Encyclopedia of the Incas

All social events were marked with food exchanges. Feasting activities
occurred with the conquest of new peoples, and also at all religious ceremonies.
Agriculture was core to Inca life. To plant, men had to make the holes in the
ground as women placed the seeds in the earth. For all participating in the
planting or harvest, chicha (maize beer), was provided to all workers with a hot,
midday meal, primarily of potatoes.
When the Incas reached the borders of a group they wished to conquer, they
sent emissaries to ask if the group wanted to join or fight the Incas. If the group
chose to join, a date would be set for incorporation and on that day, Inca military
leaders would arrive in the territory bearing gifts of fine clothing, elaborate
imperial ceramics, and jewelry for the new local leaders to use as the emblems
of the Inca state. If the local leaders accepted these gifts, a feast celebrated their
incorporation into the empire, marked by the drinking of fermented beer, chicha.
These state feasts focused on specific ingredients, ceramics, and performance.
The Incas used three standardized receptacles to present food at these state
occasions: ceramic jars and plates, and a drinking cup or kero, made of ceramic,
wood, or metal (see Ceramics; Keros). The jars held and served a liquid,
usually chicha. Andean peoples used many plants to make chicha, but the
strongest was made of the fruit of the Peruvian pepper tree (Schinus molle),
which thrived in warm valleys and on the coast. The most valued chicha,
however, was from maize. The plates—used to present dried camelid meat
(charqui), boiled potatoes, or toasted maize kernels—were an innovative way to
present dry food in the Andes, allowing the Inca leadership to display state
iconography. Outside of the imperial Inca feasts, such dried foods would have
been presented on woven cloth, as is still done in the countryside today. The Inca
controlled hunting of large game—primarily two kinds of deer (loyco, white-
tailed deer; and taruka, northern, or Andean deer) and guánaco, a wild camelid
—for their pleasure, making these animals a less common foodstuff than in
earlier times.
In fact, maize became the staple plant crop of the empire, as the Incas focused
many of their conquests on warmer intermontane valleys and the coast, where it
grew well. They built terraces to grow maize in the mountainous regions, while
on the flat lands they created state farms out of indigenous arable land. The
value of domestic crops was so central to the Inca political and religious
structure that at the start of the planting and rainy season between September and
November, the Sapa Inca himself would lead the planting ceremony by making
the first hole in the ground in a sacred field for maize plants. Royal food