Between Lunahuanas and Incas: Imperial Landscape in the Middle Cañete Valley, Peru

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Cañete Valley was of great economic importance to the Inca Empire. The presence of sites like Huacones/Vilcahuasi in the lower section of the valley or Incahuasi in the middle section, both of them having various sets of storage facilities, shows the significance of the intensive agricultural production of the valley. However, we still do not understand how local communities accepted and/or negotiated Inca presence in their homeland. This presentation focuses on how different features on the territory were used or built to create an imperial landscape in which local identities and practices were contested with imposed Inca practices in the middle section of the Cañete Valley. I will present data about three different types of settlements: cemeteries, shrines, and control stations. In the first two types of settlements, we have cases in which different traditions merge in the same place, while in others, there is a clear differentiation between them. Control stations along the Inca Road, which usually present walls, function as a way to control the movement of people, but also as possible boundaries among different types of territories. I proposed these settlements were essential elements in the strategies of control of the Inca Empire.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39060.0