Bronze Age Economics by Timothy Earle

Author:Timothy Earle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

Core and Periphery in the Inka Empire

We have conducted extensive research first in the Mantaro Valley, Peru (Earle et al. 1980, 1987; D'Altroy 1992; Hastorf 1993; D'Altroy and Hastorf 2001) and now in the Calchaquí Valley, Argentina (D'Altroy et al. n.d.). These regions held very different strategic positions in the Inka empire, the Mantaro in the core and the Calchaquí at the periphery (see Fig. II.1). Thus the two regions most probably had divergent roles in the division of labor within the Inka political economy. For the ongoing Proyecto Arqueológico Calchaquí (PAC), the goals, field methods, and recording were directly comparable to the Mantaro Valley research. In so doing, we structured our research to recognize similarities and differences in local and state economic activities.

The Mantaro Valley was in the empire's mountain core, controlled and involved directly in state agricultural development. The Mantaro is a productive, intermontane valley that had a dense pre-Inka population organized as chiefdoms, which are documented dramatically by large, well-preserved settlements (Earle et al. 1987). Following conquest, the valley became a center for Inka state activities. The main north-south trunk road passed directly through it and its population was resettled in smaller settlements located at lower elevations. Prior to conquest, the region's economy had been based on intensive agriculture, and this economy changed little. The Inka state, however, effected a few selective changes to integrate the region into the state (Chapter 10; Costin et al. 1989; D'Altroy 1992).

Nowhere is the system of staple finance so visible as in the Mantaro Valley. Even today, the storage silos stand prominently on the hills above the ruins of Hatun Xauxa and line the slopes that bound the valley to east and west. Outside the empire's mountainous central core, storage complexes such as those of the Mantaro Valley are rarely described (Snead 1992). In most cases, storage there was comparatively small scale and directly associated with administrative settlements, probably for their direct support. The limited scale and distribution of storage on the peripheries suggest that these more remote outposts were important not for amassing staples but for acquiring wealth. In Ecuador, for example, Salomon (1986, 1987) describes how the Inka state worked through the chiefly elite and their specialized traders to procure gold and feathers from beyond the empire's borders. The design of the Argentinean project capitalizes on the opportunity to investigate the proposed role of wealth extraction from the peripheries for the developing political economy of the empire.

The Calchaquí Valley was positioned on the margins of the Inka empire. Located at 2,500 in above sea level in an arid intermountain valley, the northern Calchaquí is a rural, thinly populated region of Salta Province. Prehistorically the region was home to various Santamariana chiefdoms. Subsistence depended on irrigated farming of maize and quinoa along the streams and camelid herding at higher elevations. Settlements comprised a two-tiered hierarchy: (1) town-size settlements, like La Paya, contained public structures located near open plazas and several hundred residential compounds each with one or more circular houses

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