"Chavin de Huántar's distinctive architecture and artwork inspired early researchers to view the site as the origin centre of a Chavín style and indeed as the origin of the Andean civilization (Tello 1960). [...] Previous studies in the Chavín monumental centre proposed that the site spanned 1200-200 B.C. (Lumbreras 1989), while studies based on excavations outside the centre postulated that the site spanned 850-200 B.C. and that its peak followed the decline, by 500 B.C., of other sites, particularly on the coast (Burger 1981, 1984b). Our recent detailed analysis of the architectural sequence of the centre itself, however, suggests that the centre reached its final monumental construction stage by approximately 750 B.C. (Kembel, 2001). [...] It therefore appears that Chavín de Huántar was one of the many monumental centres that existed in the late IP [= Initial Period, 1800-900 B.C.] and the early EH [= Early Horizon, 900-200 B.C.] and that declined by the middle of the first millennium B.C., rather than one that developed largely after the decline of these other centres and flourished in the late EH (Kembel 2001) [...] Accordingly, the following discussion views Chavín's interactions with other sites occurring within a large interaction sphere involving many peer or near peer centers, rather than as a late center whose dominance results from the collapse of the other centres."

Quoted from:

Rodriguez Kembel, Silvia and Rick, W. John, "Building Authority at Chavín de Huántar: Models of Social Organization and Development in the Initial Period and Early Horizon" in Silverman, Elaine (Ed.), Andean Archaeology, Blackwell Publishing 2004