Exchange and Social Stratification in the Andes The Xauxa Case

Abstract

To what extent does control over exchange create a basis for power in prehistoric Andean society? As discussed in the introduction to this volume, the evolution of social complexity depends partly on control. Control may come from a number of different sources of power that include the economy, the military, and the ideology (Mann, 1986; Earle, 1987a). Each society and its factions may use different sources of power, combined in different ways, but the basis of control is rooted in economic relations (Earle, 1989). This chapter investigates how control over exchange created an important basis for the institutions of the Xauxa/Wanka chiefs and the Inka state. As discussed throughout this volume, about A.D. 1450, the Inka empire conquered the warring chiefdoms of the Mantaro Valley. Almost overnight, the lives of the Xauxa and Wanka were transformed; they were pacified, resettled out of their fortified redoubts, and integrated politically into the Inka state. How did these dramatic changes affect the economy of the Xauxa? This chapter uses the political transformation accompanying the Xauxa/Wanka conquest and incorporation to evaluate a number of general theories that relate the organization and extent of exchange to a society's resource base and structure. It is useful to conceive of exchange as potentially fulfilling different functions. Through exchange, households can obtain goods that are needed or desired but not locally available. Through exchange, leaders and political groups can finance their activities by directing the flow of goods desired by supporters. These general functions, although not necessarily mutually exclusive (Webster, 1990), represent competing utilitarian and political theories of human economy (Brumfiel and Earle, 1987). Utilitarian theories have a strong adaptationist underpinning. They emphasize the role ofexchange in meeting household needs. For example, Service (1962) argued that exchange develops to handle local specializations that reflect environmental diversity; chiefs then arise to redistribute routinely the needed subsistence goods produced by the specialists. Substantivists such as John Murra (1975) and his many followers among Andean scholars (Alberti and Mayer, 1974; Masuda, Shimada, and Morris, 1985) believe that the social economy functioned in the pre-Hispanic period to meet the group's material wants and that the flow of goods was organized according to the social relationships of the group. Murra's