Fragmentación vs. Integración comunal: Repensando el período tardío del Noroeste Argentino

Abstract

Northwest Argentinás Late Pre-Hispanic Period has been generally characterized as a time of increasing complexity, institutionalized social inequality and political-economic stratification. This article's goal is to critically discuss this view and the evidence employed to support it. I claim that if we leave aside "bird's-eye" views when analyzing late-period sites and focus instead on the subjective and intersubjective experiences, practices, and social relations that past people daily developed in these places, we will then be able to reach a different understanding of late-period societies, which, I argue, developed a social life that was closer to communal integration than to stratification and segregation.