Chokepuquio in the Cuzco valley, Peru, flourished after the fall of Huari ca. AD
1000 and before the rise of the Incas, around AD 1400. The structure seen here
heralds the large halls that flanked Inca plazas. Adriana von Hagen.By the^ fourteenth to fifteenth centuries, the Incas transformed the area of
Cuzco between the Huatanay and Tullumayu Rivers into a centrally planned
urban core that became the cosmological center of a nascent empire. Much of
Inca Cuzco was destroyed in the 1536–1537 siege when rebellious Inca forces
tried to retake the city from the occupying Spaniards, and during the ensuing
centuries of urbanization. These processes make it difficult for archaeologists to
study the city systematically. Although dozens of archaeological excavations
have been carried out in urban Cuzco, many are not published and thus,
archaeologists often rely upon eyewitness accounts from the early Colonial
period to describe the city.
The greater Cuzco region—the Inca heartland—was composed, however, of
not just the planned urban core but also the suburbs and rural areas, where Inca
and migrant residents settled near improved farmlands. The city and its
hinterland covered some 11 kilometers (7 miles) of the Cuzco basin toward the
south. In the rural regions beyond the hinterland, stone-lined agricultural
terracing and royal estates dominated, with provincial laborers resettled amid
local ethnic groups. The ethnic and ritual boundaries of the Inca heartland were