Wari culture and the Middle Horizon state in the Central Andes

Huari grew up in the Ayacucho basin of the south-central highlands of Peru. Its religious imagery, above all the Staff God, resembles that of Tiwanaku near Lake Titicaca, and both may go back to the earlier Pukara culture. From about 600 the Wari began to expand: in the Carahuarazo valley they took over small villages and built an administrative centre, Jincamocco, introducing terrace farming and maize, and the ancient oracle of Pachacamac on the coast came under their sway while remaining largely autonomous. Provincial centres with large rectangular enclosures of rough stone and plaster — Pikillaqta near Cusco, whose walled complex covers some two square kilometres, Viracochapampa and Honcopampa in the north, Cerro Baúl in the Moquegua valley, where Wari and Tiwanaku settlers lived side by side without conflict — were linked to the capital by roads; several Wari sites lie along the later Inca highways.

The Wari left no writing, but the earliest known khipus, the knotted cords later used by the Inca for records, are attributed to them. Their tapestry tunics and polychrome pottery spread a common style, and feasts with maize beer bound local leaders to the state. The unlooted royal tomb found in 2013 at El Castillo de Huarmey, with three high-ranking women and rich offerings, shows Wari power on the north coast. Whether Wari was an empire is debated: William Isbell, Katherine Schreiber and Luis Lumbreras point to its roads and planned centres, while others doubt that it ruled the central coast, where local states may only have traded with it.

The dates come from archaeology and differ between sources: the English Wikipedia gives about 500–1000 for the Wari culture and about 600–1100 for the Wari state, the Russian article about 500–1000, with the state breaking up at the end of the 9th century. After about 800, amid long droughts, Wari declined: the capital was dramatically depopulated by about 1000, doorways in its buildings were deliberately blocked, and skeletons show a sharp rise in violence as the Late Intermediate Period began. Shimada and colleagues (1991) found no concrete evidence for the older idea that Wari conquerors brought down the Moche.