Walled Rock Wak’as on Inka Royal Estates in the Heartland

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Navigating Imperialism: Negotiated Communities and Landscapes of the Inka Provinces" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper analyzes early state formation and integration of local groups at two royal estates, Tipon and Pisaq. Tipon, southeast of Cusco, began as a Killke period settlement before 1400. It functioned as outpost in the buffer zone between the Muyna and Pinagua in the Lucre Basin and the growing Cusco polity. Wiraqocha Inka turned Tipon into his royal estate. Pisaq, in the Vilcanota Valley, was developed into a royal estate by Pachakuti on land annexed from the Cuyo. Both estates exhibit a walled-in modified rock outcrop in close vicinity to Cusco-style architecture. The discussion will compare and contrast the individual settings of the estates and rock wak’as as repeated markers of Inka state authority. Andean settlements grew from the union of a localized wak’a with its territory and the people this wak’a favored. The Inka seized local wak’as and often redefined them as active agents of the state near architectural spaces where ideological performances occurred to impose a new imperial order. The physical differences between the outcrops (uncarved versus geometric sculptures) suggest that whereas the new order of the Inka state was taxonomic and essentialized, it allowed flexibility in how to materialize and visualize it.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Navigating Imperialism: Negotiated Communities and Landscapes of the Inka Provinces

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32348