reflect scholarship conducted from the perspective of North American and European archaeologists, with a minor proportion of the contributions originating in Andean countries. This disproportion also exposes the difficulties faced by South American academics who generally have less access to funding but are directly confronted with the gradual destruction of archaeological sites.

The Southern Andes shows multiple regional identities mutually built through political maneuvering, traffic involving llama caravans, and religious peregrinations. These chapters presented by Isbell and his colleagues will no doubt stimulate debate on the degree of mutual legibility of graphical lexicons used as media of authority and differentiation. We may consider whether the adoption of symbols could be as complex as in the modern world, in which SAIS semantics are subject to reuse and resignification by Aymara communities, political parties, and academic associations. The character of the Tiwanaku and Wari polities as organizations oriented to articulate communal efforts under principles of asymmetrical reciprocity and rules of hospitality was, certainly, just a part of the social complexity of those political bodies (and the myriad of local populations involved). Vibrant legacies of the Southern traditions also offer the possibility of viewing the Andean world as a web of regions with parallel but differentiated histories. The long-term impact of Southern Andean traditions can still be felt and seen in modern Andean republics. A sense of identity rooted in Aymara and Quechua indigenous ethnicities prevails in broad segments of Bolivian, Peruvian, and Chilean populations, who have sought to position themselves in the culture and government of those nations, often using the icons of Tiwanaku/SAIS past to promote their agendas.

This book is a remarkable resource for the exploration of the visual culture of the Southern Andes that I recommend to scholars interested in archaeology and art history and, more broadly, in Latin America's past and present. Far from being an introductory text, this collective work, monumental as the human geography that it examines, is essential for an updated understanding and survey of one of the greatest iconographical systems in the history of the Western Hemisphere. Its expansion into a series of state-of-the-art volumes addressing the political panorama, ethnicity, and economy of Southern Andean prehispanic societies would be welcome.