Inka (Other Keyword)
1-25 (29 Records)
How did prehispanic farmers make a living in the hyperarid, high-altitude Atacama Desert, and how did their lives and landscapes change under different political regimes? In this paper, we discuss our ongoing project on irrigated landscapes in the interfluvial region between the Upper Loa and Salado rivers in northern Chile. Research has focused on two sites (Paniri and Topaín) with remarkably well preserved spring-fed canal and terrace systems and a residential and administrative center...
Breaking Down the East-West Dichotomy: Toward an Understanding of Intercultural Interactions in the Saipurú Region under the Inkas (2015)
In the last decades prior to the Spanish conquest, the Inka Empire expanded its frontiers into the ethnically and culturally diverse region of the Bolivian Chaco, ushering in a brief period of limited colonial control over its indigenous inhabitants. In a geographically isolated area far from the imperial heartland, the Inkas and their imperial allies established settlements in the vicinity of Saipurú; in this context, several disparate highland and lowland cultures met, interacted, and created...
Cheqoq Inka Imperial Workshop Ceramic Rims (Cusco, Peru) (2018)
Subset of ceramics recovered at the archaeological site of Cheqoq-Maras (Urubamba, Cusco, Peru) during excavations of a Cuzco-Inka (imperial-style) pottery workshop. These data include contextual attributes, as well as rim diameters, rim thickness, and body thickness for all Cuzco-Inka rim sherds identifiable to form type. These data have been published in Quave, Kylie E. 2017. "Imperial-style ceramic production on a royal estate in the Inka heartland (Cuzco, Peru)." Latin American Antiquity 28...
Chimú-Inka Ceramics: Quantifying differences between Colonial forms and their influences (2015)
Between 1428 and 1534 the Inka conquered the world’s largest territory controlled by a single state including 1300 km of coastline from the 1460 conquest of their main rivals, the Chimú. Studies on Inka provincial administrative policies are increasingly important in understanding the pre-conquest Andes, however, there has been no study of the effects of Inka subjugation on the art of their most powerful former enemy. Ceramics from the Chimú-Inka period offer a striking example of how...
Cochasquí under the Inka: Reassessing the Inka presence in northern Ecuador (2016)
The archaeological site of Cochasquí exhibits some of Ecuador’s largest and most ornate earthen pyramids or Tolas. With long dirt ramps and truncated steps of cangahua blocks, the Cochasquí pyramids are some of the most recognizable in the country. It was at this site that the Inka first encountered and conquered one of the great polities of the Caranqui Confederation. Sometime after its conquest by the Inka, the Spanish arrive and, by all historic accounts, the location was abandoned by 1580...
The Colors of the Coya's Robes (2016)
Of the many surviving pre-Columbian Inka textiles, especially those made in tapestry and featuring tukapu (rectangular design blocks), only a few full-size garments are associated with females. There are, however, many miniature female garments. Inka textiles also tend to follow a limited number of color combinations, although some textiles show a more diverse, even exuberant mixture. Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, in his section on the coyas (queens), attributes a specific set of colors to each...
Copper Rich, Water Poor: The Southern Atacama under Inka Rule (2016)
The hyperarid and thinly populated Atacama area of northern Chile seems an unlikely target of imperial interest. However, archaeological research has demonstrated direct control over this territory and its people by the Inka, who were drawn to the region by rich copper deposits that have been exploited at least since the Late Archaic (4500 BP). How did the Inka reorganize copper mining technology and labor? How were mining and metallurgical centers provisioned in this agriculturally marginal...
Crafting Identity and Wealth on the North Coast of Peru (2015)
The "organization of production" is not a monolithic, homogeneous entity in complex empires, and the production of different types of goods will be organized commensurate with the role they play in sociopolitical processes. In this paper, I investigate the ways in which craft production was reorganized after the Inka conquest of the Chimú polity of Peru to control the creation and deployment of wealth and to manipulate the construction of social identity in the changing sociopolitical landscape....
Fertility, water and rock art on the Inka imperial fringes: The valley of Mariana and Samaipata (2017)
Samaipata was one of the largest centers of the Southeastern Inka frontier. Multifunctional in nature, it was an important advance point toward the tropical lowlands. Despite the intrusions of the Guaraní-Chiriguanos, this region witnessed complex processes of settlement reorganization. This was particularly the case of the fertile valley of Mairana, an important breadbasket of this frontier outpost. Occupied by the Mojocoya and Gray Ware archaeological cultures, their inhabitants produced...
From Heartland to Province: Assessing Inca Political Economy through Material Culture Signatures (2018)
Archaeological studies of Inca hegemony often focus on the intensity or degree of "Incanization," or assimilation to Inca material culture. These studies particularly rely upon well-preserved and highly visible remains, especially well-fired polychrome ceramics and monumental architecture. While Inca scholars have begun to analyze Inca hegemony in theoretically sophisticated ways that reveal how material culture legitimizes imperial rule, these approaches present several weaknesses: (1) sampling...
Frontier, Inka craft production and the Kallawaya territory (2015)
In this paper I will evaluate the nature of Inka specialized craft production in the province of Kallawaya, and the ways in which the manufacture and distribution of imperial pottery was an avenue to enhance status. I have two goals in this presentation. First, using archaeological and ethohistoric data, I will assess the nature of production in the ceramic workshop of Milliraya and the role of specialized mitmaqkuna colonies in such processes. Second, I will illuminate the ways in which the...
A GIS Analysis of Production Areas, Ritual Spaces, and Socioeconomics at the Mixed Inka-Local Administrative Center of Turi, Northern Chile (2017)
While anthropologists are often concerned with profiling the socioeconomic character of the cultures they study, this task can be challenging for archaeological researchers investigating long-abandoned settlements. Intrasite socioeconomic reconstructions in particular may depend upon such factors as the accurate detection of specific production activities and the partitioning of architectural features into socially informative categories. This paper presents a case study on this topic wherein...
A Glance at Camata: GIS Analyses of Camata Valley, Bolivia (2015)
Although significant research has been accomplished on the Inka Empire, there are still questions about how the Inka integrated diverse people and lands, especially those regions near their imperial frontier, such as the Camata Valley. Understanding how the valley became part of the Inka imperial frontier will shed light into studies of colonialism, borderlands, landscapes, and imperialism. The goal of this poster is to explore patterns across the landscape of the Camata Valley. More...
he Inca Incorporation of the Canete Valley, Part 2: Strategies and Responses, excavations at Huaca Daris (2015)
Field research by the Canete Archaeological Project (CAP) has begun to unveil rich data regarding the Inca incorporation of the Middle and Lower Canete Valley. Utilizing both systematic survey and excavations, our work suggests a complex but intensive interaction between the Inca and those who occupied the valley before them. In this paper, we begin to tease out the imperial strategies of incorporation and local responses to them. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the...
The House that Built Me: local and non-local among the Lurin Yauyos during the Inka Empire (2017)
Most scholarship on the shifts in local lifeways during the Late Horizon strictly focused on changes in the availability to new and limited-access goods by local elites (D’Altroy 2001; Hastorf 1990; 2003). In these models, local leaders became immersed in reciprocal and status-granting relationships with the Inka through gifts and exclusive artifacts. Materiality played a pivotal role in the relationship between the Inka and their subjects. However, it is less clear how local ethnicity was...
Inka Frontier Political Economy: The Kallawayas and Yampara (2016)
In this paper I will evaluate the political economy of the ancient Inka imperial frontier in order to understand the ways in which competing border lords affiliated themselves to the empire, including associated processes of social competition, specialized production and changes in the indigenous local trajectories . In doing so, I will explore two Inka frontier segments. The first is located in the Yampara territory in the Southeastern region, and the second, in the central frontier in the...
The Inka in Chankillo ? (2016)
The Inka used numerous strategies to expand and integrate a growing empire. We present a case of Inka mobilization of things and ideas, seeking to establish context, through the lenses of stone cults, wak’as, sun worship, and sukankas, for a unique fertility offering found far from the capital on a tower at the Chankillo site (400-200 BC) on the north-central coast. The towers functioned as a solar observatory: sunrises and sunsets were tracked across the towers from two observation points. An...
Interactions, Geopolitical Mastery, and Empire: What Local-Level Political Machinations Tell Us about Imperial Strategy during the Late Prehispanic Period (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Dedication, Collaboration, and Vision, Part I: Papers in Honor of Tom D. Dillehay" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tom Dillehay’s early research in the Peruvian Chillon valley integrated archaeological and historical methods to demonstrate that Inka imperialism was not monolithic. Critically engaging with traditional models of verticality among Andean communities, his data-rich research demonstrated that the previous...
Intersubjectivity in Inka Visual Culture (2016)
The Inka of western South America, who reached the height of their power in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, identified certain rocks as sharing many characteristics with human beings. Such rocks were sentient and some of them had the ability to speak and move. Some rocks were said to eat and drink the foods and liquids humans eat and drink, dress in human clothing, and speak Runasimi, the language spoken by the Inka. The Inka, in recognizing the sentience of certain rocks, practiced...
Laying the Foundations: A Unique Inka Construction Technique in the Northern Ecuadorian Highlands (2015)
While Inka architecture is occasionally discussed as if it were a unified corpus of building styles, regional variation is great, with the Inka frequently adopting local techniques. Recent excavations is northern Ecuador have uncovered examples of a little documented Inka foundation style found at several sites in the region. At Hacienda Guachalá, where local legends maintain that the hacienda chapel, reportedly one of the oldest in Ecuador, was built atop an Inka temple, the early colonial...
Maintaining an Imperial Borderland: Inka and Indigenous Activities and Interactions in a Threatened Eastern Andean Valley (2017)
In the final decades before the Spanish invasion of the Andes, the Inka Empire struggled to maintain its eastern frontier against the imminent threat posed by the invading lowland Chiriguano peoples. Located within this sparsely populated and loosely connected borderland region was the settlement of Pulquina Arriba, an Inka tampu (waystation) strategically constructed along a preexisting indigenous road network that ran adjacent to a rich river valley. The area’s inhabitants were involved in...
Not Quite One and the Same: Repetition and Rule in the Inka Provinces (2017)
The use of molds for pottery manufacture is an integral part of the ceramic tradition of the North Coast of Peru, dating to at least as early as AD 100. Analysis of mold-made Chimu-Inka monkey effigy vessels excavated from mortuary contexts at the sites of Farfan and Tucume suggest that Late Horizon fineware production occurred in local workshops rather than in a centralized facility—a pattern consistent with other studies of Inka pottery production from around the Central Andes. The use and...
Ontological foundations of Inka archaeology (2016)
The “ontological turn” ties several core anthropological questions about cultural variability in human interaction with the world, all of which can best be summarized by Sapir’s dictum—from the 1920s— that “the worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.” Drawing on evidence—ethnographic, grammatical, cognitive, material, and visual—from the central Andes (principally from Southern Quechua and their Inka ancestors), I...
REDIFINING THE CHACHAPOYA TERRITORY (2015)
The number of studies in the ancient Chachapoya territory increased tremendously in the last two decades. It is clear that the concept of a Chachapoya unit does not have a strong basis. This is not a new idea, ethnohistorial documents refer to the differentiated communities included in the common denomination introduced since the time of the Inka conquest. This presentation reviews the distribution of sites referred in the literature, introducing new data based on speleological studies,...
Resultados preliminares del Proyecto Moqi (Peru): explorando la administracion inkaica en el departamento de Tacna (2017)
Moqi es un asentamiento Inca ubicado entre las cuencas de los ríos Cambaya y Borogueña, a 2,8000 msnm, en la cabecera del río Locumba (Tacna, Peru). Las investigaciones (2012-2014) buscaron ampliar el conocimiento de las características arquitectónicas de Moqi Alto y Moqi Bajo, la producción del sitio arqueológico, las relaciones entre su población y el vínculo económico, social y cultural con el Estado Inca. Los primeros resultados, en el contexto de la hipótesis planteada (que propone que Moqi...