This research aimed to document the political and economic strategies pursued by emerging elites in the Casanare region of the Orinoco drainage in the Llanos zone at the foot of the Andes of Colombia. A comparative perspective with the complex societies from the Llanos of Barinas in Venezuela offers the analytical basis for the study of the variability in the forms of leadership, demographic scale and social organization between the societies of the Llanos.
The fieldwork on which the study was based consisted of a pedestrian regional survey of 220 km2 that combined two sampling strategies. A total of 14 archaeological sites were recorded in the bancos and high alluvial floodplains. Six of these sites were nucleated villages which range in size between 5 ha and 12 ha. In some of the largest villages, one or two small mounds were constructed expressing an incipient spatial distinction between people living in the mounded areas and the rest of the population. The concentration of considerable amounts of fine ceramics, lithic artifacts made of imported chert and faunal remains suggests elite or special communal activities around the mounds. In the study region, approximately 500 ha were covered by agricultural raised fields similar to those recorded in other regions of the South American lowlands. Their extent and location suggests that they were worked at small scale based on the labor of a few families.
The complex societies from the Llanos of Casanare emerged between 1000 and 1600 A.D., and were small in demographic scale. The emerging leaders in these communities obtained status and prestige based on the investment of family labor in raised field agriculture which provides the economic basis to support feasting and middle-distance exchange of chert. Although warfare was present in the region, it was not endemic, frequent, or intensive. This characterization suggests that the emerging elites in Casanare were not exploitative in nature unlike the elites of Barinas. These findings make it possible to study the causes and consequences of the multiple factors affecting the emergence and different types of leadership in the Llanos of the Orinoco
