From Autonomous to Imperial Rule
Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology, 2002
This volume examines change and continuity in the domestic economy of the Xauxa society of Peru's... more This volume examines change and continuity in the domestic economy of the Xauxa society of Peru's Upper Mantaro Valley, from a condition ofself-rule to incorporation into the Inka empire. In this final chapter, I would like to reflect on the authors' studies, while placing Xauxa society back into the larger context of the Inka empire. The discussion reconsiders the questions laid out in the introduction: to assess how circumstances in one valley can help us probe the nature of imperial-provincial relations, and at the same time return to the project's conception-to contribute to our understanding of household economies in premodern complex societies. The last couple of centuries before the Spanish invasion of 1532 were an era of striking change in the region. The peoples of the Mantaro were coalescing into larger, more complex polities, while local relations became more truculent. Although the valley had witnessed the Wari expansion at least indirectly in the mid-first millennium A.D., local interactions in the tumultuous Wanka II Period triggered shifts that were more rapid and unsettling than anything seen before. In the northern valley especially, the populace took refuge in large, well-defended, hilltop settlements, while displaying some of the features of incipient social hierarchy. Despite those changes, nothing matched the impact of being drawn into the Inka empire in the fifteenth century. A new political and ideological order, forced resettlement, and extraction of labor taxes and military service altered the cultural landscape on a grand scale. The principal links among households before Inka rule drew heavily on kin relations, and ties between ordinary heads of household and the elite drew on both kinship and mutual obligation. When the Inkas assumed power, they took advantage of existing relationships by casting their jurisdiction in the guise of the local system writ large (Murra, 1980). They drew on an ethic in which lords received labor for their fields, flocks, and houses, and provided hospitality and gifts to their people in return. To rule the valley's peoples, the Inkas created a province under the direction of a governor and his subordinates, an act that shifted the upper levels of power from local lords to state-approved officials. The top provincial level was held by an Inka appointee, and the Inkas assumed the right to host much of the ceremonial hospitality that fueled political relations. When the Spaniards arrived in 1532, however, most state positions in the Upper Mantaro-from petty lords of 10 or 50 families to grand lords of 10,000 households-were held by local lords, approved by the state. The imposition of imperial rule thus both encompassed and intruded into the existing kin-based political order. Another crucial transformation lay in the creation of the state
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