Non-state artisan specializations and exchange in the margins of the Inca Empire

Summary

Although most of the time is assumed that local economies were almost completely overtaken and transformed by the interest of Inca elites, there were situations were households behaved in more autonomous and probably unexpected ways from the point of view of the empire. Low-scale artisan specialization in mining related activities using imperial infrastructure such as the Inca road was one of the ways to strive and succeed during times of political change, when isolated areas like the Atacama desert became more globalized and integrated into wider social systems.

Opportunities for exchange were open and profited by some corporate groups who detached themselves from agricultural production. They became at least for some seasons full-time miners and artisans living and working far from home in the middle of the desert.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage