From there, a great long time ago, even before the Incas were born: Representations of the Inka Empire among the Lurin Yauyos

Summary

Andean archaeology consistently uses the Spanish colonial written record as a guide in interpreting the characteristics of the different societies that fell under the Inka rule. However, a growing body of scholarship on the material culture of such incorporated societies shows that the nature of their relationship with the Empire was variable, and that Inka control was not territorially continuous. One key strategy through which the Inka incorporated these groups was the entangling and capture of their local religious practices with those of the official state cult. In this paper, I propose to flip this model and ask how local polities interpreted the Inka within their own memory and history. In other words, what were the narratives that some of these polities spanned to define their own standing within the Empire? I focus on the Yauyos people from the highlands of Lima, Peru. Through and archaeological and historical analysis, I argue that local rituals and spaces served as the critical medium through which the Yauyos defined their own interpretation of the Inka and their new position within their empire, thinking of themselves as allies as of the Inka as subjected to their own local deities.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20633