A Network Analysis of Inka Roads, Administrative Centers, and Storage Facilities

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to show how three centrality measures—degree centrality, closeness centrality, and betweenness centrality—can advance the analysis of the Inka road network. It proposes that the Inka built storage facilities and/or administrative centers at regions of high centrality and at regions of low centrality, based on the structural properties of two different exchange networks. These networks were themselves based on staple finance and on wealth finance. The article concludes with a discussion of how network models may prove useful for the analysis of the global properties of exchange relations in the Inka empire.