The Inka Conical Clan

Abstract

The structure of the Inka ayllu has long been a subject of historical and anthropological investigation. In a relatively neglected work, Paul Kirchhoff describes the ayllu as a conical clan. My purpose is to show that the recently introduced graph theoretic model of the conical clan, called a depth first search tree, clarifies the underlying structure of Inka kinship relations, in particular the elements of Inka kinship concerned with the ranking of ayllu members. An explicit formal model of the Inka conical clan, in turn, provides the basis for a comparative study of kinship systems of social groups subject to Inka rule.