Encyclopedia of the Incas

The term was used as a general classifier, or label, for groups of people formed
in any number of ways. In this sense, ayllu can be thought of as a general term
for classes or categories of things, such as with the terms genus, species, and
type. Thus, the term refers to what we understand as an ethnic group, a kindred,
a group of people sharing a common ancestor or an irrigation canal, or groups
formed to celebrate festivals or to undertake work projects. Ayllu is defined in
various historical sources and colonial dictionaries as band, faction, or lineage.
From Colonial records, it appears that ayllus took at least two different forms in
the Inca Empire.
One form of ayllu, typical among commoners, was related to what is termed
“vertical archipelagos.” While there is some controversy over the makeup of
such ayllus in pre-Hispanic times, it is generally thought that the members of any
given commoner ayllu were dispersed across the landscape in multiple scattered
settlements—termed archipelagos—each one of which gave that segment of the
ayllu access to resources within its particular ecological zone. As a result of the
dispersal of its members, an ayllu as a whole would have had access to the
wealth of resources across many different ecological zones. Colonial censuses
and other administrative documents provide some support for this view,
suggesting that in many cases, the members of any one ayllu were distributed in
settlements from the Pacific coastal lowlands up to the high Andes and down
into the tropical forest. This mode of distributing ayllu members across different
ecological zones and of sharing all the varied resources available to the members
of the ayllu is often given as the explanation for why markets did not exist in the
Andes before Spanish contact—that is, goods were shared among all the
members of each ayllu, rather than depending on the institution of the market to
distribute goods.
While Colonial documentation is not sufficient to allow us to produce an
inventory of all such commoner ayllus that existed in Inca times, there were
probably hundreds, if not several thousand, ayllus spread across the Andes,
within the territory of Tahuantinsuyu. This pattern of ayllu formation among the
vast body of commoners in the empire had political implications as well. That is,
as a consequence of the dispersal of different ayllus across the countryside, there
were often members belonging to many different ayllus within any given locale.
These local groupings of multiple ayllus were commonly organized in dual
moiety arrangements, with several ayllus in each moiety. The headmen (curacas)
of the several ayllus within a given locale were related to each other in a