Before Inca expansion, the primary function of the conquest hierarchy was to
rank kin groups within the ayllu. At this scale, the “conquest hierarchy” was
principally a classificatory structure, suggesting prestige, but not dominion. In
ayllu political organization, the symbolic “conquerors” (kin groups, figured as
male) had no prerogatives over the resources of “the conquered” (kin groups,
figured as female). “Conquerors” carried no political weight; nor did “the
conquerors” have rights to women.
Nonetheless, this framework harbored suggestions of inequalities, giving men
prerogatives in realms of power. Yes, women’s institutions, framed through
gender parallelism, were important arenas of imperial reach; yes, the gender-
linked attributes of weaving and arms were conceived as a complementary unity
of societal reproduction. But as the Incas consolidated their control over the
Andes, the ideological structure of the conquest hierarchy became a design for
imperial dominion—with gendered consequences.
The “conquest hierarchy,” transformed to meet the needs of empire, became
the framework for a political—not prestige—hierarchy. Men, not women, filled
the growing number of offices in the imperial bureaucracy: men were census
takers, the controllers of state storehouses, the judges, the political overseers and
middlemen. Another consequence was that “male conquerors,” embodied by the
Sapa Inca, now the titular husband of all “conquered” women, could claim rights
to all women under his rule. Converted to an institution of imperial rule, the
“conquest hierarchy” spawned the creation of the most renowned class of
women in the empire—the aclla, the Inca’s “chosen women” (see Acllacuna).
This transformation bore profound consequences for gender relations and for the
meanings and possibilities afforded Andean women.
Further Reading
Silverblatt, Irene. Moon, Sun, and Witches: Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca and Colonial Peru.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987.
■IRENE SILVERBLATT
WORSHIP, ANCESTOR
The relationship with ancestors was a fundamental feature of Inca culture and
society. By ancestors we refer not only to historically remembered progenitors,
but also to mythical community founders who were said to have brought ayllus
(kin-based communities) into existence in the very distant past. Most ayllus were
composed of lineages defined by descent from specific ancestors and joined as a
collectivity through common descent from a distant founder.