Politics of Property: A GIS Analysis of the Shifting Value of Agricultural Land in Colonial Cusco

Summary

Recent GIS studies of colonialism combine archival and archaeological data to understand and map changes in political economy, such as settlement patterns, land use, and population aggregations. Such studies often overlook how colonial politics centered on the transformation of value—the social significance of the things and resources that constituted social life. This paper develops a GIS method to document shifts in land value in the Inca imperial capital (Cusco, Peru), during the long process of Spanish colonization (ca. 1533-1650). The paper develops a range of GIS methods to analyze the historical ecology of Colonial Cusco, by analyzing where the Incas developed agricultural lands, then identifying the lands that were subjects of early Colonial litigation between indigenous people, Incas, and Spaniards. The paper builds on this foundation to consider how shifts from maize to wheat production corresponded to changes in the social value of land, and discusses how changes in field types, soils, labor requirements, and agricultural-ritual institutions structured how Andean people experienced and contested Spanish Colonialism. The paper adds to our anthropological understanding of colonialism, focusing less on political domination and more on how different social actors negotiated the regimes of value of a colonial project.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Methodological Tool or Paradigm Shifter? Assessing the Status of GIS in Archaeological Research

Keywords

Spatial Coverage