Factional Ceramic Economies in the Inka Imperial Heartland

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Alfareros deste Inga: Pottery Production, Distribution and Exchange in the Tawantinsuyu" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Inka ceramic workshops have been identified in many Inka provinces, but the process of making and disseminating Inka pottery in the imperial heartland of Cuzco has been largely unknown until recently. Previously, scholars assumed Inka pottery was made in state-sponsored workshops near the urban capital. However, excavations at a royal estate site 30 km northwest of Cuzco (Cheqoq, Maras) revealed a small-scale imperial-style ceramic workshop operating in the late decades of Tawantinsuyu. This paper examines the archaeological and ethnohistoric context at Cheqoq, an Inka village where forcibly migrated retainer laborers from nearby and distant ethnic groups were resettled in the late imperial period. Cheqoq was one of the largest Inka domestic sites in the Cuzco region, with dozens of large imperial storehouses, a corral complex, heterogeneous domestic terraces, and the first securely-identified imperial pottery production locus in Inka Cuzco. The site was likely one of many where imperial pottery was produced; however, household excavations there indicate that the pottery was not destined to be used at the same site. Retainer laborers at Cheqoq produced imperial-style goods for the benefit of a particular royal faction, and contributed to the formation of a decentralized ceramic economy in the imperial heartland.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Alfareros deste Inga: Pottery Production, Distribution and Exchange in the Tawantinsuyu

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 26127