Embodied Identity in the Inka Heartland: A Comparative Bioarchaeological Perspective

Summary

This is an abstract from the "New Advances in Cusco Archaeology: From the Formative to the Late Horizon" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The bioarchaeology of the Central Andes has expanded dramatically since the 1990s, providing nuanced framings of identity, health, labor, conflict, and consumption across ten millennia. Bioarchaeological research in the Cusco region is less prolific compared to others such as the north coast and Titicaca basin, but it has pursued similar questions related to embodied experience. This work is often situated within the rise, consolidation, and disintegration of complex polities and imperial states spanning the sixth through sixteenth centuries CE.

This paper synthesizes results from a comparative paleopathological and multi-isotopic study of social identities and lived experiences in the Inka Empire. Analyses of people interred in three Inka sites in the Sacred Valley (Machu Picchu, Patallaqta, and Salapunqu) and one overlooking Cuzco (Saqsaywaman) have centered on reconstructing fundamental aspects of everyday life across the life course among several hundred skeletal individuals, contextualized with existing osteological, archaeological, ethnohistoric, and mortuary data. The results suggest different Inka social identities given to the groups at each site, as the respective cohorts exhibit distinct, intersectional patterns of residential origin, diet, health indicators, estimated biological sex, and mortuary treatment. These patterns compellingly complicate ethnohistoric portrayals of retainers, chosen ones, and foreigners within the heart of Tawantinsuyu.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• New Advances in Cusco Archaeology: From the Formative to the Late Horizon

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 50618