The Illusion of Total Control in the Provinces of the Inca Empire

Author(s): Francisco Garrido

Year: 2016

Summary

Despite the interest of the Inca empire in promoting their ideology and establishing a strong political economy in their provinces, the actual result of that process was full set of “trade-offs” that involved the empowerment of local elites, and the independent development of parallel economies of sumptuary goods and household provisioning. This proposition challenges current and dominant “top-down” approaches to the Inca empire, where all economic and political transformations are seen as a direct product of the Inca intervention, without room for local agency. I propose to go beyond simple dichotomies of adaptation and resistance and explore other ways in which local populations may have infiltrated the structure of the empire for their own benefit as a “bottom up” response to imperial control.

Cite this Record

The Illusion of Total Control in the Provinces of the Inca Empire. Francisco Garrido. Presented at The 81st Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Orlando, Florida. 2016 ( tDAR id: 403521)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

min long: -93.691; min lat: -56.945 ; max long: -31.113; max lat: 18.48 ;