FIGURE 7.1. Calibrated radiocarbon dates from Wari and Wari-related contexts in the Cuzco region (from Bauer and Jones 2003)
Dating the Period of Wari Influence in the Cuzco Region
We currently have two independent data sets to date the arrival and withdrawal of the Wari from the Cuzco region (Figure 7.1).11 The first set consists of ten dates extracted from Pikillacta (McEwan 1984, 1996). The earliest dates are derived from excavated floor levels in the complex that suggest a foundation date of between AD 600 and AD 700.12 The latest samples come from the wooden beams charred in a fire that destroyed the central sector of the site, and provide dates of between AD 800 and AD 1000.13 It should be noted that since the wooden beam samples come from construction materials within Pikillacta, they do not date the destruction of the site, but instead date what appears to have been the last construction phase.
The second data set comes from our excavation program at Wari Period sites in the Cuzco Basin. In all, eight carbon samples have been dated from contexts with Wari (Viñaque and Huamanga) and Arahuay pottery. The earliest two samples date to between AD 650 and AD 850,14 and the last two fall between AD 800 and AD 1000. These dates, taken from a series of small Wari Period sites in the Cuzco Basin, are similar to those from Pikillacta. The combined data sets suggest that the Wari arrived in the Cuzco region sometime around AD 600 and were active in the region until at least AD 900, and perhaps even till the turn of the millennium. The beginning date of Wari influence in the region also meshes well with the final appearance (1422 ± 51 BP [95.4% probability AD 530–700])15 of Altiplano-influenced materials (Muyu Orco and incised incensarios) recovered at the site of Peqokaypata and thought to be in the valley before the arrival of the Wari.
Summary and Discussion
When the Wari entered the Cuzco region, they found it to be similar to many other areas of the south-central Andes. Small sets of ranked elites lived in a few chiefly villages spaced out along the river valleys. A significant percentage of the population also lived in numerous homesteads or hamlets densely scattered across the region. Local societies were thriving, but they had yet to reach a level of social or political complexity equal to that already achieved in the Ayacucho region.
The Wari were drawn to the Cuzco region because it was a rich area of agricultural potential relatively near to, but outside of, the direct control of Tiwanaku. In the Cuzco Basin they found a large concentration of people near its western end. In the Lucre Basin, Chokepukio appears to have been of importance as well. In between these basins, along the course of the Huatanay River, were numerous villages, hamlets, and homesteads. To the east of the Lucre Basin was the area of Huaro, which presumably also contained a significant population concentration. Many thousands of people lived in the region, but given its large size and rich climatic zones, large tracts of land were still available for agricultural expansion and, most importantly, intensification.
The Wari Empire was interested in maize and found that the local economy was already focused on its production. Because of this, they did not need to physically reorganize the indigenous settlement systems of the region, as they had done elsewhere. Instead, the Wari concerned themselves with consolidating their influence over the region and establishing a southern administrative center for their empire. During this period there appears to have been some minor concentration of peoples in the largest villages of the region, and many of the smallest Qotakalli Period sites were abandoned. Local potters shifted through time from producing the local style of Qotakalli to Wari-influenced styles, such as Arahuay. Burger et al. (2000) have also documented a clear shift in obsidian procurement patterns. For more than a thousand years, the peoples of the Cuzco region had obtained their obsidian from sources located in the Alca region. During the Wari Period, when Wari occupied parts of the Cuzco region, the obsidian flow from this source stopped. For this relatively brief period of time, obsidian was imported into the region from the Quispisisa area, which, like the Cuzco Valley, was under Wari control (Burger et al. 2000).
The Wari may have first established themselves in the Huaro Basin and then begun to expand their influence into the Cuzco Valley. Eventually, the area that felt the greatest Wari impact in the Cuzco region was the Lucre Basin. There the Wari built an architectural marvel, the site of Pikillacta. Enormous on any scale, the site of Pikillacta represented an unparalleled construction project in the region. The Wari selected a large mountain shelf above Lake Lucre, near the confluence of the Vilcanota and Huatanay Rivers, to build their administrative center. New terrace systems were built, canals constructed, and large tracts of previously marginal land were brought into full agricultural production.
Some 30 kilometers northwest of Pikillacta, the preexisting chiefdom in the Cuzco Basin was less affected. No secondary center was built in the Cuzco Basin, and the settlement pattern continued relatively unchanged. In this case, the Wari appear to have gained influence through more subtle means. Local elites would have played important roles in mediating Wari administration in the Cuzco Basin, at least in the beginning.
It is clear that the Wari ultimately hoped to control the entire Cuzco region and then rule the southern highlands directly from their administrative center at Pikillacta. Construction began at Pikillacta after AD 600, and the last known building phase occurred as late as AD 900. However, after centuries of occupation, the site was abandoned, with different sectors left in varying stages of construction. The fact that the center was never completed indicates that the Wari were never able to establish the kind of integration that they had envisioned when the expansion process began.
The concluding event at Pikillacta was a huge fire that destroyed much of the formally occupied area of the site. This is strong evidence that mediation with the local population had failed. In other words, the Wari had been unable to fully incorporate and indoctrinate the peoples of the region into their state. The political and economic authority that emanated from the large complex of Pikillacta was still seen as “foreign,” despite the fact that the complex had existed for several centuries.
In recent years, it has been suggested that since Pikillacta was not completed, it never functioned on a scale that its large size suggests. Nevertheless, the fact that so much of the complex was built indicates that the Wari dominated the region and were able to extract a large amount of rotational labor for its projects. As has been noted for the construction of monumental architecture elsewhere in the Americas, the coordinators of these projects most certainly attempted to present them to the local populace as logical continuations of traditional labor practices, even though the scale of the operations had greatly changed (Pauketat 2000). The construction occurred at levels not seen before in the region, because the Wari could extract labor from different ethnic groups who had never before worked “collectively” on a project.
At the height of their power, the Wari controlled a vast, though discontinuous, area across the central Andes. With the construction of Pikillacta, parts of the Cuzco region fell under its influence. Contact with other parts of the Wari realm is reflected by the recovery of a few fragments of Nazca and Cajamarca ceramics at Pikillacta (Glowacki 1996). Slightly more numerous, however, are vessels that were imported into the Cuzco region from the Wari core area of Ayacucho.
Archaeological surveys in the Cuzco region indicate that the distribution of direct Wari control was highly uneven. Centered largely in the Lucre Basin, their direct control extended up the Vilcanota River Valley at least until the town of Huaro, where another, perhaps earlier, center was built. The Wari had markedly less influence in the areas to the south, and they worked closely with local leaders to the west to extend their influence over the preexisting Cuzco Basin chiefdom.
Although the Wari attempt to incorporate the Cuzco region into their expanding state eventually failed, the centuries-long Wari presence in the south-central Andes fostered many important local changes that influenced the course of future development in the area. For example, the W
ari presence in the region must have altered local intellectual and administrative infrastructure as ethnic elites and their commoner populations both cooperated with and offered indigenous resistance against the newcomers. Furthermore, the construction of terraces and canals and the opening up of large tracts of agricultural land in the Lucre Basin must have impressed the local population. In fact, terrace construction and irrigation would become a major feature in the development of new agricultural lands and the formation of power in the next period. In addition, the Wari occupation also brought the production and standardization of local ceramics to a scale not seen before. Imported styles were reproduced, and after the fall of the empire, they served as the foundation for the development of new regional traditions. Successful cultural hegemony by the Wari over selected aspects of the Cuzco-based societies is reflected in the production of Wari-style (i.e., Arahuay) pottery in local workshops. Arahuay ceramics dominate the finer wares of the valley during the Wari Period and, perhaps most important, appear to form the ceramic tradition from which Killke (or Early Inca) ceramics develop after the Wari withdraw from the region.
The withdrawal of the Wari from the Cuzco region and the burning of Pikillacta set the scene for the rise of local ethnic groups. The next period, one of the most interesting times of local development in the Cuzco region, would witness the development of the Inca state and set the foundations for Cuzco’s own course of expansionism across the Andean world.
CHAPTER 8
The Development of the Inca State (AD 1000–1400)
Brian S. Bauer and R. Alan Covey
IN THIS CHAPTER we examine the dramatic social transformations that occurred in the Cuzco region between AD 1000 and 1400, during the Killke Period (also generally known as the Late Intermediate Period).1 Conceptually, this encompasses regional developments following the decline of Wari influence in the south-central Andes and leading up to the first Inca territorial expansion outside the Cuzco region. As such, this era represents the critical time when the Inca transformed themselves from one of many competing complex polities on the post-Wari political landscape into a well-integrated state capable of dominating the central Andean highlands.
Because Inca imperialism occurred just before the Spanish Conquest of the Andean highlands (AD 1532), some information recorded in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century colonial documents can be compared critically with archaeological data recovered through excavations and settlement surveys in the Cuzco region. References to the interactions among Cuzco’s ethnic groups during the Killke Period facilitate a more detailed discussion of Inca state development than would otherwise be possible.
In considering the ethnohistoric record, we acknowledge the problems inherent to the study of these documents (Rowe 1946: 192–197; Bauer 1992a; Julien 2000), at the same time asserting that their anthropological study can yield important perspectives on long-term regional processes. While specific Inca rulers are often credited with specific events or achievements, we combine information contained in the Spanish chronicles with excavation and survey data to construct multiple lines of evidence for state formation processes. In other words, we attempt to identify the particular conditions that favored social transformation in the Cuzco region during this period of state development, rather than develop biographies of the charismatic individuals who have come to be credited with such changes (Covey 2003:6).
In this context, the distribution of Inca of Privilege—groups in the Cuzco region to whom Inca ethnic status was extended—becomes the basis for our analysis of the development of the imperial heartland (Map 2.1). As discussed in Chapter 2, the Inca of Privilege were subservient to Cuzco and yet allied with it, and they represented a large, tribute-paying social stratum that supported the ruling elite in Cuzco and occupied low-level bureaucratic positions in Inca imperial institutions. This is to say, the state formation process promoted the development of an ethnically unified Inca heartland. The full ethnic integration of the Cuzco region corresponds to the first campaigns of Inca imperial expansion into neighboring non-Inca regions.
Previous Research on the Development of the Inca Heartland
Before the 1970s, many writers described Inca political origins in terms of the personal achievements of Inca rulers. Using certain Spanish chronicles, it has been proposed that the Inca emerged from obscurity in the early fifteenth century during the reign of Viracocha Inca and his son Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui. The catalyst for the sudden political growth in the Cuzco region is said to have been the ability of these two Inca kings to unite the various ethnic groups of the region and to score a decisive military victory over a traditional rival, the Chanka. Nigel Davies (1995: 59) summarizes the traditional interpretation of Inca political origins: “When he [Pachacuti] became ruler, the Incas formed only a modest village community; at his death they were the mightiest empire of South America.”
Accepting the belief that the Inca state was largely the invention of Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui, many scholars have concentrated on reconstructing and analyzing the individual actions of this heroic leader rather than trying to understand the broader social contexts in which those actions took place. Here and elsewhere, we argue against the use of this traditional explanation of rapid state growth, and the methodological individualism that supports it, in favor of a more processual approach (Bauer 1992a; Bauer and Covey 1999; Covey 2003). Shifting the interpretive focus to processes of long-term change is the first step in moving beyond the “great man” paradigm of Inca origins to develop more anthropological perspectives on the Inca Empire (Covey 2003: 4).
In other words, although Inca imperial expansion appears to have occurred quite rapidly, researchers increasingly view this as the result of antecedent and long-term regional political processes rather than the serendipitous outcome of a single battle and the aspirations of specific individuals. A process-oriented interpretation requires that we work with a chronological scope exceeding that of the reliable ethnohistoric record. Still, some scholars have read the documents for more causal or processual perspectives on Inca state formation as the interests of scholars have shifted from singular events and individual agency to the long-term development of social, economic, military, and ideological power (Covey 2003). For example, Rostworowski (1978) suggests that the manipulation of institutionalized exchange relationships (and not military conquest) led, to political integration and Inca territorial expansion. Conversely, Lumbreras (1978) emphasizes class conflict and traditional interregional hostilities between Cuzco and the Chanka. John Murra (1972), Richard Schaedel (1978), and William Isbell (1978) have each stressed the importance of economic management and redistribution systems in stimulating Inca political centralization, whereas others have suggested the Inca system of dual inheritance as the ideological impetus for territorial expansion (Conrad 1981; Demarest and Conrad 1983; Conrad and Demarest 1984; Patterson 1985). Through the investigation of broad categories of social and economic organization, these authors have shifted their interpretive focus from the actions of a single individual to more general processes of social change.
Certainly, earlier theoretical discussions of Inca origins have advanced our interpretive orientation, but they have been unable to test ethnohistorically generated hypotheses against independent archaeological data. As Geoffrey Conrad and Arthur Demarest (1984: 96) observed in the mid-1980s, “Archaeology could greatly further our understanding of the pre-imperial Inca by revealing the precise chronology of their cultural development and by serving as a means of evaluating conflicting hypotheses derived from the chronicles. The practical problem is that the archaeological data available at present are not very extensive.” Fortunately, a large body of new survey and excavation data has been collected in the past two decades, and we can now evaluate Inca state formation with several independent lines of evidence.
Archaeological Surveys in the Inca Heartland
Understanding how various Cuzco ethnic groups were incorporated into the emerging Inca state is a necessary first s
tep in the formation of a larger explanatory model for state development in the Inca heartland. Therefore, we first examine the settlement shifts that occurred in the Cuzco Valley during the Killke Period. Then, using results from additional survey projects that have been conducted to the south and north of the Cuzco Valley, and exploratory work that has been conducted to the east and west of Cuzco, we examine how various groups were incorporated into the emerging state.
Traditionally, there has been a general bias in the Cuzco region for conducting archaeological research at sites with monumental architecture. Great strides have been made in understanding large imperial Inca sites, such as Machu Picchu (Valencia Zegarra and Gibaja Oviedo 1992), Ollantaytambo (Protzen 1991), Chinchero (Alcina Franch et al. 1976), and Yucay (Niles 1999), but smaller, earlier sites in the region—sites that played a role in early state development processes—have not been as extensively studied. Furthermore, until recently, the interpretation of excavation data has been hindered by a lack of regional settlement pattern data from intensive survey projects. Most archaeological projects in the Cuzco region have concentrated either on conducting excavations at a single site or on collecting surface pottery from a limited number of sites. With the possible exception of Kendall’s (1976) work in the Cusichaca Valley, located some 60 kilometers northwest of the Cuzco Valley, no systematic survey work was conducted in the Cuzco region prior to the mid-1980s. Though excavation data are crucial for understanding site-level impacts of state formation, only regional settlement data can address the full scope of state formation processes and contextualize the occupations of individual sites.
Ancient Cuzco Page 12