This volume investigates how the issue of power is approached by scholars of the South American Andes in order to obtain a comparative perspective. Participants represent a wide range of regional, temporal, methodological, and theoretical perspectives on the prehispanic Andes from the Preceramic Period (representing the earliest sedentary societies) through the Late Horizon (the expansionary phase of the Inca Empire). Furthermore, the volume brings the issue of power to the forefront of research in the region. The intent here is not to prescribe any specific view of or approach to power but rather to bring together an array of approaches-both theoretical and methodological--as they are currently being employed by archaeologists in the Andes. As such it enriches the study of the emergence of complex societies, the origins of the state, and dynamics of sociopolitical organization in well-known societies like the Chav´in, Nasca, Wari, Tiwanaku, and Inca and in less-well-known groups, such as the pre- and post-Tiwanaku societies of the altiplano and the Late Intermediate Period groups of the south coast of Peru.