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In the highland Andes during the centuries leading to Inca imperial expansion (ca. A.D. 1400-1530s), the people of the Cuzco Basin established alliances and rivalries with diverse neighbors living across the Cuzco region. Among the most powerful of those groups was a polity centered at Yunkaray (occupied ca. A.D. 1050-1450) on the Maras Plain just northwest of the burgeoning city of Cuzco. Recent settlement survey and excavations in and around Yunkaray have identified the site as the principal settlement of the Ayarmaca group, which remained outside the sphere of Inca cultural influence despite its proximity to Cuzco. The distinctive nature of Yunkaray’s interaction with the Incas is examined here through household excavations, which indicate that the large village was occupied by a population presenting modest status distinctions and relying on locally derived sources of social identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on Spanish Colonialism in the Cuzco, Peru that was a capital for Inca Empire. It mentions that the Inca capital was rich in agricultural produce, exotic goods such as precious metals and feathers, and household goods and jewelry made by Inca Artisans. Topics include the tourist infrastructure of Cuzco, comparison of Spanish colonization strategies with British and American, and migration and resettlement of the Incas.

This paper uses documents generated by the 1594–1595 composiciones de tierras in Cuzco, Peru, to discuss the economic transformation of the former heartland of the Inca Empire and the impact of Spanish administrative policies implemented in the early 1570s. The diverse social and environmental landscapes of rural areas lying to the west of Cuzco provide a range of local case studies that reveal how settlement and tribute policies of the viceroy Francisco de Toledo failed to produce sustainable colonial towns of Christian Indians. Detailed records of indigenous land repartition in the area show gender- and status-based patterns of individual allocations, as well as ecological differences in landholding between communities. The local records indicate the continuing importance of Inca-era community identities and local leadership for maintaining possession of community lands. By contrast, documents related to the composiciones among private landowners reveal vast inequalities in land access, as well as the rapid growth in the demand for indigenous labor to produce important agrarian commodities. We argue that Spanish administrative policies accelerated the transformation of the means of production in rural Cuzco, creating peasants instead of Christian Indian subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Archaeological interpretations of the capital region of ancient empires often rely on documentary sources and assume the existence of a highly integrated and institutionalized state polity. A multiscalar archaeological study of the imperial heartland of the Inca empire (c. 1400–1530s) reveals variable manifestations in Inca power from the period of local expansion until the European invasions of the 1530s. Large-scale patterning from numerous regional surveys identifies variations in pre-Inca and Inca settlement patterns and the distribution of Inca architecture and pottery. More intensive analyses from the Sacred Valley, a study region lying immediately to the north of the Inca capital, reveal additional patterns of interaction that contrast early Inca expansion practices with later generations of royal estate development. Excavations from domestic and public buildings at the large upland village of Pukara Pantillijlla indicate limited Inca efforts to incorporate local horticulturalists and herders within their existing villages. The variability of Inca power in the Sacred Valley and the kin-based nature of the institutional forces transforming valley-bottom farming areas draw attention to the prevalent role of Inca elite kinship practices for state formation and institutional development. These observations raise important questions about the role of kinship in other non-Western states and empires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Distributions of state canons demonstrate power of ancient states archaeologically. [•] Regional survey data in Cusco, Peru, reveal large-scale Wari interaction patterns. [•] Survey data show that Wari power influenced only certain parts of the Cusco region. [•] GIS analysis of ceramic distribution indicates uneven and indirect Wari influence. [•] Wari regional power in Cusco suggests colonization rather than provincial rule. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Yucay was a royal estate in the Inca heartland built by provincial laborers for Huayna Capac, the penultimate ruler. Permanent retainers staffed the estate, maintaining a palace and leisure facilities for the emperor and providing material support for his family following his death. After the Spanish invasion, Yucay and other royal estates changed hands frequently, and Inca patterns of labor tribute gradually gave way to the Spanish colonial tribute system. The tributary redefinition of permanent retainers (yanakuna) in the Yucay Valley led to the 1571 resettlement of over twenty-three hundred individuals into four colonial towns, an undertaking that involved recording the names, ages, and ethnic identities of these individuals, household by household. This essay considers how the management of the Yucay estate evolved in the early colonial period, then presents an ethnic and demographic overview of the retainer population identified in the documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The popularity of media sharing platforms in recent decades has provided an abundance of open source data that remains underutilized by heritage scholars. By pairing geotagged internet photographs with machine learning and computer vision algorithms, we build upon the current theoretical discourse of anthropology associated with visuality and heritage tourism to identify travel patterns across a known archaeological heritage circuit, and quantify visual culture and experiences in Cuzco, Peru. Leveraging large-scale in-the-wild tourist photos, our goals are to (1) understand how the intensification of tourism intersects with heritage regulations and social media, aiding in the articulation of travel patterns across Cuzco's heritage landscape; and to (2) assess how aesthetic preferences and visuality become entangled with the rapidly evolving expectations of tourists, whose travel narratives are curated on social media and grounded in historic site representations. • First study to quantify visual culture of heritage tourism in Cuzco, Peru. • Tourist movements are attributable to changes in available BTC ticket packages. • Homogeneity of image clusters high at large heritage sites, diverse at small sites. • Common image themes: ruins, mountains, terracing, indigenous peoples, markets. • Affinity propagation, t-sne, scene labeling as tools for future heritage studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]