The origins and development of civilization are vital components to the understanding of the cultural processes that create human societies. In this work, the focus is on what material remains reveal about the sociopolitical structures of the Central Andes region.

This focus on ancient identity politics adopts a perspective that explicitly interrogates the processes and strategies by which higher social groups acted as self-interested agents in the achievement and maintenance of differential status, including: symbols of power and their role in the construction of an elite identity; social legitimization and achievement of economic or material power; design of architecture for the display of power and exercise of social control; and promotion of labour-intensive agriculture for the purpose of surplus production and extraction.