The Organization of Inka Silver Production in Porco, Bolivia

Buren, Mary Van; Presta, Ana María

doi:10.2307/j.ctt20mvff8.10

Cited by 9 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Local miners’ relationship with the Inca system was made possible through the presence of the Inca Road, from which Inca‐style pottery arrived and craft products were transported to final consumers (Garrido ). This site thus constitutes an important contrast to El Abra and other examples of state‐centralized modes of mining/metallurgic work in Andean history (Abbott and Wolfe ; Berthelot ; Cantarutti ; Earle ; Lechtman ; Salazar, Borie, and Oñate ; Salazar, Berenguer, and Vega ; Schultze ; Shimada and Wagner ; Van Buren and Presta ). The local settlement and production patterns seen in the Cachiyuyo de Llampos camps are the antithesis of the centralization, monospecialization, and economies of scale characteristic of Inca‐administered mining.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 87%

Imperial Expansion and Local Agency: A Case Study of Labor Organization Under Inca Rule

Garrido¹,

Salazar

2017

American Anthropologist

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Imperial expansion can produce broad economic intensification throughout the provinces to provide key economic resources for the state. However, not all such economic intensification is the direct result of the imposition of an imperial political economy over subject populations. This article presents evidence for some cases where intensification occurred due to bottom‐up responses of small groups that were able to profit from imperial conquest. In the case of the Incas, although the imposition of a labor‐tax system, or mit'a, was an important economic device for their imperial expansion, we question its universality. This article addresses the economic changes that local communities experienced within the Tawantinsuyu by comparing the coexistence of attached and independent modes of production in two cases of mining production in the Atacama Desert, in northern Chile. This contributes to finding and elaborating on explicit archaeological indicators that enable us to contrast both modes of engagement with the political economy of the Inca Empire and to identify, archaeologically, alternative and independent local responses to imperial expansion. Our study thus energizes debates on how and to what extent local populations, under conditions of empire, can negotiate spaces and activities outside of state control. [mit'a, prehistoric mining, bottom‐up dynamics, imperial expansion, Inca Empire]

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 87%

Imperial Expansion and Local Agency: A Case Study of Labor Organization Under Inca Rule

Garrido¹,

Salazar

2017

American Anthropologist

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“…This is an important contrast to other examples of state-centralized modes of Inca mining/metallurgic work in the Andes, which describe a large concentration of food serving areas, public spaces, and formal Inca architecture (c.f. Berthelot 1986;Cantarutti 2013;Cruz and Vacher 2008;D'Altroy and Earle 1985;Earle 1994;Lechtman 2007;Salazar 2008;Salazar et al 2010;Salazar et al 2013;Van Buren and Presta 2010;Williams 2000). The Incas did not integrate these miners within the political economy of the empire, possibly because of their isolation, low productivity, lack of hierarchical organization, and the likelihood that their products were irrelevant to state wealth.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking imperial infrastructure: A bottom-up perspective on the Inca Road

Garrido

2016

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology

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The Inca road has been the iconic example of imperial infrastructure in the prehispanic Andes. However, scholarly attention to its role in expanding and consolidating the Inca domain has overshadowed analysis of how locals may have appropriated the Inca road for their own private benefit. Based on a full-coverage survey and excavations, this article presents the case of small mining communities along the Inca road and the use they made of it. I argue that they most likely leveraged on emerging imperial infrastructure, in order to expand their existing lapidary and pigment production and exchange in the Atacama desert. The Inca Road may thus have served as an unintended stimuli for local economic activities, since it improved transportation logistics, and served as a linear exchange nexus. I further demonstrate how the Inca Road was, to some extent, appropriated to serve local economic purposes. This provides a unique "bottomup" perspective of how the Inca infrastructure could not be fully controlled by the elites. Thus, the "imperial landscape" created by the Inca Road was more permeable than what the Incas expected and scholars have assumed, despite the physical or ideological coercion elites may have enforced.

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“…Generalmente, la investigación de la minería en los Andes, enmarcada en la economía doméstica o comunitaria, ha sido comparativamente pequeña. Con algunas excepciones (Graffam, Rivera y Carevič, 1996;González, 2004;Núñez et al, 2003;Núñez, 2006;Eerkens, Vaughn y Linares, 2009), nuestra imagen actual de la producción minera prehispánica en los Andes está sesgada fuertemente por el punto de vista de las economías centralizadas y controladas por el Estado (D'Altroy y Earle, 1985;Berthelot, 1986;Earle, 1994;Williams, 2000;Shimada y Wagner, 2001;Abbott y Wolfe, 2003;Lechtman y McFarlane, 2006;Goldstein y Shimada, 2007;Lechtman, 2007;Cruz y Vacher, 2008;Salazar, 2008;Salazar et al, 2010b;Van Buren y Presta, 2010;Cantarutti, 2013;Schultze, 2013;Vaughn y Tripcevich, 2013).…”

Section: Minería Y Especializaciones Artesanales De Pequeña Escalaunclassified

Comunidades mineras prehispánicas de pequeña escala y sus ventajas económicas y logísticas derivadas de su conectividad con el Qhapaq Ñan, desierto de Atacama, norte de Chile

Garrido¹

2017

Bol. Antropol.

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The Organization of Inka Silver Production in Porco, Bolivia

Cited by 9 publications

References 0 publications

Imperial Expansion and Local Agency: A Case Study of Labor Organization Under Inca Rule

Imperial Expansion and Local Agency: A Case Study of Labor Organization Under Inca Rule

Rethinking imperial infrastructure: A bottom-up perspective on the Inca Road

Comunidades mineras prehispánicas de pequeña escala y sus ventajas económicas y logísticas derivadas de su conectividad con el Qhapaq Ñan, desierto de Atacama, norte de Chile

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