Hospitality and Exchange in the Mesothermal Valleys of Northwest Argentina

Abstract

Inca rule in the Southern Andes was based on the simultaneous management of military control, ideology and ceremonial hospitality. Food and public celebrations were essential both to the emergence of social hierarchies and to the negotiation of power by building alliances and reciprocity relationships. In Northwest Argentina, Inca administration was exercised through the direct government of key locations. In order to approach micropolitical processes developed in some temperate valleys of NOA under Inca rule we intend to know the importance that feasts or ceremonies held for state elites by creating social limits through the consumption of special food and distinct ceramic shapes. To that end, the Inca state invested energy in widening agricultural fields as an strategy of production and administration of goods and services through the domination of the productive space, which was appropriated by the Inca through the previous relationship between pukara-ancestors-chacras-small farms-fertility.