offerings signal that they were mostly low-status mitmacuna laborers (see Labor
Service), who occupied temporary residences at the site. (The settlement’s more
elite residents lived in elegant, finely built compounds.) Distinct types of cranial
deformation indicate that some of the laborers came from the Titicaca area while
others originated on Peru’s central and north coast. Studies of pottery offerings
imply that other residents came from the northern reaches of the empire—
Chachapoyas in northern Peru and the land of the Cañari, in Ecuador. Contrary
to a report produced by Bingham’s expedition, which claimed that the majority
of skeletal remains were those of females, the skeletal material in fact reflects a
balanced female-male ratio. The presence of infants and newborns among the
burials, along with evidence that some of the women gave birth, signals that
Machu Picchu was not, as Bingham claimed, “the home of a considerable
number of the Virgins of the Sun” (H. Bingham 1979 [1930]).
Further Reading
Bingham, Alfred M. Portrait of an Explorer: Hiram Bingham, Discoverer of Machu Picchu. Ames: Iowa
University Press, 1989.
Bingham, Hiram. “In the Wonderland of Peru.” National Geographic 24, no. 4, 1913.
———. Machu Picchu: A Citadel of the Incas. New York: Hacker Art Books, 1979 [1930].
Burger, Richard L., and Lucy C. Burger, eds. Machu Picchu: Unveiling the Mystery of the Incas. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004.
Reinhard, Johan. Machu Picchu: Exploring an Ancient Sacred Center. Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of
Archaeology Press, 2007.
■ADRIANA VON HAGEN
METALLURGY
The Incas were not innovators of metallurgical technologies. By the first quarter
of the fifteenth century AD, when they began their expansion that culminated in
the establishment and administration of Tahuantinsuyu, the Inca Empire, they
had inherited close to a millennium of highly sophisticated metallurgies
practiced by communities, newly incorporated into the Inca Empire, from the
central Andes of Peru and the south-central Andes of Bolivia and northwest
Argentina. The metallurgies the Incas encountered and appropriated, though they
differed locally, shared common technological and cultural foundations. The
Incas relied on this pan-Andean quality in the production and significance of
metal, just as they did with cloth (see Weaving and Textiles; Costume). Inca
metallurgy was an imperial metallurgy that served the purposes of state.