Status and Identity at the Margins of Empire: Foodways in pre-Inka and Inka Cuzco

Summary

Diet and cuisine are key practices in the daily negotiation of status and identity, particularly when studied at the household level. In the Maras region of rural Cuzco, the developing Inka state and a rival polity known ethnohistorically as the Ayarmaka maintained autonomous economic, social, and political practices. While other groups in the Cuzco region exchanged goods and shared some cultural practices with the Inka, the Ayarmakas did not. In the 15th century, the Ayarmaka suddenly abandoned the principal settlements in their homeland, and Inka rulers developed the Maras area into royal estate lands in the generations that followed, settling foreign retainer laborers there instead. Recent excavations at the largest sites in Maras during the pre-Inka and Inka periods provide a diachronic view of household economies at the margins of the growing Inka empire. Faunal analysis at both sites yields intrasite and intersite comparisons of social status and ethnic identity. We find greater distinctions among pre-Inka Maras contexts, and fewer in the Inka resettlement of retainers, based on the examination of taxa, species richness, camelid age-at-death and meat yields, and meat preparation techniques. This study reconstructs the local interactions of rival and subject populations in the imperial Andes.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Status and Identity in the Imperial Andes   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15418