Rowe, John Howland. An Introduction to the Archaeology of Cuzco. Expeditions to Southern Peru,
Report 2. In Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard
University 27, no. 2, 1944.
———. “Inca Culture at the Time of the Spanish Conquest.” In Handbook of South American Indians,
edited by Julian H. Steward, vol. 2, The Andean Civilizations, 183–330. Washington, DC:
Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, 1946.
■RICHARD L. BURGERRULE, IMPERIAL
In the mid-fourteenth century AD, the Incas began to expand their realm out of
the Cuzco basin by dominating their immediate neighbors (see Archaeology,
Cuzco; Conquest; Expansion). At the time, they presided over a regional polity
in which social classes, and offices or institutions of leadership, may have just
been taking form. Over the succeeding century or so, the Incas transformed their
domain into a full-fledged empire, the largest polity ever seen in the indigenous
Americas. Empire refers to a geographically extensive polity in which a core
society imposes its control over a range of other societies. In most instances, the
political formation at the heart of power is a highly stratified state, within which
status and power are formalized in social classes and governing institutions.
To achieve their goal of grand-scale dominion, the Incas employed a mix of
alliance, cooptation of compliant subject elites, diplomacy, threat, investiture or
siege, and outright conquest. The empire ultimately took in an immense territory
(about one million square kilometers) containing an estimated 10–12 million
subjects, who spoke scores of mutually unintelligible languages. Its political core
was a set of state institutions, based on a patrilineal monarchy and the Inca
aristocracy. The social formation at the empire’s heart elevated the Inca ethnic
group above all other Andean peoples. The remainder of the empire was a
patchwork of distinct societies with markedly diverse political forms, all brought
under the rule of the state and an array of groups and individuals elevated to
aristocratic status. The entire domain was organized into 80-odd provinces,
based on a reconfiguration of existing ethnic groups and polities.
The Incas called their realm Tahuantinsuyu, the “four parts bound together.” In
their vision, the domain united the four parts (suyus) of the known world into a
single entity, focused around the sacred political center of Cuzco. Running
clockwise from the northwest, the four parts were called Chinchaysuyu,
Antisuyu, Collasuyu, and Cuntisuyu. The descending rank of the four parts
followed the same sociospatial order. Each was named after a people or