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

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.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Rethinking the Inka: the View from the South

Keywords

Spatial Coverage