Wright, Kenneth R., and Alfredo Valencia Zegarra. Machu Picchu: A Civil Engineering Marvel. Reston,
VA: ASCE Press, 2000.
■STELLA NAIR
ETHNICITY
Ethnic grouping formed one of the dominant principles of social organization in
the Inca Empire. In the social sciences, ethnicity refers to the beliefs and
practices of a group of people who believe themselves to be unique, with distinct
origins, values, traditions, and practices that distinguish them from others—and
which, in turn, is viewed by other such groups as possessing those qualities. That
is, ethnicity is a reciprocal status, depending not just on how a particular group
views itself, but also on how it is viewed by others. Ethnicity is widely regarded
by anthropologists and archaeologists to be particularly pronounced in, if not
peculiar to, state-level societies, and it certainly was so in the case of the Incas.
According to chroniclers’ accounts, the Incas insisted that the empire’s
different ethnic groups maintain the distinctive clothing and headdress styles of
their particular ethnic identities. The members of the different groups were not
allowed to remove their clothing or exchange them for the attire of other groups.
Distinctive headdresses were the most common mode of ethnic signaling.
According to the seventeenth-century chronicler Bernabé Cobo:
The men and women of each nation and province had their insignias and emblems by which they could
be identified, and they could not go around without this identification or exchange their insignias for
those of another nation, or they would be severely punished. They had this insignia on their clothes
with different stripes and colors, and the men wore their most distinguishing insignia on their heads;
each nation was identified by the headdress. . . . They were so well known by these insignia that on
seeing any Indian or when any Indian came before him, the Inca would notice what nation and
province the Indian was from; and there is no doubt that this was a clever invention for distinguishing
one group from another. (Cobo 1979 [1653])Cobo continues by identifying the distinctive headgear of different peoples in
the empire. The Cañari, for instance, wore a round wooden crown; the Indians of
Bonbon (Pumpu in the central highlands) wore red and yellow kerchiefs around
their heads; while those of Andahuaylas wrapped their heads with woolen cords
that came down under the chin; and the Incas of Cuzco wore a twisted wool
band the width of a finger, called a llauto (see Costume).
The material evidence for mitmacuna—people who were moved from their
home territory to another place to practice their particular expertise (farming or
metalworking, for instance) or to pacify recalcitrant peoples, or for other
political and/or economic purposes—is especially difficult to identify. The even