Inka Administration of the Far South Coast of Peru

Abstract

This paper examines ethnohistoric and archaeological evidence of Inka imperial strategies for controlling resources and people in the Titicaca Basin and the coastal valleys of southern Peru and northern Chile, and suggests that Inka imperial policies were adapted to meet local conditions in a series of dynamic political and economic interactions. In the coastal region between the Tambo Valley of southern Peru and the Azapa Valley of northern Chile, Inka policies included, variously, the resettlement of labor colonists (mitmaqkuna), the direct incorporation of coastal groups, and the maintenance of alliances with autonomous coastal elites. Altiplano elites exploited the imperial system to extend their own networks of colonization and exchange. Recent archaeological surveys in the Ilo-Ite coastal region, as well as unpublished data collected by Gary Vescelius between 1958 and 1960, indicate that the Inka developed more direct control of the south-central coast than earlier polities had achieved, but that imperial control over this region was limited and influenced by the persistence of autonomous coastal groups. Groups around Ilo remained fairly independent, while parts of the Tambo and Sama valleys and the Quebrada Tacahuay were brought under direct imperial control.

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