The Late Period (AD 900-1400/1470) in the South Andes was a time of social and political struggles, tensions, and contradictions: struggles for power and control over land, labor, and other resources among competing communities as well as among competing households or factions within the same community; tensions and contradictions in all the communities between the preservation of communal integration versus increase in social inequality and stratification (see Chapter 30 in this volume). The prevalence of sites located in high, defensive places implies that friction between neighboring communities was common.
No single polity was able to subdue or dominate a large region. On the contrary, archaeological and ethnohistorical evidence shows that political fragmentation and competition seem to have been the rule during the Late Period. Even within each community, political power was not totally consolidated and institutionalized. Many of the larger settlements of this period have no signs of centralized political institutions (such as formalized public spaces with administrative buildings and elite residences) and surplus appropriation (concentrated and restricted storage facilities). Rather, in many sites, the presence of more than one public area, as well as the occurrence of similar rituals and feasting activities in different parts of the same site, suggest that competition among households or other internal factions was the rule.
Economic stratification, social inequality, and differences in power between individuals and groups were not institutionalized in pre-Inca times. The archaeological record shows no sign of significant differences among dwellings in terms of their size, quality, and location within the site (Figure 42.2; see also Chapter 30 in this volume). Moreover, in the majority of the sites material objects are evenly distributed. In addition, there are no clear-cut differences among residential compounds with respect to goods consumed, access to resources, tools of production, and activities undertaken.
Figure 42.2. Loma Rica de Shiquimil site, Yocavil Valley area. It is a Late Period indigenous site. (Redrawn from Raffino 1988: fig. 4.18).
Towns and villages of the Late Period were not divided into elite and commoner areas. Rather, communities displayed a strong degree of integration, where walls, paths, spaces, and a similar material culture were shared, together with activities and experiences. Indeed, the material homogeneity of Late Period places could have created a sense of integration, a perception of everybody as equal and the same, or part of one unity.
Even though historical accounts recognize the existence of chiefs (at least during the early Colonial Period), chiefs’ power was based on their skills in time of war and their ability as leaders and negotiators, but it was ephemeral and temporary and did not necessarily entail material benefits or significant control over labor and resources. I believe that a similar situation characterized the Late Period.
The Incas fostered a dramatic change in the political structures of South Andean societies. They created a clearly stratified social pyramid with themselves at the top. The polities that contended for power, land, labor and other resources before the Incas were now integrated within a single political unit: Tawantinsuyu. Power, which during the Late Period was scattered among competing groups, communities and settlements, became centralized in the hands of the Incas, and reorganization of the social landscape reinforced this. Before the Inca conquest no local town had become the political center of a large region; during the imperial domination a single Inca settlement centralized power and ruled over the rest.
Inca domination also impacted political organization and daily experience in many local communities. Archaeological evidence shows that some settlements underwent remarkable transformations with the onset of Inca conquest. Parts of these sites have intrusive Inca-style residential compounds and administrative/ceremonial buildings, whose construction required eliminating former indigenous structures (Figures 42.3, 42.4). These Incaic precincts are also distinguished from the local site area by higher concentrations of imperial objects, storage facilities and, in some cases, richly equipped burials. Examples of this are La Huerta and Pucara de Tilcara in the Quebrada de Humahuaca, La Paya/Guitian in the northern Calchaqui Valley, Quilmes and Fuerte Quemado in the Yocavil Valley (all in northwestern Argentina), and Turi in the Atacama region in Chile (Figure 42.1). This evidence suggests that the Incas either settled mitmaqkuna in some local towns, who became
Figure 42.3. La Paya/Guitian site, northern Calchaqui Valley. It is a Late Period indigenous site transformed by the Incas. (Redrawn from Gonzalez and Diaz 1992).
Figure 42.4. Turi site, Atacama Region. It is a Late Period indigenous site transformed by the Incas. The area of the intrusive Inca plaza and the height of the intrusive Inca kallanka clearly stand out. (Redrawn from Cornejo 2000).
Elites and rulers of the communities, or that they raised the status and power of some local households. A bond between these special people and the empire elevated their status and provided them with knowledge for conducting Inca rituals, with access to high-quality material objects, and to prestige goods. Inca material culture seems to have empowered these chosen people. Their position, however, could have had a negative aspect; it could have alienated them from the rest of the community, including the social and economic networks and communal solidarity that existed before the Incas. Social rejection could have been one of the unintended consequences of these new forms of praxis promoteds by the Incas.
The creation of this new and materially privileged social stratum, sponsored and protected by the Incas, promoted the centralization of power and the institutionalization of social inequality and stratification (something that indigenous societies had not quite accomplished before the Incas). Obviously it altered many facets of vernacular social life.
Among the aspects I find particularly intriguing is the transformation of some individuals’ agency, and consequently of indigenous notions of agency [Note 2], and the alteration of local settlements’ sense of place due to the fragmentation that these particular communities experienced after Inca intervention.
Tawantinsuyu promoted the creation of a hitherto non-existent type of agent, who acquired prestige and power due to his/her association with the dominant Inca conquerors.
With Inca domination, some inhabitants of indigenous settlements acquired new knowledge, more power, and a novel and greater potential for action than the rest. They conducted Inca rituals within indigenous places, enjoyed and displayed conspicuous prestige goods, manipulated resources, and made decisions that affected the life of the rest of the community. Their room for action grew wider and involved more possibilities and a greater autonomy than what native social structure had previously allowed. In this new political context, native people realized that other courses of action were possible.
The sense of solidarity and communal integration experienced in pre-Inca settlements became fragmented after Inca intervention. In these cases, people no longer lived in a place of material homogeneity, but instead they began to experience a divided community, where some individuals inhabited distinctive houses, employed fancy Inca-style objects, and carried out different activities than the rest. The Incas created a sense of social stratification and inequality.
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