The cloud forest settlement of Choquequirao perches high above the Apurimac
River west of Cuzco, in the province of Vilcabamba. Adriana von Hagen.Ensuring access to tropical resources and trade networks along the Amazonian
tributaries, perhaps by allying with local chiefs, was crucial to Inca success in
the region. In some cases, key alliances may have allowed the Incas to exploit
some exchange networks, a policy that may have served as a model for Inca
strategies in “managing” the tropical lowlands, from the forested Andean slopes
bordering northernmost Chinchaysuyu (modern Ecuador) to the Chaco plains
flanking Collasuyu in the south (modern Bolivia, bordering on Paraguay).
■ADRIANA VON HAGENARCHAEOLOGY, CUZCO
As the Incas grew to be a regional political power, they dramatically transformed
Cuzco, their capital. These changes are reflected in the archaeological record,
making it possible to reconstruct how the Incas developed from, as pioneering
Inca scholar John H. Rowe put it, a “straggling collection of poorly built
houses” in the Cuzco basin to the core of the largest native empire in the
Americas. Although Rowe argued that Cuzco became a metropolitan center after
Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui defeated the Chancas of Andahuaylas around the mid-
fifteenth century AD, recent surveys and systematic excavations have revealed
that Cuzco developed as an urban center and imperial heartland gradually over
several centuries. With radiocarbon dating, scholars today find that sites
historically associated with rapid expansion under Pachacuti were already in the
process of abandonment during his reign, which pushes back initial growth
through the heartland to around the twelfth century (the beginning of the Killke
period [see Chronology, Inca]). During the approximately three centuries of
sociopolitical consolidation in the Cuzco region, the Incas faced resistance from
some neighbors and successfully established alliances with others (the latter
would become known as Incas by Privilege and were provided special status
and rights not held by other neighbors). They created a mosaic of
semiautonomous remaining allies who were left in their ancestral villages and a
series of repurposed royal estate lands in places where groups were particularly
rebellious.