Encyclopedia of the Incas

relationship between large collca installations and direct imperial control? What
do we make of areas of apparently direct control without massive agricultural
storage facilities (e.g., the Titicaca basin)? Did all large state storage facilities
fulfill the same general goals (e.g., the Huánuco Pampa model), or were there
multiple storage strategies engaged by the Inca state depending on regional
conditions (as the facilities at Cochabamba in Bolivia, Incahuasi on Peru’s
central coast, and Farfán on Peru’s north coast might suggest)?
It is also worth noting that synthetic analyses of storage in the Inca economy
have tended to focus almost exclusively on major administrative centers. As a
result, there are several important gaps in our knowledge about other scales of
storage and resource flows. First, the articulation of large regional centers with
other state storage facilities such as tambos and corrals remains an important
unknown. Were these sites only supplied from local catchment areas or did they
receive goods from regional storage facilities? Second, the storage of nonstaple
goods (seemingly an important function even at sites such as Sacsahuaman
overlooking Cuzco), has also tended to be ignored due to a lack of
straightforward archaeological signatures. Third, the ways in which storage at
the levels of the household and the community might have articulated with the
state are also obscure. While ethnohistoric and ethnographic sources hint at
architectural installations associated with the institution of sapci or community
resources, it remains unclear how these relate to the collcas and other storage
facilities found at smaller residential sites such as Aukimarka Baja in Huánuco,
Peru, and Potrero-Chaquiago in Catamarca, Argentina.
We still also lack a clear understanding of the Andean precedents for Inca
patterns of storage and resource flows. While the Late Intermediate Period that
preceded the Inca florescence remains poorly understood in many respects, it is
likely that the immediate origins of many Inca storage forms are to be found
there. There are, for instance, substantial regional storage facilities in the Tarma
region of Peru’s central highlands that appear to predate the Inca presence. The
pattern of imperial storage may date back even earlier to the Huari polity of the
Middle Horizon, although some have questioned the importance of storage
facilities in Huari administrative centers and their influence on later
developments in the Andes (see Chronology, Pre-Inca).
In tackling these key problems concerning storage strategies in the Late
Horizon, the interpretive balance in considering both the unifying forces and
internal diversity of the complex political economy of Tahuantinsuyu is
immediately apparent. Given the importance of the Inca state economy in