Balancing the center and the local: mobilization and production strategies of the Inka and early colonial state in Cochabamba, Bolivia

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Karoline Noack
• Subject Area: Prehistory and World Archaeology ; Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology ; Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 455109393

The project aims to understand the entangled dependency/mobility/mobilization of dependent groups of people and the centralized maize/goods production for the Inka state as an exemplary “early state”, shedding light on the comprehension of that state, generally. This includes the system of storage and distribution of production within a complex of nested state and local institutions in the Cochabamba Valley as the driving central force, as well as the transition processes during the early colonial state. Therefore, the project will conduct an interdisciplinary analysis of archaeological and ethnohistorical methods and data regarding the settlement patterns, population and land use before and during the Inca occupation in Cochabamba and the transformation processes through late Inka and early colonial times after Spanish Conquest. Under the reign of Inka Huayna Capac (1491 – 1527 AD), the Central Valley of Cochabamba experienced massive population changes through the colonization of 14.000 mitimaes from all over the empire to work on the Inca state fields. In turn, the original groups were expulsed and sent to the eastern valleys. The paramount interest of the Inca was the fertile valley bottom for the cultivation of maize and the generation of surplus and staple goods for further conquests. The population movements before and after Spanish Conquest, land tenure patterns, social structuring and culture belonging of population groups can be tracked in archival sources, a work that hardly has been done so far. The archaeological complex of Quillacollo and Colcapirhua consists of more than 4000 granaries (qollqa), located in four different sectors on the hills to the south of Rocha River, an area of more than 200 hectares. In no other part of the vast Inca Empire existed such gigantic capacities for the storage of maize as in Cochabamba, indicating that the Central valley played a highly important role as “local center” in the economic, political and social organization of the Empire and still did after Spanish conquest. The novel interdisciplinary approach of combined ethnohistorical and archaeological studies will help to investigate the mechanisms of the Inca State via the functions of the qollqa and the related processes as mobilization/dependency, specifically. Both methodologies, the ethnohistorical and the archaeological one, are complementary in helping to build a complete picture of the Late Horizon in Cochabamba and after Spanish conquest. Additionally, we will investigate climatic and environmental aspects, which allowed such a magnitude of cultivation of maize in the region.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants