Encyclopedia of the Incas

conquered by the Incas, households may have included any one of these, and
combinations as well. Second, archaeologists do not excavate social units, they
unearth the structures and artifacts that are the result of those units’ activities.
Thus, a household might occupy one structure or a group of structures; it may
include storage features, have boundaries or lack them; or it may be tightly
grouped or dispersed.
How did households function in Cuzco, the capital? In the heart of the city lay
the palaces of the kings—large compounds with many structures inside that
housed the royal families, their servants, and goods. The royal panacas (descent
groups of deceased rulers) also maintained residences in central Cuzco, but we
do not know what kind of compounds they occupied. Presumably, they must also
have been large, as they had to support the family of the dead king. The 10
nonroyal ayllus lived outside the center, and beyond them lay the settlements of
conquered peoples.
The basic unit of Inca architecture was the cancha, a single-roomed,
rectangular structure. Several of these, surrounded by a wall with only one
entrance, formed cancha compounds. The compounds often housed nuclear
families, but a group of related families, such as a panaca, may have inhabited
the same enclosure. Conquered craftspeople, who likely lived in separate
communities, delivered the crafts to the households of their Inca lords. How
goods were produced and distributed within greater Cuzco is not known, due to
the destruction of the social and economic systems by the Spaniards.
The most impressive royal estates—private landholdings of the kings, their
relatives, and their descendants—lay scattered in and around Cuzco, but every
province in the empire set aside such holdings. The land could be used as a
retreat or as a source of wealth. The estates included a wide range of
environments, and sometimes thousands of retainers. Upon the death of a king,
his panaca inherited the lands. Farmland on the estate sustained its occupants;
the household economy of these estates thus functioned much like a village.
Unlike the citizens of Cuzco and environs, who generally benefited from the
expansion of the empire, conquered people and their domestic economies often
were compromised, sometimes severely, by the demands of the empire. A family
typically was given enough land by its ayllu (kin group) to support its members;
larger families received more land than smaller ones. Family members planted
and harvested their own fields (see Farming; Subsistence). While most villages
were self-sufficient, exchange and trade provided resources that were not readily
accessible. Low-altitude crops could be exchanged for high-altitude resources,