ASB 222 - Buried Civilizations of the Americas - Keith Kintigh

10-11. The Wari and Inka Empires: Imperial Strategies & Historical Contingency

• Wari Empire - Middle Horizon AD 600-1000
• 2 major states rose,
• Tiwanaku near Lake Titicaca in Bolivia
• Wari Empire in Peruvian central highlands
• Wari. Urban area 1.5km², 20,000-30,000 people
• Distinctive architecture, compounds w/ patios surrounded by galleries. (No earthworks.)
• Some areas devoted to craft specialists
• Several offerings of huge ceramic urns painted with the Tiwanaku Staff Deity.
• Iconographic similarity of Wari and Tiwanaku suggests similar ideology. Tiwanaku and Wari architectural styles completely different.
• Economy, extensive terracing of Quechua zone
• Large labor investment to increase productivity (intensification). (Tiwanaku also intensified agriculture with raised fields.)
• Why intensify?
• Extensive road system, part of Inka highway
• How could we date roads?
• Imperial Strategy, observable archaeologically
• Idea: Empire coopts local political systems if there is a strong local system but it imposes authority where there is no local hierarchy
• Research Design: Develop an archaeological strategy to test that the Wari empire used this strategy in its imperial expansion. What are our expectations--what would this require?
• Evidence that Wari was an empire.
• Evidence that the Empire coopts the local political system if there is a strong system.
• Evidence that the Empire imposes authority there is no strong political system.
• Test in the Carhuarazo Valley, Ayacucho, Peru, by Katharina Schreiber
• Survey for sites the area, puna and shelves down slopes to the river.
• pre-Wari (pre Middle Horizon) mainly high altitude tuber farmers, no "centers"
• Middle Horizon-Wari: extensive terracing & development of irrigation system from the puna; people move down to this zone.
• How do we date terraces?
• build Jincamocco, an administrative center in Wari architectural style
• Moche
• End of Moche sequence get elite Wari ceramics in high status areas. Could indicate either takeover or trade.
• Wari Empire Sites
• South: Pikillaqta near Cuzco, to North Viracocha Pampa near Cajamarca;
• Also Cerro Baul on 600m mesa within Tiwanaku territory;
• (Took over) existing coastal systems; tombs at Pachacamac near Lima had Wari ceramics



• Inka (=Inca) Empire - Late Horizon - AD 1470-1532
• Tawantinsuyu - land of the 4 quarters (directional) - the Inka empire
• Inka an ethnic group, from Cuzco, not everyone in the Inka empire or Peru. Cuzco 11,138 elevation
• Spoke Quechua language and extended it over most of the Andes, Aymara to south
• At Spanish contact, Cuzco's population was 40,000; 200,000 w/i 10-12 leagues
• Inka History as told to Spanish
• Guamon Poma letter w/ 400 drawings to the
• Ethnocentric view: Inkas civilized the world; all other were savages
• History
• Early, a local Cuzco dynasty, amid competing proto-states until 1438. Empire,<100 years
• The Inka or Sapa Inka was the divine ruler,
• 1st Inka - Manco Capac, 1st through 4th Inkas may be mythic
• 8th Inka - Viracocha Inka. In 1438 Cuzco attacked by the Chancas (to the NW); his son Pachacuti led to victory and became Inka
• 9th Inka, Pachacuti 1438-1471; expanded to include Tiwanaku; inspired by cut stone.
• in 1463 joined by son, Topa Inka and conquered Chimu on the north coast stretching empire north to Quito
• 1471 turned over empire to his son and rebuilt Cuzco
• 10th Inka, Topa Inka 1471-1493
• 11th Inka, Huayna Capac, 1493-1528, (Topa Inka's son)
• expanded empire to southern Colombia
• peak of empire: 12,000,000 population, 385,000 square miles 3416 miles long, 25,000 miles of roads w/ suspension bridges
• The largest precolumbian new world empire
• killed by smallpox, empire in turmoil;
• 12th Inka, Huascar Inka 1528-1532
• 5 year civil war between 2 half-brothers Huascar Inka (legitimate heir) and Atahualpa
• captured by Atahualpa in 1532
• 13th Inka, Atahualpa 1532-1533
• Historical Contingency
• 1528 Pizarro appears, splits for reinforcements
• 1532 Pizarro returns w/ 62 horsemen and 198 foot soldiers
• Captured Atahualpa at Cajamarca, relaxing after victory over Huascar; ransomed for a room of gold, 2 of silver in Cajamarca. Ransom received but Atahualpa killed.
• Far more gold than Aztecs; mostly melted
• How could less than 200 people take over an enormous empire of 12 million people, armies, storehouses?
• End of a civil war; divided the empire
• Devastation of Spanish diseases
• Inka Organization - Capital at Cuzco
• Sapa Inka, The Inka, married his sister. Inkas descended from a union of Inti, the sun and the Moon. Wealth was extraordinary
• Ancestors very important; Past Inkas mummified and paraded.
• 4 apus, lords of the four quarters
• 80 provinces w/ governors
• hereditary local leaders, administered groups of 100 to 10,000 households
• Ayllu (endogamous - marriage within the allyu)
• group of related lineages, families tracing their ancestry back to a founding ancestor
• Allyus (often=village) control land, members cooperate on irrigation construction & maintenance, and crop production.
• Ayllus divided into exogamous moieties, upper and lower; one is higher ranked than the other. Each has a leader, karaka
• kinship traced by males through male line and female through female line
• some human sacrifice, not a central role
• Inka Achievements
• Architecture
• Polygonal masonry; much still in use
• Sacsaywaman blocks 80-120 metric tons
• Trapezoidal doors and niches and windows
• How was this done?
• Houses, field stone, thatched roofs
• Cuzco in shape of a Puma, plaza between feet, tail between 2 rivers; Coricancha in tail
• Coricancha: rooms lined with gold, gold llamas etc.; Spanish covered with church of Santo Domingo; discovered after 20^th C earthquake
• Sites
• Pisaq, Ollantaytambo, Machu Picchu estates of Pachacuti
• Machu Picchu discovered in 1911 by Hiram Bingham, last refuge of the Inkas
• Pachacamac; built additional structures; left old structures there
• Sophisticated Expansion Strategy
• Strategy was the Wari strategy
• Coopt local system where there is a hierarchy; keep elites in place, demoted a level; marry local rulers or children into Inka elite
• Create new administrative structure if needed
• Degree of influence is not proportional to degree of visibility
• Administrative Structure
• Mit'a Labor tax: people serve in army; weavers, metalworkers, specialists; construction projects
• Agricultural taxation: 1/3 state, 1/3 religion (Sun), 1/3 local
• State taxes supported the Inka & local elite
• Qollca, state storage facilities, stone silos
• Religious taxes local redistribution & feed mit'a workers
• Local taxes, redistributed by karakas
• Textile taxation; State demanded & collected
• Quipu, record keeping
• Move people mitimaes in mass, in order to: colonize new areas; remove troublemakers; acquire specialists, e.g. 20,000? Chimú moved
• Road System. Tambos at 1 days distance, tampus at 12 mile intervals for runners. Runners 240km per day; 5-6 days Quito-Cuzco; 3 days Lima-Cuzco, Spanish 12-13
• Split inheritance. Wealth of father not passed on at death. Sons had to create their own wealth. Leads to a continual need to expand.