Dis-embedded centers and architecture of power in the fringes of the Inka empire: New perspectives on territorial and hegemonic strategies of domination

Empires were expansive polities based on the extraction of resources and economic surplus from subdued territories and people through a range of strategies of domination. Based on research on Oroncota in the Southeastern Inka region, this article presents evidence from architecture, settlement shifts, storage capacity and artifacts distribution, to illustrate the mechanics of dis-embedded Inka imperial centers. As an alternative form of control in the territorial and hegemonic spectrum, this research focuses on the nature and evolution of Inka dis-embedded centers as an alternative form of provincial control based on the use of architecture of power.     

Provisioning of the Inka army in wartime: obsidian procurement in Pambamarca,Ecuador

Ninety-nine obsidian artifacts from fortified and non-fortified sites in the Pambamarca region of northern Ecuador were analyzed with XRF to examine patterns of procurement of obsidian by soldiers in the Inka army and by the local Cayambes who were resisting Inka conquest. The results show that the Inkas acquired material from several different sources, a pattern consistent with provisioning by subject peoples in partial fulfillment of labor obligations. The Cayambes also acquired material from multiple sources, although they may not have directly procured material from all of the sources because the external boundary of Inka territory bisected the region of obsidian sources. That frontier may have prevented the Inkas from accessing one source, Callejones, from which the Cayambes acquired some of their obsidian. In addition, the Inkas were acquiring some obsidian from the Yanaurco-Quiscatola source, which had been previously abandoned around AD 1000.     

Identifying the sources of Inka period ceramics from northern Chile: results of a neutron activation study

To examine regional patterns of ceramic production and distribution during the era of Inka domination in northern Chile, we determined the elemental compositions of 157 samples of archaeological ceramics and geological clays from the sites of Catarpe and Turi using instrumental neutron activation analysis. We identified two major and three minor composition groups in the ceramics. The major groups, High Cr and Low Cr, are linked to clays from two broad geological contexts within the region, while the minor Low Na group is made up of ceramics imported from northwestern Argentina. The distribution of the composition groups indicates that, in the Catarpe–Turi region, patterns of ceramic production differed for different vessel types: jars were made from clay and temper acquired near the sites where the jars were used, while bowls were made of material coming from more distant sources. The geographical distribution of the analyzed ceramics indicates that bowls were exchanged between Catarpe and Turi in a pattern more similar to tribute/extraction than to market exchange, with Catarpe being the dominant site. The compositional analysis also demonstrates that Inka-style ceramics were being locally produced at sites in this region during the era of Inka domination.     

Paria la Viexa and an expanding empire: Provincial centers in the political economy of the Inka Empire (a.d. 1440–1532)

Abstract

The fastest growing and largest territorial empire of the Americas was the Inka Empire. At the time of its emergence in the 14th century, the empire lacked an urban network, a developed division of labor, a sophisticated craft industry, and an exchange network like that of most pre-industrial states. The emerging Inka state had to create the social and economic institutions that would ensure its growth and long-term operation. Data from Paria la Viexa, an Inka provincial center in Bolivia, illustrates how the Inka Empire created the necessary conditions for its expansion and operation through a network of provincial centers it had called to life.     

Provisioning Inka feasts at Tiwanaku, Bolivia: the geographic origins of camelids in the Pumapunku complex

While political integration can be achieved by many means, here we focus on the use of feasting and statecraft in the Inka Empire of the Andean Late Horizon (c. AD 1400-1532) in South America. In order to examine Inka political integration of the Lake Titicaca Basin of Bolivia, we examine paleomobility and paleodiet through radiogenic strontium and stable oxygen and carbon isotope data in archaeological camelid remains from the site of Tiwanaku. Mean radiogenic strontium isotope values from all archaeological camelid enamel and bone samples is ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr = 0.70998 ± 0.00179 (1σ, n = 48), mean stable oxygen isotope values from a sub-set of archaeological camelid enamel and bone samples is δ¹⁸O_{carbonate (VPDB)} = −10.0‰ ± 2.6‰ (1σ, n = 18) and mean stable carbon isotope values from a sub-set of archaeological camelid enamel and bone samples is δ¹³C_{carbonate (VPDB)} = −9.0‰ ± 1.7‰ (1σ, n = 18). While many camelids consumed in these feasting events were likely local to the Lake Titicaca Basin, others came from a variety of different geologic zones, elucidating our understanding of Inka statecraft and the role of feasting in political integration in empires in the past.     

Reconstructing Middle Horizon mobility patterns on the coast of Peru through strontium isotope analysis

The pre-Columbian coastal site of Ancón, Peru frequently has been interpreted as an important outpost of the highland Wari Empire, inhabited by individuals from the sierra and the coast. In order to test this hypothesis, bone–tooth pairs from 35 Middle Horizon (550 AD–1000 AD) Ancón skeletons were analyzed for strontium isotopes, which vary by geologic provenance. Results indicate that 34 of the 35 individuals have ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr enamel and bone values higher than Ancón's biologically available strontium isotope range. Nitrogen and carbon isotope data from a subset of the Ancón skeletons suggest that the higher than expected ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr values among the Ancón sample likely reflects a diet rich in marine resources rather than migratory activity, and highlight the need to use multiple lines of evidence to track residence change at sites where individuals relied on resources other than locally grown terrestrial foods. The one remaining individual, a young female of elite status, has an enamel strontium isotope signature much lower than the available data for local fauna and soil indicating that she was not raised locally. Her enamel ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr ratio fits well within the range of strontium isotope values established for the inland Wari site of Conchopata [Tung, T.A., Knudson, K.J. Social identities and geographical origins of Wari trophy heads from Conchopata, Peru. Current Anthropology, in press.], and suggests that highland, Wari immigrants may have been present at Ancón during the Middle Horizon.     

A processual study of Inka state formation

Traditional interpretations of how the Inka empire developed emphasize the disjunctive transformation of a village-level society through the agency of a single charismatic ruler. New evidence from the Inka heartland indicates that it was in fact the formation of a centralized state in the Cusco Valley of highland Peru that enabled the rapid campaigns of Inka territorial expansion during the 15th and 16th centuries. By using archaeological data and ethnohistoric documents to develop independent lines of evidence, it is possible to describe Inka state formation processes anthropologically. Settlement and excavation data from the Vilcanota Valley provide several indicators of the development of a centralized Inka state during the Killke Period (c. A.D. 1000–1400), while multiple accounts of the Inka past describe the transformation of Inka society over a period of several generations leading up to the first campaigns of imperial conquest. Both lines of evidence are consistent with the kinds of changes described for other known cases of state formation. The formation of the Inka state and its expansion in the Cusco region created conditions in which the agency of Inka rulers could direct the expansion of a mighty empire in only a few generations of conquest.     

The Social Basis of Sacred Spaces in the Prehispanic Andes: Ritual Landscapes of the Dead in Chimú and Inka Societies

Sacred landscapes are a subset of the diverse media that people use to make statements about social order. Mary Douglas has discussed two dimensions of social order—group and grid—and suggested connections between their varied conceptions and expressions in the culturally constructed landscape. I extend Douglas's concepts to a specific domain of sacred landscapes, funerary architecture. Drawing on two examples from the prehispanic Andes, I argue that differences in Chimú and Inka funerary landscapes represent different conceptions of social order. Archaeological investigations of sacred spaces as expressions of varying social experience deepen understanding of Andean societies and other ancient peoples.     

Sanitizing Szigetvár: On the post-imperial fashioning of nationalist memory

ABSTRACT

In this essay, I examine an early modern battle between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, the Siege of Szigetvár, and its protagonists, Nikola ?ubi? Zrinski and Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent, as sites of memory in Hungary, Croatia, and Turkey. In relation to recent commemorations of the Siege, I focus on how sanctioned memories of Szigetvár have been sanitized for national(ist) ends, evacuating fraught historical and political questions related to the enmity between the two empires. Concomitantly, I pursue the silences and erasures that hegemonic memories of the battle and its protagonists have produced, both in relation to specific landscapes of memory in Szigetvár and through an analysis of three narratives of the Siege: a Hungarian-language epic poem, a Croatian opera, and a Turkish television serial.     

Safavid Iran and the “Turkish Question” or How to Avoid a War on Multiple Fronts

This essay parts with the compartmentalized way in which scholarship tends to view Iran’s military predicament in the Safavid era by examining the perennial threat the Ottomans posed to the country largely in isolation from the recurring conflict between the Safavids and their other main adversaries, the Mughals and Uzbeks, respectively. The security dilemma facing Safavid Iran, it is argued here, was acute as well as multifaceted, and should be approached as such. All three of its direct neighbors were Sunni and two, the Ottomans and the Mughals, were capable of mobilizing far greater military resources than Iran. The main strategic concern of the Safavids was to prevent these neighbors from joining forces and engaging them in a two-front war. This study examines balancing the strategies employed by the three most consequential Safavid shahs, Esma‘il I (1501?24), Tahmasb (1524?76), and ‘Abbas I (1587?1629), to avoid becoming the target of a simultaneous or combined assault by their neighbors. This analysis provides the backdrop to the rational decision the Safavids made in 1639—to end the threat of a two-front war by concluding a lasting peace accord with their most formidable enemies, the Ottomans.     

4. IMPERIAL SOVEREIGNTY IN MUGHAL AND BRITISH FORMS

Azfar Moin's recent work on millennial sovereignty in Mughal India prompts a consideration of the evolution of sovereignty in modern South Asia more broadly. Although the sovereign principles of the Mughals differed from those of the British Indian empire, which ultimately succeeded it, these empires shared important similarities in their linking of sovereign authority to visions of a cosmos in immanent interaction with human affairs. This article explores these similarities and differences and speculatively considers their implications for both similarities and differences in Mughal and British principles of statecraft. These similarities and differences provide an important backdrop for thinking about the meanings attached to popular sovereignty in modern India as well.     

Silver lining: evidence for Inka silver refining in northern Chile

Prehistoric silver purification using lead cupellation has been documented in multiple places throughout the Andes, but direct evidence of the Inka use of this technology has remained elusive. In this study, we use X-ray fluorescence, scanning electron microscopy, and electron-microprobe analysis to document direct evidence of Inka period (AD 1400–1532) silver purification using lead cupellation in the Tarapacá Valley of northern Chile. Local metalworkers used wind-driven huayra furnaces to produce pure lead metal, sustaining temperatures of ca. 900–1100 °C to smelt lead-bearing ores that may have included galena. The lead metal was then used in open-vessel cupellation of silver-bearing ores, some of which may have been cupriferous and derived from the nearby Inka mines at Huantajaya. Phase analyses of the slagged interiors of bowl-shaped ceramic vessels used for cupellation indicate that the metalworkers maintained the oxidizing environment and temperatures between 800 and 1100 °C requisite for cupellation. We argue that the Inka introduced this technique to Tarapacá metalworkers. The absence of finished silver artifacts in local valley contexts suggests that the refined silver was removed from the valley for use elsewhere in the empire.     

Four Millennia of Cultural History in Nigeria (<Emphasis Type="Italic">ca</Emphasis>. 2000 B.C.–A.D. 1900): Archaeological Perspectives

This essay is an analysis of archaeological contributions to the understanding of Nigeria's cultural history between ca. 2000 B.C. and A.D. 1900 focusing on the following themes: the origins of food production; development and transformations in metallurgical traditions; the beginnings of social complexity; and the character of state formation and urbanism. The transformations in everyday material life as a result of the entanglement with the Atlantic commerce and ethnoarchaeological approaches to understanding material culture and archaeological contexts also receive attention. The essay provides pathways to some of the turning points in Nigeria's cultural history, shows the convergence and divergence of cultural historical developments in different parts of the country, and identifies the critical gaps in archaeological research agenda.     

Situating the imperial archive: the Royal Empire Society Library, 1868–1945

This paper explores the Library of the Royal Empire Society from its foundation in 1868 to the mid-twentieth century. It begins by considering the production of imaginative geographies of the British Empire not only by the materials in the collection but also by practices and technologies of assembling, classifying, cataloguing and display which went on in the Library. The architecture, spaces and experience of being in the Library are considered as integral to these imaginative geographies and the role performed by the collection. The second part of the paper considers the ways in which the Library was imagined as a centre of calculation for imperial, economic and geopolitical concerns and some theoretical and methodological issues involved in understanding how and by whom the Library was used. The Royal Empire Society Library offers an insight into the interplay between imperialism and wider concerns about knowledge, vision, order and control, as well as highlighting the importance of recognising the specificity of different types of knowledge space.     

Empire Day in Africa: Patriotic Colonial Childhood,Imperial Spectacle and Nationalism in Nigeria, 1905–60

Anyone born or raised in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, after 1960 would remember Children’s Day, observed every 27 May. However, few knew that it started as Empire Day in the first decade of the twentieth century—fewer are aware that it was a significant symbol of imperial domination, decolonised from the late 1950s to align with postcolonial ideals of self-determination and nation-building. African historical research has examined the sites and symbols (such as western biomedicine and education, police and prison, and indirect rule) through which British imperialism established and maintained itself in Africa. However, little is known about Empire Day, an invented tradition of ritualistic yearly veneration of the glory of the British Empire, which was first celebrated in Britain in 1904 and was immediately introduced to the African colonies. In this article, I examine the story of Empire Day as a significant colonial spectacle and performance of imperial authority in Nigeria, and how it assumed new meanings and functions among diverse groups of Nigerian children and adults. Empire Day, more than any other commemoration, placed children at the centre of imperialism and recognised them as a vital element in the sustenance of an imagined citizenship of the British Empire.