The Vilcanota Valley (Peru): Inka state formation and the evolution of imperial strategies.

Abstract

New historiography and the collection of archaeological data in the Vilcanota Valley (Peru) permits the development of a new paradigm for Inka imperial origins, one that explains the available evidence more fully than previous interpretations. This dissertation develops independent process-oriented models of archaeology and ethnohistory to identify long-term patterns enabling Inka imperial expansion. This interpretation views the formation of a centralized state as a critical precursor to rapid imperial expansion. An archaeological survey and excavations conducted in Peru's Vilcanota Valley provide new data for assessing long-term change in the Inka heartland. Around A.D. 600, the Wari empire established colonies close to a complex polity in the Cusco Basin (where the Inka capital was later established), and foreign and local groups interacted for at least 300 years before the abandonment of Wari imperial installations. The decline of the Wari colonies led to intensified political competition between groups of different ethnic identities and varying levels of political complexity. The Cusco Basin polity began to intensify agricultural production while simultaneously stepping up diplomatic and military activities in neighboring areas. The ethnohistoric and archaeological evidence indicates that a centralized state had formed in the Cusco Basin several generations prior to imperial expansion, as early as A.D. 1200. Inka state formation involved the incorporation of previously autonomous groups. The Inka used marriage alliance, elite interaction, and warfare to bring many (but not all) neighboring groups under their control. Inka expansion was aimed more at the direct acquisition of exotic goods than at territorial administration of the Cusco region. In several generations of conquest, local administrative development, and the suppression of local rebellions, the Inka state developed the basic strategies employed in its imperial expansion. At the same time, it established administrative control over a large population, intensified agricultural production, and promoted a conquest ideology, enabling sustained campaigns of expansion. Inka imperialism saw the modification of strategies for conquest and administration, and the growth of the empire led to the transformation of the imperial heartland.