Instead of lamenting the absence of written records in the Andean area, we have only to look closely at the abundant evidence which has survived in the form of archaeological associations. (Dorothy Menzel 1959:I41) Some years ago, R. T. Zuidema reviewed a book called Empire of the Incas, written by an historian. Such a book was premature, claimed Zuidema (I965), since we know so little about the social, symbolic and political organization of the Inka state. Our only sources were the dynastic oral traditions recorded by the eyewitnesses of the European invasion; hence, the only certain fact of Inka history was King Atawallpa's captivity in 1532. The historian was indignant. In a long and angry letter to the editor of the American Anthropologist he asked: did the reviewer mean it that no one could write Inka history until the anthropologists had first figured out Andean social structure? Zuidema replied, in essence, that the historian's impression was accurate. Neither asked what archaeology's contribution could be in this impasse. In fact, considerable progress has been made in recent decades in the study of eyewitness accounts of the sixteenth century - if not in figuring out Inka history, then in our understanding the Andean use of the unusual high altitude resources available, hence of economic and political institutions. Many new questions have been formulated (Murra I962; I975) and new research strategies devised. While notable sites are continuously being 'reconstructed' without previous excavation, as if their very beauty and popularity removed them from the province of grubby research, other examples of Inka urbanism, like Huanuco Pampa, have received serious attention since I964 (Morris I967; 1974). While it is plain that dual patterns of authority prevailed in the Andes at all levels of society, we still know little about the two kings who were probably ruling in Cuzco at any one moment in time. However, the functions and privileges of the two Lupaqa kings, ruling a major Aymara polity incorporated into Tawantinsuyu, the Inka state, can now be discerned (Murra I968). Graziano Gasparini (pers. comm.) thinks this duality is represented in architecture and town planning. Much has been made of the scarcity of new 'chronicles', as the sixteenth century sources are locally called (Murra I970). Philip A. Means's Biblioteca Andina, published in 1928, incredibly, is still a useful guide to these accounts. Dynastic oral tradition is more difficult to use in the Andes than it is in Africa (Vansina I96I; Wilks I974). While a good deal of the regional, provincial tradition can be recovered ethnographically,