Queros as Inalienable Objects: Ritual Drinking Vessels and the End of the Inka Empire at Moqi (Locumba Valley, Southern Peru)

Mutual toasting using pairs of intricately carved wooden cups, called queros, was the fundamental act incorporating local communities into the Inka Empire (AD 1400–1532). These cups then remained in the possession of provincial communities and were used to reaffirm political ties in subsequent state-sponsored events. I argue that the value of these cups derives from their inalienability: they were indelibly imbued with the power of the Inka state and were objects of memory embodying the history of local–imperial relationships. Archaeologically, queros are often found in mortuary contexts, usually as pairs. This suggests that these vessels functioned to authenticate claims to authority vis-à-vis the empire for an individual or kin group. Less frequently, queros are deposited singly and in ritualized non-mortuary contexts. I review archaeological examples and present two new queros from the site of Moqi (Upper Locumba Valley, southern Peru). At Moqi, these queros were used not only to promote a shared affinity with the empire but also to commemorate the sundering of the community's ties to the Inka state on abandonment of the site. Such community expression, at the expense of personal aggrandizement, may have been particularly important at Moqi and other sites constructed and populated de novo by the Inka.

A Multidisciplinary Review of the Inka Imperial Resettlement Policy and Implications for Future Investigations

The rulers of the Inka empire conquered approximately 2 million km2 of the South American Andes in just under 100 years from 1438–1533 CE. Inside the empire, the elite conducted a systematic resettlement of the many Indigenous peoples in the Andes that had been rapidly colonised. The nature of this resettlement phenomenon is recorded within the Spanish colonial ethnohistorical record. Here we have broadly characterised the resettlement policy, despite the often incomplete and conflicting details in the descriptions. We then review research from multiple disciplines that investigate the empirical reality of the Inka resettlement policy, including stable isotope analysis, intentional cranial deformation morphology, ceramic artefact chemical analyses and genetics. Further, we discuss the benefits and limitations of each discipline for investigating the resettlement policy and emphasise their collective value in an interdisciplinary characterisation of the resettlement policy.

Experiencing Community: Continuity and Transformation of Residential Life under the Inka Empire in Huarochirí (Lima, Peru)

Most archaeological research on the impact of Inka imperialism at the domestic level centers on the intrusion of Inka-style buildings into pre-Inka domestic settlements as transforming the experience of domestic life and actively hindering interhousehold interaction. Results from excavations in the site of Ampugasa in Huarochirí (Lurín valley, Lima, Peru) show that pre-Inka residential spaces (patio-groups) were replaced by enclosures with a single access to an internal patio for domestic activities. My analysis shows that pre-Inka houses were ritually closed, directly connected to the site's ritual core, and remained part of the everyday life experience of people in the settlement. I argue that Ampugasa's transformation corresponds to a pattern of Inka imperialism in Huarochirí that enshrined rather than erased the collective ritual practices through which the people of Huarochirí maintained a broad regional identity. I propose that the interplay between Inka transformation of domestic space in Ampugasa and the continuity of ritual and secular practices among the site's inhabitants shows a space of negotiation where Inka imperialism still relied heavily on local practices that fostered the continuity of collective identities.

Multi-isotopic and morphometric evidence for the migration of farmers leading up to the Inka conquest of the southern Andes

We present isotopic and morphometric evidence suggesting the migration of farmers in the southern Andes in the period AD 1270–1420, leading up to the Inka conquest occurring ~ AD 1400. This is based on the interdisciplinary study of human remains from archaeological cemeteries in the Andean Uspallata Valley (Argentina), located in the southern frontier of the Inka Empire. The studied samples span AD 800–1500, encompassing the highly dynamic Late Intermediate Period and culminating with the imperial expansion. Our research combines a macro-regional study of human paleomobility and migration based on a new strontium isoscape across the Andes that allows identifying locals and migrants, a geometric morphometric analysis of cranio-facial morphology suggesting separate ancestral lineages, and a paleodietary reconstruction based on stable isotopes showing that the migrants had diets exceptionally high in C4 plants and largely based on maize agriculture. Significantly, this migration influx occurred during a period of regional demographic increase and would have been part of a widespread period of change in settlement patterns and population movements that preceded the Inka expansion. These processes increased local social diversity and may have been subsequently utilized by the Inka to channel interaction with the local societies.

Producing legibility through ritual: The Inka expansion in Huarochirí (Lima, Peru)

This article builds a framework for the analysis of the Inka Empire’s (1400–1532 CE) expansion in the Peruvian highlands. Drawing from recent archaeological excavations at the site of Canchaje (Huarochirí), I propose that the Inka built upon cultural familiarities between them and their subjects by using ritual emplacements (rock outcrops and plazas) as arenas of mediation. At the same time, the construction of mutual legibility enabled subjected communities to maintain and redefine their cultural practices in ways that survived the Inka Empire. By recasting the Inka from foreign conqueror to new kin within local ritual systems, the people of Huarochirí reinvented their traditions to garner political agency. Using archaeological data and colonial-period documents, I show that local agency informed empire-building, leading to the reinvention of local traditions. Ultimately, my work shows how mutual legibility was built on the ground while exploring specific instances of negotiation through ritual.

Algunas reflexiones sobre la escritura de la historia del Tahuantinsuyo a partir de fuentes primarias (quipus)

Se plantea cómo deberíamos repensar la naturaleza y el contenido de la información «histórica» contenida en los quipus y, a partir de esta nueva forma de acercarnos al contenido de estos artefactos, cómo me parece que podríamos escribir una historia del Tahuantinsuyo basada en fuentes primarias, materia sobre la que Sabine MacCormack escribió importantes ensayos con deslumbrante erudición. En pocas palabras, mi argumento es que la mayor parte de la información contenida en los quipus se refiere a estadísticas administrativas; por lo tanto, si repensamos la naturaleza de la historia –esto es, que ella no se ocupa de grandes hombres y batallas importantes, sino más bien de la economía, la demografía y la relación que la sociedad mantiene con el medio ambiente–, podremos efectivamente escribir una historia indígena del Imperio Inca. Abstract A possible redefinition of nature and content around Khipus «historical» information is revealed as a new way to approach the substance of these knotted textile record-keeping devices used by the Inkas. This article aims to reveal how a new history of Tawantinsuyu based in primary data can be written. This is the world about which Sabine McCormack wrote relevant essays with extraordinary erudition. In short, my argument defends that main khipus information refers to administrative or official statistics; so we’ll be able to write a real indigenous history of the Inka empire, specially if we redefine History, that is, if History is consists of more than just great men and great battles, if History can be written as a memory relationship of Economy, Demography and Society with Natural Environment.

Have You Heard? Newsworthy items from the field

Some Latinx students and parents feel schools are not preparing the students well enough for college. Teachers’ beliefs about learning do not always match the views of cognitive scientists. The National Museum of the American Indian offers new online educational resources about the Pawnee Treaties and the Inka Empire. A survey shows that when educators are struggling to help students, they turn to their colleagues. A new study shows that school segregation is on the rise in counties that have experienced school district successionsecession.

Infrastructure and inequality: An archaeology of the Inka road through the Amaybamba cloud forests

One of the most important ways in which material inequalities are reproduced is through state infrastructure projects. Although infrastructure has long been studied in archaeology, this has mainly been as an index of complexity and centralized government—and less so as a means to create social distinctions among human subjects. This article therefore examines a precolonial highway built under the auspices of the Inka Empire, located in the cloud forests of the eastern Andes. In particular, it emphasizes the radically divergent experiences of the elites, who mostly interacted with roads as instrument of travel and knowledge, as compared with nonelites, who encountered them as objects of maintenance, cleaning, and repair. Although ethnographic research centered on modern nation-states tends to focus on variable access to infrastructure as the basis for inequality, I argue that inequality is also manifest through radically different experiences of the same infrastructures, a fact which is particularly relevant in many nonmodern contexts.