Funding the Inka empire

In analyzing the economy that sustained the Inka Empire, we need to bear in mind that Andean peoples did not have a concept equivalent to the discipline of modern economics or many of its conventional compo-nents.1 Except in limited contexts, there was no market system, no notion of capital or of cost-setting supply and demand, no money,2 no means of buying or selling land or labor, and no formal theory of a political econ-omy that sustained the state. Instead, the fundamental principles underlying Andean practice all entailed an inextricable link between social position and economic relationships, often legitimized through a moral imper-ative. Among them were labor obligations, shared and limited access to raw and productive resources, control over the products of labor, and commensal hospitality. Important roles for nonhuman actors (e.g., sky, terres-trial, and water deities, mountain spirits, oracles) and powers in human affairs were also implicated. Such an emphasis on social relations and nonmarket economics was common in premodern society. Significantly, in the Inka state economy, an approach based on controlling resources, labor, and distribution of products still entailed sophisticated planning. The Inkas are renowned for their long-term organizational strategies, which incorporated both a formal taxa-tion system and decision-making about allocation of resources and efficiencies of production. The Inkas had to make choices among potentially competing goals, and questions of risk and transport cost perpetually entered the picture. In short, the Inka economy is ame-nable to comparative economic analysis, although along different lines than those often considered in emergent market or industrial economies. The essential features of the Inka economy were best described in Murra’s ([1956] 1980) classic work. As he explained, the economy was founded initially on

C h a P t E r 7

Funding the Inka Empire

Terence N. D’Altroy

the productive capacities of taxpayers who labored on discrete resources that the Inkas took for their exclu-sive use. In economic terms, the Inkas thought of their imperial venture as domination over peoples, whose resources were appropriated in the process. Each time they annexed a new ethnic group, the Inkas claimed virtually everything3 that lay within the new territory and allocated a portion back to the subject communi-ties for their own sustenance and agendas. A key prin-ciple underlying the Inka logic was that subject com-munities would remain self-reliant. People received access to their traditional resources in return for labor service and homage to the ruler, who personified the state, and to the sun god. That idea was presented as a grand extension of the long-standing relationships that existed between many local lords and their people, who worked within frameworks of mutual obligation. By the time of the Spanish invasion in 1532, both the Inka state and official institutions also held discrete farmlands, pastures, and herds of the indigenous domesticated camelids, the llama and alpaca. Thus, the Inka Garcilaso de la Vega ([1609] 1966) could claim that the resources of the empire were divided into three parts, albeit not of equal extent. Even so, as Murra pointed out, the Inkas slowly transformed the economy in two crucial ways during their hegemony. First, the Inkas undertook a program of mass resettlement, by creating hundreds of internal and frontier colonies, members of which were assigned agro-pastoral, craft, or security duties (e.g., Espinoza S. 1970, 1973, 1983; D’Altroy 2005). Those workers—and even entire transplanted communities—produced vast quantities of textiles, metal goods, ceramics, wooden items, and composite objects. Second, the royal fami-lies, other Inka aristocrats, and ethnic lords developed estates that were worked by designated subject fami-

figure 7.1. The Inka empire, showing the major roads and provincial installations, along with the four named parts (inset).

(After hyslop 1984: frontispiece)

fundIng The InkA eMpIre 99

lies or communities (see chapter 13, by Niles). At the time the Spaniards invaded, those expansive manors, often scattered across complementary environmental zones, boasted large contingents of personnel who were assigned either permanently or as part of their rotating labor duties. Production from state, aristocratic, and institutional resources thus depended on the energies and technical expertise of an estimated two million self-sufficient taxpayers who were mobilized through labor taxes. The conditions that Andean peoples faced in carv-ing out a living and that the Inkas encountered in their imperial quest were among the most demanding of any region where major civilizations arose. The Andean topography and climate interacted to provide extraor-dinary challenges and opportunities. Most importantly, the variegated landscape created a myriad of different micro-environments to which societies had to adapt their foraging, herding, fishing, and agricultural strat-egies. The scope of the difficulties was daunting, as about two-thirds of the populace lived more than three thousand meters above sea level, were working with a Bronze Age technology, and had no effective water or wheeled transport. The intent of this chapter is to explore how the Inkas dealt with those issues in supporting their imperial ven-ture by discussing a series of key elements at the heart of the economy. Among them are the environmental and socio-technical foundation of the economy, the orga-nization of production, the nature and distribution of services and products, and the infrastructure (fig. 7.1). In the process, both modern and Inka-era conceptions will be examined, in an attempt to approach an under-standing of the decision-making processes that would have obtained at the time.

Natural Resources

The Inka imperial expansion ultimately brought about one million square kilometers of uncommonly varie-gated environments under their control, along the west-ern edge of South America. Within this region lie three major climatic zones: a narrow coastal desert cut by river valleys; highland valleys and grasslands in the Andes mountains; and warm eastern slopes and lowlands. All three trend from a tropical north, in Ecuador, to a temperate south, in central Chile. The diversity within those broad zones arises in part because the collision of

tectonic plates has created both the Andes mountains and a parallel deep Pacific trench. The mountains span the length of the continent, reaching a maximum height of 6,960 masl at Aconcagua, along the border between Argentina and Chile. Within this space the Inkas could draw upon three fundamentally distinct kinds of resources: raw mate-rials (e.g., stone, water, minerals, wild biota), agro- pastoral products, and human labor and expertise. Col-lectively, those resources underwrote the Inka’s power and wealth, and were surely one of the driving forces in the empire’s creation, even if the Inkas were largely unaware of the scope of the Andes at the inception of their ventures. Pulgar Vidal’s (1987) widely used classification sys-tem for Peruvian environments recognizes eight basic land-use zones within this swath (cf. Tosi 1960; Troll 1968; Flannery et al. 1989). Each one exhibits a distinc-tive combination of climatic, biotic, and topographic properties, and thus each requires a different kind of strategy for effective exploitation (fig. 7.2). The frigid waters that well up northward along the coastline cre-ate one of the world’s richest marine biomes. From the first human occupations onward, onshore marine waters yielded rich harvests of anchovies and shellfish to simple net-fishing and gathering techniques. The ter-restrial coastline (chala or costa in Pulgar Vidal’s classifi-cation) is bordered by a generally narrow strip of desert landscape (ranging from less than one to more than fifty kilometers in width) that extends from northern Peru to central Chile. While that band was successfully occu-pied for millennia through mixed maritime and terres-trial foraging, the population expanded substantially once irrigation agriculture was extensively applied, after about 1,800 b.c. The arid coastline is punctuated by a series of lush river valleys whose waters come primarily from rain that falls on the foothills above 1,600 masl. In those valleys, intensive irrigation has always been essen-tial to agriculture, which in the periods under consid-eration included the industrial crops gourd and cotton, and staple crops such as maize, squash, and beans. The foothills on both sides of the Andes constitute the yungas zones (300–2,300 masl). Warmer than the coastal valleys, the yungas produce maize and tropical fruits, but the most valued crops are coca and peppers. Above the yungas lies the quechua zone (3,101–3,500 masl), the most agriculturally productive and densely populated highland ecozone. Because the temperate cli-mate of valley floors is suitable for frost-sensitive crops,

100 TerenCe n. d’ALTrOY

traditional dry farming produced maize, beans, garden vegetables, quinoa, and various root crops. About 60 percent of the pre-Hispanic population lived in this zone and above. The frosts above 3,500 masl can kill maize, so small valleys, quebradas, and rolling uplands are dedicated to chenopods, legumes, and tubers, especially the staple potatoes, which include almost five hundred varieties. Small-scale irrigation was com-mon prehistorically in the quechua zone, drawing from springs and streams. The suni or jalca zone (up to 4,000 masl) is characterized by cold hills, ridges, and deep val-leys that abundantly yield quinoa and talwi (aka tauri, tarwi, or chocho), which both produce nutritious seeds. The puna (up to 4,800 masl) is an alpine tundra that is the natural habitat of the Andean camelids. This cold and damp grassland was crucial to the Andean economy, as millions of llamas and alpacas were pastured there during the Inka era. Some hardy tubers can be culti-vated in these high reaches, especially bitter tubers that provide a main source of chuño, or freeze-dried pota-toes. Above the puna is the janca zone, which has been exploited for centuries for its abundant mineral wealth. The upper fringe of the Amazonian rainforest (mon-taña) and the lower jungle (selva) were also important ecozones during the pre-Hispanic era. The montaña

produced maize, coca, fruits, and a host of other warm-weather crops, while the forest was exploited by the Inkas more for natural products, such as wood, feathers, and gold. To the north of Peru, the coastal environment was characterized by mangrove swamps, while the wet, grassy highlands are called páramo. The temperate climate of the upland valleys makes them one of the world’s most pleasant regions to live in, and it is no sur-prise that the Inkas built their northern capital in south-ern Ecuador. The dominant feature to the south of the Peruvian sierra is the altiplano, which was home to great herds of camelids in Inka times. In the far south, the principal area of occupation was the valliserrana, a high zone of long desertic valleys, shrub forest, and puna that sustained a surprising density of communities. As productive as these Andean ecozones may be, they are chronically beset by potentially catastrophic events. In some highland areas, crops typically fail up to two-thirds of the time, while earthquakes, avalanches, and volcanic eruptions can be devastating. The most celebrated disturbance is the ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation climate pattern, comprising the warmer-than-normal condition [El Niño] and its opposite [La Niña]), which occurs periodically, but unpredictably. In

figure 7.2. Cross-section of the Andes in central peru, showing the principal land-use zones as described by pulgar Vidal (1987). (After

Burger 1992:21)


an El Niño event, heavy rains fall on the Peruvian coast, sometimes washing out irrigation systems, while the warm tropical waters that arrive along the coast can kill or drive away much of the marine biota. While much of the foregoing description would have made sense to a pre-Hispanic Andean resident, it would have still been incomplete. Human relations with the environment were a constantly and carefully negotiated arena in Inka times. Some areas, especially the highland valleys (quechua zone), were thought to be a place of civilization, while the higher reaches were wild, uncivilized lands. The jungles to east were the home of chaos and malevolent beings (see chapters 15 and 17, by Pärssinen and Schjellerup, respectively). The Inkas, their contemporaries, and their anteced-ents recognized a host of nonhuman factors involved in agro-pastoral and other kinds of economic produc-tion. Most important were the numerous gods, spirits, and forms of consciousness that inhabited the skies, water, and land and whose good will was necessary to ensure human well-being. In Inka eyes, for example, the mountain peaks (apu, wamani) were the owners of the flocks and the providers of weather and water (Rein-hard 1985). Similarly, the earth mother (Pachamama) was propitiated with offerings of coca and maize beer (chicha or awasqa), and the sea and lakes also had their own deities, as did the skies and weather.

The Productive Foundations of the Inka Economy

Since the Inka imperial economy was initially founded on the productive capacities and practices of the societ-ies that were incorporated into Tawantinsuyu, it will be helpful to sketch out the highland economies present at the time of the Inka expansion. The essential socioeconomic unit of central Andean life was the ayllu. It was a corporate kin group that was often internally ranked, so that individual families or lineages could hold positions of elevated or subordinate status. The leaders of the ayllu were called curaca, a term generally glossed as “lord.” Ayllu varied considerably in size, but could boast from a few score to as many as sev-eral thousand members. They were not precisely com-mensurate with residential communities, since mem-bers of an ayllu could live in several settlements, while a single town could house members of several ayllu. Broadly speaking, the highland economies on which

the Inkas modeled their state economy were general-ized in their agro-pastoral activities and only modestly specialized in artisanry (see chapter 16, by Hayashida and Guzmán, for a contrasting situation on the north coast of Peru). The ayllu held its productive resources in common: for example, agricultural and grazing lands and sources of clay or stone. Ayllu often tried to control resources in complementary ecological zones (Murra 1972). In so doing, they were able to spread risk across different kinds of production, gain access to a variety of products, and maintain self-sufficiency. Usufruct access to those resources was allocated to each household by the ayllu leaders on the basis of status and family need. Higher-status families could receive a greater share than the commoner families and, to judge from Colonial-era documents, often had access to resources across a wider range of environmental zones. Specialization in services was apparently rare among those communities, apart from the household service to which the elites were entitled. The upper crust had rights to have their lands worked, herds tended, and some craft products manufactured, in return for their leadership (Murra [1956] 1980). Besides their kin relationships, the unifying glue of the ayllu was a series of mutual obligations, so that eco-nomic relations had an essential moral component (see Trawick 2001). Among the general populace, the group members shared labor on tasks such as agriculture and canal maintenance. The balanced reciprocity seen in those tasks was called waje waje; the core principle was that households of equal status would exchange ser-vices in expectation of an equivalent return. There were also asymmetrical labor exchange rela-tionships (minka), which linked households of differ-ent statuses (e.g., lord and subject) or social standing (in-laws). In minka exchange, inequality between the parties lay at the heart of the relationship. The elite members of the ayllu were expected to provide certain kinds of services and goods in return for their privileged status. In addition to military and ritual leadership, the lords were supposed to provide such prized materials as cloth and chicha (maize beer) to their constituent populace. Because the elites often had access to pro-ductive resources out of the reach of many people, they were expected to provide those products as part of their obligations. A particularly important item was coca leaf, which was grown in limited ecological contexts on either side of the mountains and whose fields were often controlled by the curaca. Those valued items were fre-


quently distributed in the context of feasting sponsored by the lord. Ultimately, those distributions—often called redistribution in this context—provided a means of bonding groups and reinforcing social inequality. These relationships of unequal duty provided the rationale by which the Inkas extracted labor from those same communities under imperial rule. In a number of recorded cases, where the ayllu did not have access to key resources, such as salt or lowland products, long-distance exchange provided a means by which they could be procured.

Application of the General Labor Tax

As just noted, the initial foundation of the Inka state economy lay in the labor and expertise of subject soci-eties, applied to resources that the Inkas expropriated for their own use. The core principles of Inka economic logic, as applied to the basic tax, included the following:

(1) each subject society would be responsible for its own

well-being;

(2) each household enumerated in periodic censuses would

be responsible for rendering labor service on a rotating

basis (mit’a);

(3) the Inkas would be responsible for supporting workers

while they discharged their duties;

(4) the Inkas would derive their material goods from institu-

tional resources, not taking any directly from the subject

societies; and

(5) the Inkas would provide leadership and generosity as their

part of the mutual relations between lord and subject.

The heart of state revenues was thus labor, both skilled and general, applied to independent state-held resources. As Murra (1958) has pointed out, this ratio-nale for economic governance was essentially the exten-sion of the existing local relations to an imperial scale. Whether any subject society bought into that argument is an open question. The basic tax-paying unit was a married couple. Generally speaking, households owed two to three months of service when called, although military ser-vice in particular could demand lengthy tours away from home. Because the general taxes were assessed in terms of labor, we can easily lose sight of the fact that the taxes were not constant. As the chronicler Cobo

([1653] 1979:234) explained, the Inkas regularly made an assessment of their anticipated needs for products and services. Taking into account the personnel avail-able, they then determined the amount of seed to be sown or labor exactions to be required for the coming year, announcing them at an annual sponsored festival held at state facilities. This approach meant that admin-istrative personnel up and down the chain of command needed to be kept current on local conditions, which in turn required frequent censuses and updates on pro-ductivity and stored materials (see chapter 9, by Urton). By 1532 the array of duties rendered by subject households was diverse, but it can be broken down into a few basic categories: agro-pastoral labor, military duty, transport, craft production, and personal ser-vices. Itemized lists provided by the chroniclers Falcón ([1567] 1946:137–140), Murúa ([1613: bk. 2, ch. 21] 1987:402–404), and Guaman Poma ([1613:191–193] 1980:183) specify up to forty different kinds of labor service due the state, not including agricultural and military services, which likely demanded the greatest input. Falcón noted that coastal societies included spe-cialists responsible for human sacrifice; miners; people who worked with stones, colored earth, and salt; arti-sans, including weavers, sandal-makers, potters, wood-workers, and masons; guards for the Women of the Sun, priestesses, llamas, and storehouses; coca farmers; and fishermen (see also Rostworowski 1989). Other high-land specialists were people who served the bodies of the deceased Inkas, and artisans who made earspools and cords of lead that the rulers played with. One of the repeated elements of the lists, seen also in inventories of goods in storage facilities, is that production of dis-tinct qualities of products (e.g., fine and common cloth or ceramics) was listed as a separate duty (see chapter 11, by Phipps, on the production of different-quality textiles). Labor assignments took into account both the scale of the available population and the environmental characteristics of the region where the activities were being conducted (LeVine 1987). Julien (1982) points out that the Inkas sometimes reorganized the populace into administrative units that were convenient for labor mobilization. Typically, provinces had multiple units of ten thousand households each, generally twenty or thirty thousand. There are some indications that service levies were applied to units of one thousand households, while production of material things was


distributed among units of one hundred, most likely because the smaller units were more attuned to ecologi-cal variations. The kinds of labor duties that particular ethnic groups rendered were also tailored to the kinds of resources or skills that they were thought to have. The laborers assigned to categories in the 1549 Huánuco vis-ita (inspection) provide insight into how one provincial population met its obligations. The 4,108 Chupachu male laborers can be grouped as follows: 15.0 percent (640) to extract natural materials, 13 percent (560) to manufacture material goods, 22.9 percent (980) to cul-tivate state fields, 9.4 percent (400) to build or maintain the physical infrastructure, and 39.7 percent (1,698) to provide services that did not yield a material product (e.g., guard duty). In practice, of course, there was far more complexity to the Inka economy than this outline suggests. For one thing, even though the Inkas laid exclusive claim to all wild and mineral resources, they never actually enforced a state monopoly. Quite a number of subject lords had their own mines, for example, and used their ores to make gifts for the ruler, among other things (Berthe-lot 1986). In addition, the Inkas tried in many areas to develop lands that had previously not been used to sup-port local communities, thus alleviating some stresses on their subjects. Such a practice could not be applied to the flocks, however, and the Inkas requisitioned large numbers of camelids from the peoples of the altiplano in order to build their own herds. In addition, the local lords drafted into state duty were given a fair amount of discretion in allocating duties within their own domains. That policy gave them both tremendous lever-age with their people and a vested interest in keeping the Inka overlords happy.

Specialized Labor Institutions

The standard labor tax provided an enormous array of materiel and services for the state as a whole (personi-fied as the ruler) and for the state religion of the sun. Even so, the Inkas apparently felt those contributions to be insufficient, as the levies were expanded and diversi-fied to meet an increasing array of aristocratic and insti-tutional demands. In his classic thesis, Murra ([1956] 1980) described the changes as a large-scale shift from corvée to retainership. The reasoning behind the reor-

ganization stemmed in part from a desire to make the state economy as independent as possible from the sub-ject economies. Among the key goals may have been enhancing security and dampening resistance, since there were evidently problems with compliance among the subjects, particularly for service in distant locations or for prolonged periods (see chapter 6, by Covey). In addition, the ever-expanding estates of Inka and pro-vincial aristocrats required staffing, as did a variety of institutions. While some elements of the shift toward retainership may have been instituted relatively early in the imperial era, the major elaboration of dedicated work cadres apparently occurred under the direction of emperor Huayna Capac, whose multidecade reign ended about five years before the Spanish arrival. The two most important statuses of dedicated work-ers that the Inkas developed were based on distinct crite-ria. The yanakuna were individuals—or in rarer instances large groups of people—who were separated from their homeland or kin group on a permanent basis. At least in some cases, conversion into a yana was intended as a punishment. Although these individuals were no longer counted on the census rolls at home, their status was not inherited by their offspring, who seem to have retained residual rights in their traditional society. Yanakuna were allotted duties through their assignment to particular aristocrats or institutions, most often farming, herding, and household service for the elites. The grandest-scale conversion of a subject group into yanakuna of which we are aware occurred when more than four thousand Chupachu were converted wholesale into yanakuna by the ruler Huascar, for his own personal service ( Julien 1993:209). Although colonial and modern writers often considered the yanakuna to be slaves, they could achieve high-status positions under Inka rule. In contrast, mitmaqkuna were families or entire communities who were transplanted as colonists to meet military, political, economic, and ideological goals (see Espinoza Soriano 1973, 1975, 1983; Rowe 1982; D’Altroy 2005; see further below). By the end of the Inkas’ century-long run of power, somewhere around one to four million people had been resettled. Many of them had simply moved from hilltop commu-nities to more hospitable locations at lower elevations following the Inka pacification of the land. However, Cobo’s estimate that one-third of the Andean popula-tion was resettled under the mitmaqkuna program pro-vides some measure of the massive scope of the state

figure 7.3. Identifiable locations from which colonists were resettled at the sanctuary of Copacabana.

figure 7.4. resettlement of colonists to two major state farms, at Abancay and Cochabamba.

figure 7.5. distribution of major colonies of state artisans named in the early colonial documents.


enterprise. The net result was to reconstitute the Andean social landscape. Mitmaqkuna retained status as mem-bers of their home communities and were counted as such by their home curaca, although the governors of the provinces into which they moved were also sup-posed to keep track of them so that their labor service was appropriately tabulated. In theory, service could be for a limited period of time, but it was sufficiently resented that abandonment of their duties seems to have been an ongoing issue, since the Inkas instituted penalties for second-time offenders. The inception of the resettlement program, like many other aspects of Inka state policy, was attributed to the legendary imperial founder, Pachacuti. Report-edly, his goal was to reduce local resistance by resettling uncooperative peoples in distant locations as garrisons, where their own well-being would depend on staying in the good graces of their overlords. That policy had the additional advantage of limiting the potential for coor-dinated resistance among subject peoples. Over time, the Inkas also used resettlement to imprint their vision of the order of the world on the empire. To that end, they resettled members of mul-tiple ethnic groups in twelve districts around the heart of Cuzco in a layout that mimicked the societies’ distri-bution in the entire domain. Conversely, they exported the center to the provinces, creating six “new Cuzcos” laid out (conceptually) in the form of the Inkas’ home capital. They also resettled members of at least forty-two ethnic groups into the sacred center at Copaca-bana, on the southeast shore of Lake Titicaca (Ramos Gavilán [1621] 1976; fig. 7.3). The importance of this center lay in its role as the entryway to the Islands of the Sun and the Moon, the origin place of the Inka world. Economic rationales may have taken on a more important role for colonization in the latter years of the empire, especially under the direction of Huayna Capac. A wide array of references to mitmaqkuna in early colonial documents cite economic production as the rationale for resettlement, especially in areas where particularly rich natural resources could be exploited. Those included farmlands, pastures, and locations of valued mineral resources. For example, major farms were established in Abancay (Peru) and Cochabamba (Bolivia), whose products were reportedly intended for Huayna Capac’s armies (fig. 7.4). The former spe-cialized in growing maize, coca, cotton, and peppers, while the latter was dedicated to maize farming. Among the artisans were potters from fourteen different ethnic

groups the coast, who were resettled in the adjacent highland valley of Cajamarca to make ceramics for the state. At Milliraya, alongside Lake Titicaca, the Inkas resettled one thousand weavers to make fine cloth for the state in the heart of camelid country, along with one to three hundred potting families (fig. 7.5; Espinoza Soriano 1970, 1973; Wachtel 1982; Spurling 1992). A large colony that was settled along the eastern fringes of the empire, in Bolivia, illustrates how the program was applied to royal estates. The workers there were assigned to produce gold for one of Tupa Inka Yupanqui’s royal estates, rather than for the state itself. Of the six thousand families assigned to that operation, only one thousand were dedicated to mining the gold itself; the remainder were there to sustain the whole enterprise. Even at that scale, however, the mining col-ony was much smaller than the farm at Cochabamba. The latter boasted fourteen thousand workers, although how many of those were permanent and how many were temporary is unclear. There were other institutions to which the Inkas dedicated personnel, most importantly what are often described as religious orders. The aqllakuna were young women who were separated from their families before puberty and assigned to live in segregated precincts within state installations. There, they were trained in a range of culturally respected roles, wove cloth, and brewed chicha, until they were awarded in marriage to men honored by the state (Morris 1974; see chapter 11, by Phipps). The Inkas also took advantage of what they saw as particular skills of ethnic groups and committed them to special tasks. For example, the Rucanas were employed as litter bearers, the Colla as stonemasons, and the Chumbivilcas as dancers. Over time, particu-larly skilled or belligerent ethnic groups were commit-ted wholesale to military duty. Each emperor had his own guard, often made up of such dedicated groups. The Chachapoyas, Cañaris, Chuyes, and Charkas stood out as warriors (Rowe 1946), while the Quillacingas of the tropical forests were especially valued because they would eat their enemies.

The Inka Herds

Just as important to the Inkas as their agricultural lands were their llama and alpaca herds. The camelid flocks lay at the heart of the state economy, as they had utilitar-


ian, status, and ritual value. The Inkas devoted a consid-erable amount of their subjects’ labors to the breeding of large herds, but how large those herds were is still uncertain. The chronicler Román y Zamora (1897:122) wrote that the Sun had more than a million animals, which might be a fair estimate. A figure of 31–50 mil-lion camelids is frequently cited for the pre-Hispanic era (see Bonavia 2008), so an overall Inka holding in the millions seems like a reasonable figure. Creating those herds required requisitioning substantial num-bers from their subjects (Polo [1571] 1916:61–62), since there were no free-roaming flocks that could be brought under state control. Murra ([1956] 1980:52) has suggested that the Inkas drew most heavily from the altiplano, since that was the location of the largest available flocks in their domain. It may therefore have been no accident that the Titicaca basin was one of the early, prime target areas for Inka expansion. In the early Colonial era, the Charkas people, living in the southern altiplano and the Huamanga valley of southern Peru, complained that the Inkas had done grievous harm to their ancestors by taking their herds. The utilitarian value of the llamas lay in their wool, their meat, and their service as transport animals. The evidence suggests that the military were prime users of the llamas: in pack trains, for clothing, and for food at the end of the line. When they were on the move, the military employed thousands of llamas as pack animals, which were then eaten when their service was no longer required. The trains could be immense. For example, the chronicler Zárate ([1555] 1862) reported that the Inka general Quizquiz abandoned about fifteen thou-sand animals in the eastern mountains after a battle early in the Colonial era.

Intensification of Productive Resources

An essential part of the Inka economic enterprise was an extensive program to intensify productive resources. Their approach to the issue was grounded in an inti-mate understanding of the natural environment, sea-sonal cycles, their crops, and the engineering of land surfaces and water. At the same time, they saw a host of nonhuman forces implicated in productivity, as they understood themselves to be living in a socialized, active landscape in which a living past was constantly being inscribed and interacted with. In modern terms,

the Inkas intensified production primarily by bring-ing unused or underused lands into production and through manipulation of landforms and water. In Inka eyes, they were also civilizing the landscape, in which dangerous powers resided. Under Inka rule, vast tracts of land were cultivated that had previously been off-limits because of either regional discord or lack of development. For example, in the upper Mantaro valley of Peru’s central highlands, the productive valley floor between Xauxa and Huan-cayo (a stretch of about 50 km) was radically underused during the latter part of the Late Intermediate Period (LIP). Those lands had been occupied for centuries beforehand and would be the focus of occupation dur-ing the Colonial era, but the fractious politics of the LIP led to their abandonment for a couple hundred years. Under Inka rule, an area with a radius of about 15 kilometers around the provincial center of Hatun Xauxa was apparently dedicated to state farms, whose contents were stored in a massive array of warehouses on the adjacent slopes (D’Altroy 1992; fig. 7.6). Simi-larly, the Inkas created vast state farms—at Abancay (Peru) and in the western part of the Cochabamba valley (Bolivia)—whose products were reportedly intended solely for Huayna Capac’s armies. At Coctaca-Rodero ( Jujuy, Argentina), the Inkas appear to have directed the construction of about six square kilome-ters of terraces in an area that had not previously been occupied, but the project was never completed (Albeck and Scattolín 1991). In the case of some of those state farms (see also mitmaqkuna, below), the resident popu-lation was forcibly removed or eradicated. The former seems to have been the case in western Cochabamba, whereas the recalcitrant Ayaviri (southern Peru) were essentially wiped out and their lands confiscated. As Earls and Cervantes describe more expansively in this volume (chapter 8), the Inkas’ construction of terracing stands as one of their singular accomplish-ments. Whether it was at the scale of Coctaca-Rodero or with the elegance of the estate terracing at Pisac, Ollantaytambo, and Machu Picchu (see chapter 12, by Nair and Protzen), the Inkas clearly considered terrac-ing to be a matter worthy of considerable attention and labor investment. There are several obvious reasons for their interest. The rough Andean terrain is often lacking in farming-friendly surfaces. and the topsoil is poor or thin. Terracing solves both problems. In addition, the terraces serve as a heat sink and retain humidity, ame-

figure 7.6. distribution of major state farms and storage facilities throughout the empire.


liorating the effects of the cold mountain nights. Earls and Cervantes (chapter 8) provide detailed empirical evidence in support of this claim. At Ollantaytambo, Protzen (1993) reported that the ambient temperature of terraced lands was raised 3°C over that of adjacent unterraced surfaces. That amounts to a downward shift of about six hundred meters in elevation in the crops that can be grown. Small wonder that the estates in the “Sacred Valley” (Vilcanota [aka Urubamba] valley east and north of Cuzco) could grow peanuts and other warm-weather crops normally found only on the other side of the mountains. Despite the labor involved and the sometimes spec-tacular results, we should not overstate the importance of formal terracing. Kendall and her colleagues found in the Cusichaca area, for example, that informal terrac-ing and lynchets (informal terraces created through the construction of a berm, behind which soil accumulates over time) covered far more land surface than did the labor-intensive, stone-faced terraces so emblematic of royal estates. Perhaps of comparable importance to the engineer-ing successes of terracing and canal construction (e.g., Wright et al. 2006; Wright and Valencia Zegarra 2000) was the social and ideological value of the improved lands. Royal estates, whether in the Vilcanota valley or distributed throughout the empire, boasted a series of architectural signatures (e.g., step tenons in terrace faces; dual-canal fountains) that spoke to the terrac-ing as the cultural imprint of the Inkas on the land. The Inkas had a complicated relationship with the landscape (see chapters 8, 10, and 12, by Cummins, Earls and Cer-vantes, and Nair and Protzen, respectively). It was the home of spirits and the ancestors, with whom amicable and frequent relationships were a necessity; points on the landscape surrounding Cuzco were referred to in terms of kinship and body parts (van de Guchte 1999). The entire array of shrines surrounding Cuzco—dupli-cated analogically by hundreds of other Andean soci-eties—was a conceptual map of the Inka past, the cos-mos, and social relations (see chapters 8 and 9, by Earls and Cervantes, and Urton, respectively). Large parts of the Andes were uncivilized and dangerous, however. The high janca zone was held to be wild, while the east-ern forests were the land of chaos and danger. One part of the Inka venture was, therefore, to domesticate or civilize the land by transforming it. Viewed in this light, terracing was as much a cultural statement of power as it was a means of improving production.

Things/Objects

We have already noted that the Inka economy produced both material things and services. Looking at Inka craft production in terms of scale, we would certainly say that the state was involved in underwriting industrial-level manufacture. However, mass production was not the result of efforts to reduce costs in a market econ-omy. Instead, large-scale production combined utilitar-ian value, social messages, and artistry in a wide variety of forms. The Inkas required production of an enormous range of goods, from various grades of cloth, to some thirty kinds of pottery vessels (fig. 7.7), trapping snares, clothing for soldiers, gold and silver idols, stone bra-ziers, sandals—in short, everything that the state needed for its activities. The principal goods that the state required were probably textiles, which marked social identity and status and were used for data record-ing, among many other purposes (Murra 1962, 1989). Ceramics, the most plentiful of the objects produced that are preserved today, apparently had far fewer indi-viduals dedicated to their manufacture. The evidence we have available suggests that the Inkas were very pre-cise about how many artisans were to be put to work at any given task. For example, some early Spanish docu-ments indicate that at particular enclaves ten times as many weavers were dedicated to making cloth as were committed to potting. In thinking about Inka objects, we also need to keep in mind that contemporary clas-sifications of artifacts by material probably mislead us as to the ways that the Inkas thought about many of these items. Some fabrics were adorned with feathers or beads of metal and shell, while metals were inlaid with stone and shell, painted, adorned with feathers, or dressed in cloth (Dransart 2000). In fact, the essence of the objects may have come into being only when the appropriate materials were combined. As has been well documented, the Inkas used all these goods as instruments of imperial policy. They developed highly distinctive styles of ceramics, textiles, and metal and stone objects, whose geometric designs lent themselves to replication by state-sanctioned arti-sans (Morris 1995; Cummins 2007; see chapters 10 and 11, by Cummins and Phipps, respectively). The most obvious of such items were the fancy tapestry-weave cloth called cumbi, as well as the goblets of wood, gold, and silver that were given as gifts to compliant subject elites and individuals who had distinguished them-


figure 7.7. The variety of Inka imperial ceramic forms found at the royal estate of Chinchero, near Cuzco. (After rivera 1976)


selves in state service. Less obvious was the control of hospitality and cuisine imposed by the use of state vessels and foods in the context of politically charged commensal feasts (e.g., Bray 2003). By producing the maize beer (chicha or, more properly, aqha) that lubri-cated public feasts in vessels of state design, emphasiz-ing the production of the sacred crop, and exporting Cuzco-area crops to all parts of the empire, the Inkas developed a way of imprinting their cultural stamp on the provinces through social practice. While many objects can easily be described as utili-tarian or status goods, the Inkas had a more complex relationship with material things than is implied by those two notions (Sillar 2009). For one, the Inkas saw a variety of things as having consciousness, inten-tionality, and the ability to act. Among them were the brother images (wawqi) of the rulers and the objects/idols (bultos) that stood in for a number of histori-cal figures (Ziółkowski 1996). Those items—made of stone, gold, or the clippings of the ruler’s nails and hair, for example—had the ability to speak for the ruler and seem to have been regarded as a direct extension of the ruler’s persona. Similar kinds of consciousness were seen in features of the landscape, especially stones. In addition, a number of material things were infused with camay, that is, the capacity to create or even to instill vitality into something else (Cummins 2002; Bray 2009). Many found objects, such as ore nuggets or oddly shaped stones, were also thought to be imbued with the power to affect outcomes. It is also worth considering, briefly, what the Inkas did not manufacture. Most significantly, they made few, if any, representations of personally identifiable humans. There were some images of humans on textiles, perhaps as rock art in caves, and as male and female idols buried in shrines and capacocha offerings (a sacred ceremony performed in times of momentous change or great need, in some instances involving the sacrifice of young adolescents). However, the paucity of human representation in public view or in contexts in which royal accomplishments were often recorded in other early empires—e.g., friezes, murals, monuments—is striking. I have argued elsewhere (D’Altroy 2010; n.d.) that such practice probably arose because of the Inkas’ interest in dividing different kinds of cultural arguments into things that could be given material existence, that were left to immaterial expressions (e.g., speech, gene-alogies, oral sagas), and that were performed (e.g., ritu-als). Given that so much of the Inka economy was dedi-

cated to services that leave little material trace—about 40 percent in the labor censuses for which we have evidence—and that they avoided making certain sorts of objects, we need to keep the balance of the material and nonmaterial in mind when considering the overall structure of state economics.

The Infrastructure

The imperial economic enterprise would not have func-tioned without an elaborate infrastructure of as many as two thousand provincial centers and secondary facilities, storehouses, and a vast road network that inte-grated them into a single system (see fig. 7.1; see chapter 6, by Covey). A number of principles at the core of the Inka economy required that the infrastructure be devel-oped so extensively.

(1) Taxes were largely extracted as labor. The services aside,

the material products of taxation were largely bulky

goods, such as food, textiles, and other artisanal objects.

(2) Andean transportation capabilities were inefficient in com-

parison to those of empires elsewhere in the world. There

was essentially no effective water, mounted, or wheeled

transport, so human carriers and llama caravans moved

the vast bulk of materials for the Inkas.

(3) no general-purpose money was employed in the state

economy. subjects could not be taxed in specie, and there

were no markets in which the state or its agents could

make purchases. A variety of special commodities were in

circulation, such as textiles and coca, but their utility was

limited to particular social contexts. We may be at the limit

of reasonable description to call some of them (e.g., coca,

salt) consumable currencies.

(4) The Inka efforts to create an independent state economy

meant that supplies could not be requisitioned from the

subject population on a regular basis, and bulky goods

could not be consistently moved long distances.

(5) The spatial distributions of productive resources within

the empire (e.g., farmlands, pastures, sources of clay and

metal) were not necessarily congruent with needs.

Collectively, those features meant that most of the economic resources raised by the Inkas were spatially limited in their range of use and their fungibility. Many elements of the imperial economy thus had to be repli-cated throughout the domain. The Inkas solved these problems largely by dedicating particular resources


and the personnel to work them, province by province, under the supervision of governors and subordinate elites. The state installations served several key eco-nomic functions in the process (Morris 1972; Hyslop 1990). For one, they were the locations in which a great deal of craft production took place, either by dedicated service personnel such as the aqllakuna or by rotating laborers. For another, those installations provided the sustenance for itinerant personnel, such as the military or people traveling on state business, out of the goods stored in massive facilities. On the reciprocal side, the provincial centers were the locations where state hos-pitality was conducted, sometimes on a scale of many thousands, and where the administrative acts of assign-ing labor duties were carried out. The storage complexes themselves were massive, perhaps paralleled on a global scale only by the vast warehouses that the Roman Empire maintained to sus-tain the plebian populace of Rome and environs (LeVine 1992). Hundreds of facilities were built, the largest ones apparently located around Cuzco, to feed and supply the capital’s residents and support personnel (see fig. 7.6). In the provinces, facilities of many hundreds, and even in the low thousands, of structures were built near major farms and state centers. The twenty-five hundred structures at Cochapata, Bolivia, adjacent to the farms of Cochabamba, and the three thousand storehouses in Peru’s upper Mantaro valley stand out for their scale. In their warehouses, the Inkas kept food, raw materials, finished crafts, weapons, and virtually everything that they could anticipate needing and that would not dete-riorate over the short term. The forty-thousand-kilometer road network tied the whole empire, and thus its economy, together. Stud-ies by Hyslop (1984) and others have documented the remarkable planning and engineering that went into the design of the system. Paved and demarcated surfaces, staircases, suspension bridges, canals, causeways, ter-races, elevated foundations, and a host of other techni-cal improvements greatly facilitated the movement of personnel and goods over the rough Andean terrain. Even so, there were constriction points—such as the woven, hanging bridges—where even the best Inka technology could not get past topographic constraints that slowed movement significantly. Thus, the road net-work was highly effective and far more efficient than anything that had existed previously, but it was much less efficient than transport systems seen elsewhere in the ancient world.

Concluding Comments

How, then, do we characterize the overall nature of the Inka economy, especially in a comparative framework? Several alternative theories have support, each empha-sizing a different element of the organization and each with something to offer. The predominant approach since the mid– twentieth century is known as lo andino, or “the Andean way” (e.g., Murra 1975). This perspective emphasizes the distinc-tive nature of Andean life, especially the sociopolitical principles that organized economic relationships and behaviors. In this view, factors such as energy expen-diture, transport costs, and exchange values are subor-dinated in their explanatory utility to social hierarchy, resource sharing, group membership, complementarity between genders, and labor exchanges. Inka economics were therefore socially structured, based on the imposi-tion of unequal exchanges and obligations between lord and subject. Marxist scholars stress the coercion, exploitation, and tensions between the upper and lower classes inherent in the imperial organization. In particular, they focus their analyses on the massive confiscation of resources, expropriation of labor by a predatory elite, and control of workers’ products by coercive means (e.g., Godelier 1974; Espinoza Soriano 1978; Patterson 1991). In their view, the Inkas’ material demands led them to impose a household labor tax, but the tensions intrinsic to that relationship of inequality led them to create the labor enclaves. That is, the Asiatic mode of production at the heart of the imperial economy led to an ongoing restructuring of social relations and the need for an elaborate, obfuscating ideology. Although Marxists accept that some of the Andean conditions were particular to the region, they view Inka imperial economics as an example of a pattern found worldwide, in which the material and political goals of a rapacious elite result in exploitation on a massive scale. Alternatively, we may argue that Inka economic decisions were based at least in part on choices made among competing ends (e.g., D’Altroy and Earle 1985). While we may not always grasp the logic behind eco-nomic decisions, outcomes were subject to the same kinds of energetic and ecological constraints found elsewhere. Despite the vast resources that the imperial elites had at their disposal, they were hardly infinite. An example of competing ends may be seen in the shift from a general labor tax toward resettlement and retain-


ership, which implies that the taxes were insufficient to meet a proliferating array of demands. The growth of the aristocratic estates may have played a major role here, especially in the allocation of labor to particular tasks and locations. Over the last few decades, joint documentary and archaeological analyses, informed by the competing theoretical emphases just outlined, have provided great insight into the Inka economy. Even so, major ques-tions remain unresolved or only partially studied. A core issue concerns just how decisions were made in allocating productive resources and personnel among the burgeoning demands that arose over time. What was the (potentially shifting) weight among the differ-ent factors that determined economic policies and prac-tices? How were military, civil, and religious interests balanced in their access to labor, raw resources, land, and herds? How were choices made when multiple entities—the state personified as the ruler, the religious institutions, or the aristocratic families—coveted the same resources? Was there simply a pecking order, so that the ruler had first call, and then the social rank-ing of the entities involved came into play? Or was the emperor Huascar’s exasperated threat to appropriate all of the resources held by the temples and royal families just part of the last bloody negotiation over wealth and power? To put this point in a slightly different way, was there an evolving set of rules about how economics were to be run, or were raw power and political nego-tiation the essential tools for economic transformation throughout Inka history? A related question concerns the balance between political and economic spaces in the Inka political econ-omy. By this, I mean to focus on the circuits of produc-tion, storage, and consumption in state activities. From the early documents, we know that the provinces were supposed to be largely self-sufficient. If that were true, regions of production and consumption ought to have coincided fairly well with administrative spaces (e.g., provinces administered by governors). But we also know that some goods were distributed in circuits that crossed over provincial borders, so that there appear to have been multiple spatial layers of economic practice. For example, certain kinds of high-quality objects—textiles, ceramics, and metal idols—were transferred long distances and used in specific state-related con-texts, such as high-elevation shrines. In addition, high-status non-Inka ceramics—such as Pacajes, Yavi Chico Polychrome, and Negro Pulido—circulated across

provincial borders in state networks in Collasuyu (Wil-liams et al., in prep.). In light of such evidence, we need to explore further how multiple kinds of administra-tive (e.g., regional political autonomy) and economic (e.g., transportation costs) concerns entered into the picture. Weight-to-value ratios may have been impor-tant, but other factors, such as the imperial phase (e.g., expansion, consolidation), regional challenges to Inka authority, context of use, and political infighting also seem to have played a role. A third area of research raises a significant puzzle in Andean studies. If the colonization program was so extensive, affecting a quarter or more of the subject populace, why are colonies so hard to find archaeo-logically? To judge from the documentary sources, we would underestimate the resettlement programs by as much as a factor of one hundred on the basis of present archaeological evidence (D’Altroy 2005). Some mixed or out-of-place architectural or ceramic styles have been recorded, for example on the Bolivian frontier (Alco-nini 2010) and in the Lurín valley (Makowski and Vega Centeno 2004), but they are rare. One would think that if the mitmaqkuna program was the driving force in the late imperial economy, we could recognize its material signatures more readily. But such is not the case, which implies that we need to rethink how to use archaeologi-cal tools to study what may have been one of the most important Inka economic programs. Fourth, what were the biological effects on the Andean populace of the imposition of massive resettle-ment and the extractive economy that sustained the empire (Andrushko 2007)? This is an area of research that has only recently begun to take shape, but it promises some significant advances in understanding changes in diet by region and gender (Hastorf 1990), infant mortality (Owen and Norconk 1987), patholo-gies (Verano 2003), the stresses of labor (Norconk 1987), and the intersection of what had been distinct gene pools (Turner et al. 2009; Haun and Cock C. 2010; see chapter 4, by Shinoda). Fifth, how did the economies of subject societies react to the presence of the state and the demands of its economy? We know that there was some resistance to meeting state levies, but we may also ask how members of local communities tried to further their own ends. In the Upper Mantaro, research found changes in metal-lurgy, food choices, textile production, ceramic produc-tion and use, and other household activities (Costin and Earle 1989). And elites in some subject societies


created special bonds with the state to advance their own interests (e.g., Lorandi and Boixadós 1981–1988; Alconini 2010), in some cases employing state wares for political hospitality carried out in subject communities (e.g., D’Altroy 2002). But it is also the case that an enor-mous amount of economic activity within the empire was not imperial, as such. Since only a very few studies have been conducted on community economics under imperial rule (e.g., D’Altroy and Hastorf 2002), much more work on the subject is needed. To close, I would like to consider how the Inkas used economics as a tool in the cultural reconfiguration of the Andes—another issue that merits further investi-gation. In one sense, Inka economic policies were sim-ply domination and extraction. In another, they were hegemonic arguments over land, biota, history, and the cultural practices that mediated between humanity and the nonhuman aspects of their world. For example, the transformation of the landscape through terracing and irrigation was a kind of cultural statement, as Earls and Cervantes, and Nair and Protzen note elsewhere in this volume. It was certainly the case that both of those practices improved agricultural productivity by accel-erating the growing season, improving humidity and soil retention, and expanding the area on which crops could be grown. Of comparable significance, however, was the domestication of a landscape that was consid-ered to have a social life and past of its own, through the manipulation of water and reduction of the chaos that the Inkas claimed was inherent in the Andes prior to their appearance. A parallel effort was made to reconfig-ure the biotic space of the Andes by distributing a par-ticular variety of the most highly desired crop—Cuzco flint maize—throughout their domain. Apparently in the service of religious observance, they also carried out some experimental agricultural activities, successfully growing maize at the sacred enclave at Copacabana, Bolivia, about 200 meters above its normal elevation limit of about 3,600 masl. And at the far southern edge of their domain, in central Chile, they cultivated crops (esp. quinoa) brought from the central Andes (Rossen et al. 2010). The effect of such agrarian and even for-estry practices (see also Chepstow-Lusty and Winfield 2000), especially when applied in contexts of commen-sal hospitality, was to impose a particular view of civi-lized behavior on subject societies. Overall, then, Inka economic policies were intended to sustain the activities of the state, the aristocratic elites, and the official religious institutions, as well as

to impose a particular view of an ordered, civilized life. To meet those goals, the Inkas implemented a labor tax, reorganized the ethnic composition of the empire, remodeled the landscape, and dedicated large numbers of people to institutional and personal service. All this was done under the guise of shared social responsi-bilities, a view that was resoundingly rejected by many Andean subjects at the first opportunity—and some-times the second and third, to judge from the narratives of resistance and support for the invading Spaniards.

Notes

1. Indeed, the modern discipline of economics as it is cur-rently understood is generally considered to have taken form with the publication of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which appeared in 1776 (Smith 2000). The contrasting field of economic anthropol-ogy generally starts with a different set of assumptions than did Smith, and is far too complicated to be covered in other than a cursory way in this paper. 2. There were three principal kinds of “money” used in the northern part of the territory incorporated into the Inka empire. One consisted of strings of red and white beads called chaquira, which were described as having been made of bone and were used in highland Ecuador (Salomon 1987:66). A second, found in the same area, was called chagual; this money consisted of gold buttons. The last consisted of copper “axe-monies” called hachas-monedas, which were manufactured in a decimal sequence by weight and were used on the central and south coast of Ecuador down to the far north coast of Peru (Hosler et al. 1990). None of those special-purpose monies, which circulated in the north before and under Inka rule, was adopted into the Inka imperial economy itself. 3. The resources and personnel of ancient oracles, such as coastal Pachacamac and highland Wari Willka, were apparently respected and allowed to continue functioning after acknowl-edging the supremacy of the Inka sun god, Inti.

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