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. . . by animism I do not mean the theory of the soul in nature, but the tendency or impulse or instinct, in which all myth originates, to animate all things; the projection of ourselves into nature; the sense and apprehension of an intelligence like our own but more powerful in all visible things. (Hudson 1918 [1982]: 162) The animated world of the Andes evokes a vaster horizon than its occidental equivalent, each thing that possesses a function or a nality is animated so as to permit this function or nality: elds, mountains, rocks as well as people. [El mundo animado de los Andes evoca un horizonte mucho ms vasto que su equivalente occidental, cada cosa que posee una funcin o una nalidad es animada para permitir que se realice su funcin o su nalidad: las chacras, los cerros, las piedras as como los hombres.] (Taylor 2000: 7, my translation) . . . under the generic term huaca, Andean people meant the force that animated what usually was inanimate; and this animation manifested itself, rstly, through the ability to speak, to communicate with people. [ . . . con el trmino genrico huaca, los andinos indicaban la fuerza que animaba lo que comnmente est inanimado; y esta animacin se manifestaba, en primer lugar, a travs de la facultad de hablar, de comunicarse con los hombres.] (Curatola Petrocchi 2008: 17, my translation)

1 INTRODUCTION

This chapter sets out to introduce and explain three underlying concepts underpinning Inca and Andean religion: animism (and anthropomorphism), oracular divination, and ancestor worship. Seeking to demonstrate how these worked within the evolution of Andean and, ultimately, Inca religion. Emerging from coeval highland religious traditions during the early Inca period, Inca religion was changing during the fteenth century as a consequence of the experience of empire. The idea for this transformation of Inca religion was probably the effects of exposure to new ideas, from such well-organized cults as that of Pachacamac-Vichma and

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those of the Chimu Kingdom, along the central and northern coast respectively. This was manifested through the attempt by the Inca state to create a pan-Andean cult exalting the Sapa Inca (unique Inca) and the concomitant pantheon centred on the different aspects of the Viracocha deitythe Sun (Inti), Thunder (Inti-Illapa), and the Day (Punchao). A series of specic problems arises in any consideration of a past cultures religion. This is especially so in the case of the Andes where no writing exists from the indigenous perspective at the moment of contact; quipus, a mnemonic writing device on knotted strings, was unsuitable for long narratives (Urton 2003). The ethnohistoric accounts of Andean folklore, apart from some notable exceptions (de la Vega 1979 [1616]; see Guaman Poma de Ayala 1993 [1615]; Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui 1927 [1613]; Yupanqui 2006 [1565 70]), have been written by Spaniards usually on ofcial engagements, such as tribute or tabulation visitas or for the eradication of heathen practices known as Extirpacon de Idolatras (Pillsbury 2008). Even the native writers of mixed birth or mestizos were born shortly before or just after the Spanish conquest and as such were already somewhat removed from the events and rituals that they describe. Garcilaso de la Vega (15391616), for instance, was writing at the end of his life, having left the Andes almost 50 years previously; he also wrote a highly partisan account. This bias arose from the fact that these learned mestizo chroniclers usually belonged to one or other of the Inca elite families known as panacas, thus embellishing the accounts of their particular forefathers. The Spanish accounts, such as that of Juan de Betanzos (1996 [1557]), Sarmiento de Gamboa (1999 [1572]), Cieza de Len (1995 [1554], 1996 [1554]) and Cobo (1979 [1653], 1990 [1653]) suffer from the prejudices and biases inherent in early colonial narratives. Many of these early authors did not know or understand what it was that they were describing, others pandered to a certain viewpoint or perspective. Sarmiento de Gamboa, for instance, was assigned by the authorities to investigate and discredit Inca claims to long-term suzerainty of large swathes of the Andean region. Nevertheless for all its problems the early documentary sources remains a crucial tool for disentangling the intricate web of native beliefs. This is particularly true of the set of documents produced as a consequence of the Extirpacon de Idolatras. Known as the bastard child of the Spanish Inquisition (Duviols 2003: 48), the Extirpacon de Idolatras collected and collated native accounts of ritual practices and religion. In sum, all these accountsindigenous, Creole, and Spanish represent invaluable insights for understanding indigenous concepts of religion in the Andes. The work done by eminent ethnohistorians such as Maria Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, Gerald Taylor, Peter Gose, Pierre Duviols, and especially Tom Zuidema in this matter serves to show the importance of this source material in elucidating past Andean belief systems. Valuable as the work of these scholars has been, a major omission has been the lack of engagement with anthropological theory to elucidate the nature of Andean and Inca religion, especially the role of animism and anthropomorphism.

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Pre-Hispanic Andean religion has been described as animistic in essence; but what in effect does this mean? Originally, animism was thought to represent the primitive belief system common to primitive tribal societies (Evans-Pritchard 1965; Tylor 1958 [1871]). Recent

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anthropological studies have revisited this theme contesting Tylors primitive label. Stringer (1999), for example, states that Taylors use of phrases such as primitive, savage, or children can only be understood under the epistemological concepts of the late nineteenth century. Following from this, the scope of animism has been revised. No longer is animism understood to be a religion; indeed Tylor (1958 [1871]) himself acknowledged that animism is more a philosophy than a religion per se. Insoll (2004) makes the pertinent point that animism should be viewed as an element within a belief system and not necessarily as a whole religion. The approach here concurs with this observation noting that although largely animistic, Andean, and especially Inca religion cannot be viewed simply in these reductionist terms. Inca religion comprised animism embedded within a religion that also included a highly developed ancestor cult and oracular dimension. Yet what is animism? Bird-David (1999: S79) notes that far from being a failed epistemology or simple religion, animism represents the interaction or relatedness between people and animals or environments emphasizing the theme of nested relatedness within these relationships. This nal point is crucial to any denition of animism. As she states, against I think therefore I am stand I relate, therefore I am and know as I relate (Bird-David 1999: S78). This denition highlights the concept of personhood and belonging which is engendered through the animation and veneration of a given landscape. In animist traditions the gods, spirits, or manifestations inhabit and are represented actively in the world around them, opposing the separation that exists between the physical and the metaphysical in many Western religions. Bird-Davids linking of animism with anthropomorphism simplies a more complex relationship. Stewart Guthrie (2001: 157) aptly describes the differences between these two terms, noting that:
Animism . . . is best dened as attributing characteristics of living things (e.g. sentience and spontaneous motion) to inanimate things and events, whereas anthropomorphism is best dened as attributing characteristics of humanity (e.g. language and symbolism) to nonhuman things and events, including other animals.

Guthrie (1993, 2001) therefore argues for a separation of the terms such that animals cannot be animistic being already animate; but they can nevertheless by anthropomorphized. This goes against the all-encompassing animist precepts espoused by Stringer (1999) and Hornborg (2006). Yet diminishing the scope of animism, such that anthropomorphism lies outside its denitional remit, supports the concept expressed by Insoll (2004) that animism is but one element within a religious belief structure. Nevertheless, it should be said that it is possible to both animate and anthropomorphize objects, a subject which we will return to when examining Andean and Inca religion. In support of Bird-David, Ingold (2006) claims that animism in essence, is a means of being in the world, similar to the relationality expressed by Hornborg (2006). What is meant by this is that humans partake and relate in a world where all manner of objects and events are imbued with the logic of life, such that at its most extreme there is no division between subjects and objects, a veritable holistic living-in-the-world. Supporting this view, Bruno Latour (1993) argues that even in our modern, supposedly rigidly Cartesian, world we have not been able to shake this perennial animism, a fact noted by Gell (1998) in his theory on the agency of objects. In fact, Latour (1993) argues that in the modern world we

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seek to understand everything around us through the creation and maintenance of hybrids or quasi-objects that marry society, science, and nature in a new form of scientic animism. Somewhat cynically perhaps (and contra Boyer 1996), Guthrie (1993) suggests that animism and anthropomorphism are in effect a form of insurance policy. Believing that something is alive or human-like can save you from unintended consequences; such as being eaten alive when the object you thought was a log turns out to be a crocodile. Essentially, underlying all these denitional variations is the constant that animism is always present, continuously alive, in movement (actual or perceived) and necessarily immediate, forever on the verge of the actual (Ingold 2006: 12), and crucially that humans are an integral part of this process. It is this ascription of animism that is particularly important to the Andes.

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In the animistic Andes effectively the whole world was alive and intimately interrelated. Nevertheless, within this viewpoint there were aspects of the world which were more alive than others. Central to this alive-ness was the concept of camac (Taylor 2000; see also de Avila, 1999 [1598?]). As stated by Taylor (2000), the root of the word camac means to animate. If the Andean environment was lled with camac, it was the huacas that best expressed this vitality through the act of talkingoracular divinationthrough selected intermediaries (the camasca). The more powerful the huaca, concomitantly the more camac it had (Curatola Petrocchi 2008; Gose 1996). This perception of life extended to the recently dead as well as to the living. Life and death in the Andes was a complex issue that comprised a series of stages between actual life and death (Salomon 1995). In death there was the possibility of the person becoming a good, locale-based camaquen ancestor or a bad, wandering shadow upani spirit that drifted aimlessly. It was the camaquen ancestor that became in turn revered and oraculara huaca (Gose 1992). It is through the concept of the huaca that Andean animism and anthropomorphism really comes through. Features in the landscape and ultimately the totality of the physical environment were represented by huacas. Huaca is a complex term that denotes a spirit or deity revealed as an object, feature, or happening such as mummy bundles, trees, and naturally occurring free-standing rocks or outcrops, as well as mountains, hills, rivers, springs, and literally all manner of physical manifestations, including rain, hail, lightning, thunder, and wind. Veneration of all of these deities and spirits was widespread and conducted in sanctuaries, temples, mortuary monuments, and natural locations such as lakes, spring heads, and caves. All these loci were also generically known as huacas. Efgyor idol-objectied depictions of huacas were also common, but especially so when the physical manifestation of the spirit or deity was impossible, such as in the case of thunder for instance. The term huaca was also used for these representations. These idols came in many shapes and sizes, from carved stone, wood, dough, ashes, or precious mineral efgies through to common rocks and stones.

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Nevertheless, at the root of the huaca concept was animation, its camac, reected in communication: in essence the huacas ability to impart wisdom and oracular divination. The relationship between people and huacas (and by implication the environment) was complex and in constant ux. Interaction with these physical manifestations of Andean, and Inca, animism had to be constantly negotiated through libation, consultation, worship, or even violence rendering some into kin and others into enemies (DAltroy 2002). The centrality of huacas and oracular predestination within Andean society has been highlighted by MacCormack (1991) and Rostworowski (1988, 2002), and it has prompted Curatola Petrocchi (2008) to claim that Andean oracles can only be fully understood as a total social fact (from Mauss 1990). The power of a huaca derived from oracular predestination, its strength from the veracity of their divinations. Therefore a huacas power could wax and wane depending on their ability. Conquered peoples huacas became subservient to the main huaca of the conqueror, so much so that the Incas held provincial oracles or huacas as hostages back in Cuzco. This allowed for the realignment of these huacas within the Cuzquenian ideology as well as subordinating these huacas under the central Inca cult. When these huacas were eventually returned to their places of origin they helped perpetuate the ascendency of the imperial cult. Another particularly powerful expression of huaca subjugation can be seen in the Capacocha ceremonies where children from the provinces were sacriced to the Inca. These children were selected and came with their huacas to Cuzco where they were killed as a ritual of afrmation to Inca power. This ritual was also a forum whereby provincial huacas could negotiate with the principal Inca huacas residing in Cuzco (Schroedl 2008). In the political sphere Andean oracles have been described as a form of political ventriloquism (Gose 1996: 14). Indeed in the Andes, huacas functioned as a source of wisdom and information, without necessarily setting a moral standard, as well as serving as oracular entities. Generally, huaca oracles were a means by which rulers, in a segmentarily organized society, could listen to factional interests spoken through the medium of a founding ancestral hero or deity without the problem of a living rival (Gose 1996). This was especially important under the Incas given the multi-ethnic, and therefore multioracular, nature of their possessions (Ramrez 2008). Finally, some huacas could disappear entirely; there is evidence to suggest that the eleventh Inca, Huayna Capac (ad 14931527), rationalized the system of huacas by declaring war against them and actually ridding the Inca Empire of a large number of them (Ramrez 2008). The Inca Atahualpa (ad 15323) destroyed the central Andean huaca oracle of Catequil because it had predicted that his brother Huascar would win the civil war that raged between them (MacCormack 1991). Similarly, Atahualpa destroyed Topa Incas body (the tenth Inca, ad 147193, itself a huaca oracle), his attendant, and his descendants because of this huacas support for Huascar (Sarmiento de Gamboa 1999 [1572]).

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It is known that Inca cosmology shared many commonalities with that of other Andean ethnic groups, for besides a special cult to the Sun known as Inti, Inca religion was similar to other contemporary highland religions (Demarest 1981; McDowell 1992; Zuidema 2002).

4 GODS

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This Andean pantheon included a certain number of gods, spiritual or natural entities and regional and local, real and ctitious, ancestor heroes also sometimes known as mallquis, founders of a lineage that were often hailed as conquerors (Rostworowski 1988). Generally it has been acknowledged that at the root of this religion lie ancestors, especially dead ones which nevertheless lived in the animated landscape of the Andes (Gose 1996; Salomon 1995). Although true, this is only a partial explanation of the complexity of Andean religion, not all deities were ancestors, although they were all oracular. Death and ancestor worship is a constant theme throughout Andean religion and it is a complex issue especially regarding its role vis--vis ancestors and deities. As mentioned above, death in the Andes was not so much a nite episode but rather a transformational process or renewal and rebirth intimately tied to the Andean concept of the pacarina (Albornoz 1967 [1569]; Gose 1992). A pacarina is described as the destination of the deceased, also described . . . [as] a communitys place of origin (MacCormack 1991: 428); it dened the community it represented. Pacarinas were places of worship centred around veneration of ancestors and as such doubled as the origin point of communities or lineages. It was deities and huacas in their role as ancestors that were intimately linked with these community birthplaces. A hierarchy of pacarinas existed from the local to the pan-regional through ancestors and perceived ties of kinship upwards towards the main ancestor of a particular group. Linking the various pacarinas was water, imaginary subterranean streams and rivers that returned the dead spirit to the source and back again in a ritual of re-afrmation of group identity and solidarity with the central or primary ancestor. New pacarinas could be established by a group taking part of the soil or water from a given pacarina to a new site, a concept similar to the idea of shrine-franchising developed by Insoll (2006). Death was the process by which humans became mummies and in certain cases acquired alive-ness or camac, the rst step in the process to becoming a bona de ancestor hero or mallqui (see Salomon 1995 for a detailed description of the stages of death and return in the Andes ). Ancestors were not the only type of deied entity in existence in the Andes; aligned alongside proximate ancestors were also the original distant ancestor or creator-god. For instance, amongst the people of the Huamachuco region, one encounters the creator-god Ataguju and the primal ancestor Catequil; co-joined to Catequil is his companion aspect Piguerao, and Catequils wife Mama Catequil (MacCormack 1991; Topic et al. 2002). This central Andean cosmological division presages many common themes in Andean religion, and indeed society. This is the idea of internal separation into unequal reciprocal divisions; in this case Catequil had a homologous counterpart in Piguerao but some deities were represented by two, three, or more aspects; Pariacaca, another central Andean deity had ve aspects: Pariacaca, Churapa, Puncho, Pariacarco, and Sullca Illapa identied as his brothers (Astuhuamn 2008). In the case of the Inca, these creator and ancestor deities were represented by Viracocha as the creator-god and Inti, the Sun, as the primary ancestor of the Inca royal lineage. IntiIllapa, the Thunder God, was Intis brother aspect as was Punchao, the Day; and Mama Quilla, the Moon, was Intis wife (Demarest 1981). All four came together as part of a quadarchic cosmological organization and were worshipped jointly in the Coricancha, as well as individually. Nevertheless, Viracocha had less of a formalized, more distant, worship. The distance of creator-gods has been underlined by Sabine MacCormack (1991: 147): Andean ancestor gods, [were] a more distant presence, hence they were removed

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from the exigencies of daily cult and affairs, as these concerns were satised by ancestors and other local huacas. Given the latent animism and anthropomorphism underlying ancestor worship in Andean religion it is hardly surprising that the relationship between deities tended to imitate life. The organization of the Andean supernatural conrmed many common social and cultural themes that existed in Andean society such that principal Andean huacas had kinship ties similar to those of the human inhabitants (Rostworowski 1998: 346). This was shown in the often tortured relationships that existed between Andean deities, their concubines, wives, brothers, and sons. These were reected in relationships where they lived, fought, died, resurrected, and procreated. A ne example of what Stewart Guthrie (1993: 3) has elegantly expressed in his statement man makes god in his own image. Within the cosmological hierarchy it was ancestor heroes or mallquis, referred to by the Spaniards as minor gods, that formed the most immediate type of deity with the most profuse number of huacas ascribed to these entities. Shared lineage and corporate identity was an important component of ancestral heroes and mallquis. A mallqui has been described as:
ancestor mummies that belong to an ayllu [community], and sometimes to various groups unied by some type of reciprocity or kinship bonds. [antepasados momicados pertenecientes a un ayllu, y a veces a varios grupos unidos por algn tipo de reciprocidad o de lazos de parentesco.] (Rostworowski 1988: 14, my translation)

Alternatively, ancestor heroes are described as people who at some time either enacted large scale construction work, such as terracing and irrigation systems, or conquered new lands (Gose 1992: 4889). In essence they are sometimes very similar; both were invoked as the heads of communities (ayllu) and both were venerated. The main distinction between the two was predominately one of hierarchical positioning within the cosmological order. Ancestor heroes were normally mythical and had many of the characteristics associated with the larger creator-gods, or huacas, described in the deity section above. In a similar fashion to the major deities they were also responsible for the creation of people, albeit at a much more local scale. The pattern of veneration was also conducted in an almost identical form, through idol worship, sanctuaries, and sacred loci in the landscape. Again as between mallqui and ancestor heroes, the difference between ancestor heroes and major deities seems to have been one of scale. Ancestor heroes were located in small communities, forming the basis of belonging for groups of local ayllu. Mallquis were essentially dead founder ancestors; in this fashion they provided a much closer connection between the living community, the lived-in landscape and the past. Mallquis were usually thought to be direct descendants of deities or huacas (Salomon 1995). Not all dead people in a community became mallquis although other members of the lineage were added once deceased, providing a link between the recent dead and the heroic dead (Salomon 1995: 322). As with huacas, a hierarchy of mallquis or lineages existed below the local minor deity or huaca. An adjunct to the whole pantheon of deities were female entities; female deities had a more amorphous quality within Andean mythology. It is important to emphasize two in particular, the Pachamama (Earth Mother) and the Mamacocha (Mother Water), although others exist, including Mama Quilla (the Moon), Kuychi (the Rainbow), celestial constellations, and dark patches between these (see Urton [1981] for further examples). Apart from Mama Quilla, none of these important female entities seems to have been venerated directly in purpose-built shrines, although it is possible that small oratories existed.

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Mama Quilla may have been venerated in Copacabana on the shores of Lake Titicaca (Rostworowski 1998). Garcilaso de la Vega (1979 [1616]: 11617) recounts that Mama Quilla was also venerated in the Coricancha, the Inca Sun temple in Cuzco, in a separate room as the Suns sister-bride. This concept of the female being venerated through, or in, the same place as the male might have pervaded much of Andean cosmology. Thus it is likely that the Pachamama, sometimes referred to as the wife of Pachacamac, the powerful huaca of the central Andean coast, was venerated to some extent within the large religious precinct of the site of Pachacamac. Female deities appear more often than not as mothers, wives, consorts, and sisters to male deities (Hernndez Astete 2002; Rostworowski 1988). Nevertheless, veneration of the Pachamama was practised throughout the Andes (MacCormack 1991: 192). If female deities have been given short shrift in the literature it is possible that this was as a consequence of both male bias on the part of the original Spanish chroniclers and because they predominantly occupied the lower moiety within Andean cosmological divisions (Hernndez Astete 2002). Another common theme of many of these female deities is that they are often depicted as being manifest in important economic plants: Mama Sara was materialized in maize, Mama Acxo in potatoes and Mama Coca in coca, for instance (Rostworowski 1988: 723). It is possible, then, that female deities were of a slightly different type, less violent perhaps, more universal and more nurturing (Millones 1980). Their economic prowess, on the one hand, added to their geographical universality on the other, and probably occasioned a heightened level of offering and libations to these deities relative to their more geographically localized male counterparts.

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Along the path to empire the Incas claimed both the Pacic and Titicaca Lake as their maximal Pacarinas, linking their ancestors and creator-god Viracocha-Inti to them. This policy, akin to myth appropriation, had the dual purpose of restating Inca pre-eminence amongst other cultural groups, as direct descendants of the two largest most prestigious of pacarinas, whilst also subsuming all local pacarinas and, by association, all deities and huacas under the mantle of the Inca Sun cult (Demarest 1981; Sherbondy 1992). Likewise, the ceque system of radial lines linking shrines, huacas, and landscape to individual Inca lineages, was itself being exported to the empire. These probably usurped pre-existing pilgrimage routes that linked people and the living landscape, especially in the southern Andes (Zuidema 2002). The placement of an Inca Sun temple within the precincts of the powerful coastal oracle temple of Pachacamac also indicated the ascendency of the Inca Sun cult and Pachacamac-Vichmas relative abasement to Viracocha-Inti (Eeckhout 2004; Uhle 1903). Yet, how different were the Inca in comparison to other cultures? The founding myths of Pariacaca (de Avila 1999 [1598?]; Salomon and Urioste 1991) and Pachacamac (Rostworowski 1992) also catalogue the defeat of earlier people and deities akin to that encountered by the Inca creator-god Viracocha in his defeat of the Chanka and their idols. Similarly, there is evidence to suggest that the Capacocha ceremony was not an innovation, having existed previously amongst the cultures of the north-central highlands (Zuidema 1989). The

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underlying indication seems to be that the Inca were not so much innovators, as collators of pre-existing huacas, rites, and rituals brought under their control and the cosmological suzerainty of Incan Viracocha-Inti deity. Given the complexity of the various spirits, deities, and manifestations how then did the Andean religious system function? Essentially, mallquis formed the lowest echelon in the representational ladder of veneration, followed in the cosmological order by the local huaca, through to major huacas. The relationship between the major huacas and the minor ones was usually one of parentage and kin association between the parent huaca and lesser deities. This had important repercussions for corporate cultural identity and was emphasized by the mallquis of ayllus that shared kinship ties at the huaca level being interpreted as brothers of each other (Salomon 1995). Yet, all these divisionsdeities, natural manifestations, and ancestral heroeswere not xed. Many of these beings enjoyed a complex multilayering of complementary and contradictory identities in much the same way that communities and people did. A mallqui could be at the same time an ancestral hero and thus a local huaca, but it could also serve as an important oracle transcending the purely local. Catequil, in the northern highlands, was rst and foremost the creator-god and common ancestor hero of the local people in his area in Huamachuco. But Catequil was also at the core of a larger regional cult centred in Cerro Icchal that established client or franchise oratories across the land (Topic et al. 2002). This pattern correlates well with what we know of other major huacas: Pachacamac was venerated throughout the central coast and part of the highlands (Rostworowski 1992, 1998), Pariacaca enjoyed a similar status amongst the inhabitants of the central highlands (Astuhuamn 2005; de Avila 1999 [1598?]; Duviols 1997) and the Incan Viracocha in the southern cordillera (Demarest 1981). As all of these entities, be they mallquis or huacas, were oracular, essentially their social status and power could be circumscribed according to how well they performed this and other duties, such as fertility, community protection, and conquest. Veneration of huacas and mallquis was constant and sometimes conducted at specic locations whilst at other times they were invoked in non-specic situations such as when a new eld was placed under cultivation or a new house was built. This cosmological uidity is important as it helps to trace the ways characteristically similar huacas could sometimes predominate over their immediate peers. Therefore, although the broad similarities between many of the larger huacas must have aided in the religious and physical assimilation of regional huacas that accompanied the expansion of the Inca Empire (Conrad and Demarest 1984), the Inca victory must in itself have cast doubt on the veracity and omnipotence of these regional huacas in the eyes of the populace. A similar crisis of cosmological condence occurred with the coming of the Spaniards, as huaca predictions of imminent Spanish defeat proved singularly unfounded (MacCormack 1991). Other than in the case of major oracles, such as Viracocha, Apurimc, and Pachacamac who had formalized temples, lands, and a hierarchically arranged organization of prelates, it is likely that for lesser-ranked and more local huacas there was no such formalized standing number of huaca retainers. Duviols (2003) has shown, in his compendium of idolatry persecutions in Cajatambo and Recuay from the seventeenth century, how the rank of priest, at the community level, was chosen from among the constituent communities. Similarly, with land given over to the huacas, there seems to have been a more formalized division amongst the greater deities in the form of parcels which were worked by special

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retainers or communities for the purposes of feeding the major huacas and their attendants. This parcelling of land to deities saw its maximum expression under the Incas with the division of land to important huacas as well as to the different royal Inca panacas or lineages (Conrad and Demarest 1984; DAltroy 2002; Rostworowski 1999); considering that the Incas portrayed themselves as deities in their own right this is not a surprising development. At the localized level the difculty that the Spanish colonial authorities had in disentangling community from huaca lands (Aibar Ozejo 19689; Varn Gabai 1980) reects much less clear-cut distinctions between these two (three if you include those of the Inca) types of land status. Probably most of the land and goods given over to the huacas were selected in a more informal manner; as and when local ritual practice necessitated them, rather than specically allocated as part of an Inca state agenda, or as a specied donation to the major huacas (Gose 1992: 486). A strict division between lay and religious property did not exist in the Andean world, as it did in that of late medieval Spain (MacCormack 1991).

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There is no doubt that the Incas tied the origin of their own state and power to a direct relationship, of an oral order, between their ancestors and the huacas and to a whole series of other facts which were patently oracular. [ . . . no cabe duda que los Incas hacan remontar el origen mismo de su Estado y de su podero a una relacin directa, de orden oral, entre sus ancestros y las huacas y a toda una serie de otros hechos patentemente oraculares.] (Curatola Petrocchi 2008: 19; my translation)

6 CONCLUSION

Inca and Andean religion then was essentially an ancestor focused animism projected through oracular divination, the roots of which were rmly within the longue dure of Andean religious tradition. As such this religion represented the totality of the landscape and environment as the stage, props, and cue to a veritable dramatis personae of manifestations, happenings, spirits, ancestors, and deities to which people related, combined, and interacted. In this sense Inca religion was not particularly different to its contemporaries. In fact, evidence points to Inca religion, like the state, being probably in ux during the early sixteenth century. Given the short duration of the Inca Empire it is likely that imperial institutions had yet to crystallize and cohere into a more durable and rigid form (DAltroy 2002). Inca religion therefore was still at a pre-state of development. This can be appreciated in the problems that Huascar, the twelfth Inca (ad 152732) had in curtailing the power of the panacas (households, lineages) of the 11 dead Incas that existed by the time of his reign. Some of these panacas, such as that of the ninth Inca, Pachacuti (ad 143871), owned vast amounts of property, were extremely powerful, and had a propensity to sometimes oppose the dictates of the ruling Sapa Inca (Conrad and Demarest 1984). The panacas were a throwback to the segmentary form of leadership that existed amongst many of the Late Intermediate period (ad 10001480) polities of the Andean highlands. In opposing them Huascar was going against a system that curtailed effective state and religious centralization.

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Similarly, the Andes at this time enjoyed a plethora of local shrines and concomitant huacas that were but very loosely tied to the Inca central religion. This is amply demonstrated by the ease with which local groups abandoned the central Sun cult of the Incas (MacCormack 1991). The reason for this is not that it was an alien concept or cult as has been claimed (DAltroy 2002); many of the essential components of the Viracocha-Inti cult were present in other great Andean creator-god cults, such as that of Pachacamac-Vichma and Ataguju-Catequil of the central coast and highlands respectively. Rather, the problem resides in the fact that the Incas just did not have enough time to consolidate their Sun cult at the apex of a cosmological hierarchy that included all these numerous local and regional cults. In the end, like the social, cultural, and economic ties that welded the empire together, their foundations proved to be too shallow to survive the coming Spanish onslaught.

SUGGESTED READING
On the Incas themselves the long article by Rowe (1946) still remains a classic, succinctly distilling a large amount of ethnohistoric information; for more recent compilations consult Rostworowski (1999), Zuidema (2005), and the outstanding Prssinen (2003). An excellent general book that marries archaeological and ethnoarchaeological perspectives can be found in DAltroy (2002). A closer perspective on the development of Cuzco and the rise of the Incas can be found in Bauer (2004), whilst Zuidema (1964) and Bauer (1998) set out to describe the complexities of the ceque system of ritual pilgrimage across the landscape; Duviols (1976) presents an important short introduction to the Capacocha ritual. Finally, Ogburn (2004) and Morris (1998) tackle the manner in which the Incas exported and imposed their religious and political authority.

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