{
  "author": "ChronologiaOS editorial guides",
  "date": "2026-10-09",
  "department": "Kingdoms & Monuments",
  "department_id": "KINGDOMS",
  "epistemic_label": "Source guide",
  "epistemic_status": "SOURCE_GUIDE",
  "period": "400\u2013900 CE",
  "place": "Lake Titicaca basin, Bolivia",
  "public_sources": [
    {
      "publisher": "UNESCO World Heritage Centre",
      "title": "Tiwanaku: Spiritual and Political Centre of the Tiwanaku Culture",
      "type": "Heritage site record",
      "url": "https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/567/"
    }
  ],
  "publication_state": "PUBLIC",
  "read_time": "3 min read",
  "sections": [
    {
      "body": "UNESCO inscribed Tiwanaku in 2000 as the spiritual and political centre of a culture whose influence spread widely across the Andes; the nomination describes it as a capital until about the eighth century CE, with political dominance declining from the eleventh century.",
      "heading": "Start with the record",
      "source": 0
    },
    {
      "body": "The research record frames an urban florescence at about 400 to 900 CE and warns against using that range as the date of every monument at the site. Building sequences at a long-lived centre need their own evidence.",
      "heading": "A florescence, not every monument"
    },
    {
      "body": "Conservation reports in the record mention concern for the stability of the Akapana platform and the condition of the Gate of the Sun. A monument's current state and its original form are separate facts; reconstructions in between add a third.",
      "heading": "Try the research habit",
      "source": 0
    },
    {
      "body": "What would show that a widely shared style across the Andes meant political control rather than admiration and exchange?",
      "heading": "A question to carry forward"
    }
  ],
  "short_title": "Does a shared style mean a shared ruler?",
  "slug": "tiwanaku-a-capital-on-the-altiplano",
  "summary": "Follow Tiwanaku from urban florescence to decline, and learn why the record refuses to date every monument by the city's best-known centuries.",
  "tags": [
    "Tiwanaku",
    "Andes",
    "Altiplano",
    "Bolivia",
    "Urbanism"
  ],
  "title": "Tiwanaku: a capital on the altiplano."
}