Multiscalar Analysis of an Early Rival to Inca Power

Summary

Systematic regional survey research identified Yunkaray as a town at the center of a hierarchical network of villages near Maras, approximately 20 km to the northwest of the Inca capital. A grid of more than 80 intensive collection units established Yunkaray to be larger than 20 hectares, almost all of which was occupied and abandoned during the Late Intermediate Period (c. AD 1000-1400). The scarcity of Inca imperial pottery in surface collections suggested that abandonment occurred during the early period of Inca state expansion, after AD 1200. In 2015, we directed excavations at Yunkaray to study life at the center of a polity that competed for a time with the growing Inca state. Our excavations identified households and plazas, revealing aspects of daily life and social organization at a time of regional political and economic competition. As a town first settled around AD 1000, Yunkaray contrasts with other large valley-bottom settlements in the Cusco region, where Late Intermediate Period prominence followed centuries of occupation. The abandonment of Yunkaray also contrasts with Cusco, a center that continued to grow as it conquered, becoming an imperial capital.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Framing the Local within the Regional: Current Research in the Cusco Region, Peru

Keywords

Spatial Coverage