Southeast Inka Frontiers

Abstract

Southeast Inka Frontiers explores how the Inka empire exercised control over vast expanses of land and peoples in the Southeastern frontier, a territory located over hundreds of kilometers away from the capital city of Cuzco. This frontier region was the setting for the fascinating encounter between the Inka, the largest empire in the pre-Columbian world, and the fierce Guaraní tribes from the tropical mountains and beyond. This singular encounter also occasioned radical shifts in the political economy of many indigenous frontier populations like the Yampara. Based on extensive field research, this manuscript explores these changes by using different scales of analysis and lines of evidence. Only through a deeper, cross-regional understanding of the multifaceted socioeconomic processes that transpired in the different Inka frontier regions can we elucidate the mechanics of this remarkable empire, and the associated effects on the lives of the indigenous populations.