Settled in Strange Lands: Forced Relocation as a Technology of the Inka Empire

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Seeing Migrant and Diaspora Communities Archaeologically: Beyond the Cultural Fixity/Fluidity Binary" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Why do empires force their subjects to leave home? From Neo-Assyria to the British West Indies, coercive migration policies have been adopted by expansive, multiethnic polities across time and space. One of the most ambitious projects of imperial forced relocation took place in the Inka Empire through their policy of mitmaq. This policy is widely recognized as a lynchpin of Inka statecraft, yet only rarely interrogated or contextualized. In part, this is due to the high burden of proof required to detect the mitmaq archaeologically. In isolation, archaeological indicators of migration, such as ceramic typologies and isotope geochemistry, cannot distinguish mitmaq from other forms of mobility. In order to delve deeper, I engage in a comparative study of imperial forced resettlement. Then, I present preliminary archaeological findings from the Rio Qaracha Basin (Peru), where the mitmaq is documented historically, but, to date, has not been addressed through archaeology. I argue that, when informed by global examples of imperial forced relocation, the settlement pattern and osteological indicators not only reflect the mitmaq, but hint at details unknown through written records. Finally, I outline how a cross-cultural perspective on empire will direct a fine-grained study of one community’s life under the mitmaq.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Seeing Migrant and Diaspora Communities Archaeologically: Beyond the Cultural Fixity/Fluidity Binary   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35618.0