Publication Date

Summer 7-2021

Abstract

In empires, material culture plays an important role in creating and maintaining state power and legitimizing imperial rule. Through their form and decoration in imperial styles, these objects convey messages about state power, yet their production is often decentralized and carried out by subjects. This dissertation asks the question, how do imperial authorities organize the production of material culture? This question is addressed through a study of one category of material culture—Inka imperial pottery—from the site of Pachacamac, in Peru.

The Inka empire, called Tawantinsuyu, was a territorial empire spanning over 2 million km2 in Andean South America during the Late Horizon (1470 – 1532 CE). Inka objects were created at many different locations around the empire by subjects serving labor obligations to the state. These subjects came from diverse cultural backgrounds, used a variety of technologies in craft production learned in different communities of practice, and experienced different levels of state control in their home territories. Groups of potters were also moved from their home territories to other parts of the empire to serve state needs. Pottery from several Inka contexts at Pachacamac, a major political and ritual center for the Ychsma polity during the Late Intermediate Period (1000 – 1470 CE) that was transformed by the Inka into a regional center, is examined using traditional ceramic analyses and several archaeometric techniques to reconstruct the chaînes opératoires. Results indicate that (1) multiple communities of practice produced the Inka pottery at Pachacamac, (2) some of these communities were local Ychsma potters while others were relocated to the region by the state, (3) task segmentation may have occurred in pottery production, and (4) there are several steps of pottery production that were controlled by the Inka and uniform across different communities of practice.

Keywords

Inka, Pottery, Pachacamac, Communities of Practice, Ychsma

Document Type

Dissertation

Language

English

Degree Name

Anthropology

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

Anthropology

First Committee Member (Chair)

Frances M. Hayashida

Second Committee Member

Patricia L. Crown

Third Committee Member

Loa P. Traxler

Fourth Committee Member

Carla M. Sinopoli

Fifth Committee Member

Marie-Claude Boileau

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