A Multidisciplinary Approach to Inca Resettlement in the Andes

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Thinking Big in the Andes: Papers in Honor of Charles Stanish" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

We employ a novel multidisciplinary approach to test the Inca (ca. 1400–1532 CE) policy of forced resettlement (mitma) in the Chincha Valley, Peru. This political strategy significantly transformed the Andean demographic landscape, but it has only been proposed based on intriguing yet ambiguous written sources and archaeological data. We integrate ancient DNA (aDNA) with archaeological, isotopic, and written evidence to investigate six individuals from two cemeteries that date to the Inca and Colonial (1532–1825 CE) periods. These independent datasets are consistent in their support for Inca movement of peoples from the far north of their empire to the Chincha Valley. Such results are some of the strongest evidence yet of Inca resettlement in the Andes. Our research demonstrates the power of multidisciplinary research designs that incorporate aDNA and sets a methodological “gold standard” for addressing questions of mobility in the past.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)   •
• Thinking Big in the Andes: Papers in Honor of Charles Stanish

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36380.0