The Role of Institutions in Imperial Formations in the Andes

Summary

This is an abstract from the "From Households to Empires: Papers Presented in Honor of Bradley J. Parker" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Bradley Parker was first and foremost a student of empire. As an Assyriologist and a budding Andeanist, he was enthralled with understanding the rise and persistence of empire from a comparative approach, and at the time of his death was building an inspirational model to understand imperial expansion from the ground up. Our discussions lead me to question the role of institutions in imperial legacies. In this paper, I explore how Andean institutions were critical to the first imperial formations, and how the persistence of those institutions even after political collapse of empire was fundamental to the establishment of future imperial formations in the Andes. I start by examining Wari, a first generation empire that both Bradley and I have used as a basis for understanding the genesis of Andean expansive states. New research on Wari has been critical in understanding how institutions served the state in both incorporating and maintaining connections with distant regions under imperial influence. I then examine the histories of several Inca institutions that were essential to the establishment and maintenance of the empire, and argue that it was through institutional antecedents, especially those adopted and developed by Wari, that Inca imperialism was ultimately so successful.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• From Households to Empires: Papers Presented in Honor of Bradley J. Parker   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23110