Plant Use and Peasant Politics Under Inka and Spanish

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 71 (2023) 101529
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jaa
Plant use and peasant politics under Inka and Spanish rule at
Ollantaytambo, Peru
R. Alexander Hunter a, *, Luis Huamán Mesía b
a
Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, Providence, RI, United States
b
Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Laboratorio de Palinología y Paleobotánica (LID-314), Av. Honorio Delgado 430, Lima 15102, Peru
A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T
Keywords: In the Andes, successive waves of Inka and Spanish imperialism reshaped local ecologies and transformed
Andes agricultural practices between the 14th and 17th centuries. As the Inka (ca. 1450–1532CE) consolidated control
Inka archaeology over the region they co-opted existing resources, directed the development of new farmland, and imposed new
Spanish colonialism
labor obligations on Andean people. In turn, Spanish colonizers (1533-1824CE) introduced foreign flora and
Botanical analysis
Land use and domestic economy
fauna, created new tributary regimes, and reorganized agricultural production around forcibly resettled com
munities and Spanish-owned haciendas (agrarian estates). In this paper, we explore how agricultural workers
managed this extended period of upheaval through analysis of botanical data from recent excavations at the site
of Simapuqio-Muyupata, in Peru’s Cusco region. We track how agriculturalists living at the site altered patterns
of plant use—and, by extension agricultural practice—across the period of Inka and Spanish Colonial gover
nance. These farmers remained reliant on a similar suite of cultivated plants under both political regimes, but
shifted practices of land management to conserve labor when confronted with the structural conditions of
servitude to Spanish landlords. By altering agricultural practices, these agriculturalists re-shaped the agroeco
logical context in which they lived and worked to ensure survival in the face of political upheaval.
1. Introduction considers factors including, but not limited to, the impact of colonial
policies, animal and plant introductions, and the ecological agency of
Ecological change is a fundamental consequence of imperial expan subjugated peoples (see Rosenzweig and Marston 2018).
sion, whether via direct or indirect intervention in local practices of land In this paper, we examine the connections between household plant
management. In the Americas, for instance, as they displaced Indigenous use, agricultural practice, and ecological change in the context of Inka
peoples, European colonizers also cleared forests, introduced plants and and Spanish rule in the Andes. Between the 14th and 19th centuries the
animals, built dams, and drained wetlands (e.g., Candiani 2014; Cronon Andean region was transformed socio-politically and ecologically by
1996; Demuth 2019; Estes 2019; McLeester et al. 2022; Roberts 2019). successive waves of Inka (ca. 1450–1532CE) and Spanish (1533-
Early studies of colonial ecologies emphasized environmental change as 1824CE) imperialism. During the period of Inka rule, Inka elites co-
a tool of imperial domination (e.g., Crosby 1986), or naturalized the opted local tributary economies, moved thousands of people around
effects of phenomena like plant and animal introductions (e.g., Melville the region, and directed the development of new agricultural fields on
1997). More recently, researchers studying the ecological consequences state farms and royal estates (D’Altroy and Hastorf 2011; Kosiba 2018).
of colonialism have pushed against determinist and top-down readings Following the 1532 Spanish invasion, Iberian colonizers exposed An
of environmental change in colonial contexts, instead demonstrating dean people to repeated deadly pandemics, forced them to resettle in
that colonial ecologies were also shaped by subjugated groups as they consolidated towns, and imposed new labor demands, even as newly
opposed imperial expansion or asserted identities in the face of subju introduced flora, fauna, and agricultural technologies catalyzed con
gation (e.g., Acabado et al. 2019; Carney 2001; Lightfoot et al. 2013; Oas flicts over land that continued through the era of Spanish governance
and Hauser 2018; Morrison 2018; Spielmann et al. 2009). These studies (Covey 2021; Kosiba and Alexander Hunter 2017; Ramirez 1985).
demonstrate that a nuanced understanding of ecological transformation Recent archaeological and historical research has begun to demonstrate
in colonial and imperial contexts requires a holistic approach that how Andean people navigated these waves of imperial expansion,
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: raymond_hunter@brown.edu (R. Alexander Hunter), luis.huaman@upch.pe (L. Huamán Mesía).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2023.101529
Received 27 January 2023; Received in revised form 23 June 2023;
Available online 6 July 2023
0278-4165/© 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
R. Alexander Hunter and L. Huamán Mesía Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 71 (2023) 101529
including by altering practices of household production and consump servitude to Spanish hacienda landlords in exchange for usufruct rights
tion (Bray 2003; Cossin 2019; Hernández Garavito and Osores Mendives to small plots that they cultivated for their own subsistence. Hence, to
2019; D’Altroy and Hastorf 2011; deFrance et al., 2016; Hastorf, 1990; investigate worker responses to these successive subjugations and to
Hastorf and Johanneson, 1993; Quave et al., 2019; Weaver et al., 2019), query the ecological agency of agriculturalists living in sequential ser
and by shifting agricultural practices and patterns of land use (Hunter vitudes is to investigate the inherently political connections between
2021; Kosiba and Alexander Hunter, 2017; Kosiba 2018; Wernke 2010). elites who controlled land, the workers who labored on it, and the land
In this paper, we marry these approaches by using archaeological data itself.
from domestic contexts to consider how peasant farmers living in Studies of peasant responses to imperial subjugation frequently draw
servitude shaped the ecologies in which they lived and worked under on Scott’s (1985) influential argument that those with relatively little
consecutive waves of imperial expansion. We examine botanical data overt political power are able to oppose colonial or imperial governance,
sets from the archaeological site of Simapuqio-Muyupata, a small agri including the extraction of labor and goods, through tactics of everyday
cultural village in Cusco’s Urubamba Valley, in relation to published resistance such as work slowdowns, sabotage, or hiding surplus. This
data on local agro-ecological change to understand how agriculturalists analysis informs our interpretations in this paper, especially in that it
managed their articulations to the local agroecology—the suite of re demonstrates how responses to colonial rule or imperial subjugation can
lationships between humans, plants, animals, and land that enabled refract through ecologies as environmental transformation. However,
agricultural production—while living under Inka and Spanish rule. we are cautious about equating ecological agency on the part of agri
Simapuqio-Mutupata is located amidst an extensively modified cultural laborers in servitude with resistance to imperial domination in
agricultural landscape that was, during the Inka era, part of the Inka our research setting. Focusing on worker resistance does not adequately
royal estate of Ollantaytambo. During Inka times, workers who lived at account for the complexity of agricultural servitude under Inka or
the site cultivated nearby fields on behalf of Inka elites. In the Colonial Spanish rule. Some Inka workers may have had little cause to undermine
Era those workers labored in servitude to the Spanish landlords of ha imperial power: servitude to the Inkas could confer prestige, even as it
ciendas, expansive private landholdings that dominated the richest also could curtail freedom and, in some contexts, entailed economic
agricultural land in the region (Hunter 2021). Our analysis in this paper marginalization (Hu and Quave 2020). During the Colonial era, many
draws on data from domestic contexts at the site to understand how Andean people fled to haciendas to escape other, more onerous labor
these workers responded to the political circumstances of Inka and obligations, including compulsory work in silver or mercury mines
Spanish rule by adjusting agricultural practices and patterns of land use. (Quave 2014; Wightman 1990). Indeed, in 1555 Ollantaytambo’s he
We build on studies that link political ecology and practice theory to reditary leader petitioned to lower the community’s tribute obligations
situate the agentive labor of agricultural production within broader on the basis that his subjects had fled the town to become yanaco
social, political, cultural, and ecological structures. Our analysis is na—personal servants to Spaniards (Julien 2000). To be a hacienda
especially inspired by Enrique Mayer’s (2002) proposition that Andean worker could itself, then, be a form of resistance to other modes of
farmers are “articulated peasants,” politically engaged agriculturalists colonial exploitation. Furthermore, hacienda hierarchies were charac
whose practices of agrarian production and domestic consumption are terized by webs of patronage and kinship that linked laborers and
constituted in dialectic with one another and with the exigencies of landlords in webs of familial obligation, complicating the question of
socio-political and ecological context. Understanding agriculturalists as worker resistance (Winchell 2022).
articulated peasants foregrounds a recursive and mutually constitutive For these reasons, rather than emphasizing resistance, we focus on
relationship between politics, land use, and household economy, factors that enabled peasant persistence across the period of Inka and
including practices of plant use that preserve in the archaeological re hacienda rule. In invoking persistence, we draw on scholarship that
cord. It also highlights the ecological agency—the capacity to work highlights the varied and innovative practices through which Indige
within, and transform, the non-human environment—of agrarian nous peoples endured the structural violence of colonial oppression
workers in servitude. (Panich 2021; Lightfoot and Gonzalez 2018; Silliman 2012; Panich and
The data we draw on in this paper, including both macro- and Gonzalez 2021). Importantly, persistence does not assume stasis, but
microbotanical remains, demonstrate both continuity and change in rather emphasizes cultural agency to adapt to shifting circumstances.
worker practices of plant use under Inka and Spanish rule. We identify For instance, cultural persistence might include intentional adoption of
only minimal shifts in plant availability; workers consistently drew on material culture introduced by imperial powers (Hu 2021). In drawing
local products and cultigens from distant production zones. However, on this perspective, we approach servitude as a set of structural cir
patterns in both micro- and macrobotanical remains suggest that cumstances that agricultural workers managed and adjusted to, even as
Simapuqio-Muyupata’s inhabitants altered some practices of plant pro they did so in coercive and violent circumstances (Hauser 2017). Our
curement and use between the two eras: under Inka rule, those farmers aim in deploying this framing is not to minimize peasant opposition to
worked within a centralized imperial ecology oriented around the imperial domination, but rather to acknowledge that peasant politics are
intensive production of high-value crops for the Inka royal estate; often oriented foremost around subsistence. Overt and even subtle op
hacienda control over land, and attendant labor demands, prompted position to external domination may be exceptional rather than routine
agricultural laborers to adopt less intensive subsistence practices such as (e.g., Hobsbawm 1973). Archaeologically, this means that we focus on
tuber cultivation and field-burning. We argue that by making these shifts the remains of mundane day-to-day practices which clarify the ways in
in practice to ensure their survival in the face of colonial exploitation, which workers managed the imposition of foreign power, rather than
Simapuqio-Muyupata’s peasant agriculturalists contributed to the re- evidence of potentially rare overt or covert resistance (Silliman 2014).
making of Ollantaytambo’s Inka imperial ecology in the Colonial Era. Finally, given our focus on understanding peasant contributions to
ecological change, it is important to acknowledge that practices of
2. Ecological articulations and peasant politics acquiescence to authority can also contribute to ecological
transformation.
Inka royal estates like Ollantaytambo were staffed by many hundreds Structuration theory, as read through political ecology, offers an
of workers, including agriculturalists who labored on estate fields to understanding of peasant life that accounts for the agency of producers
produce the agricultural surplus required to support elite consumption while situating analysis of agricultural practice within broader social,
and provision the retainers that undergirded Inka power (Covey and cultural, political, and ecological context (e.g., Grant and Lane 2018;
Amado González 2008; Covey and Elson 2007; Julien 2000; Quave Wernke 2013; Zimmerer 1991). Political ecologists hold that the bio-
2012). Following the consolidation of Spanish control over the region, physical milieu of the non-human environment is an arena in which
many of the same fields were worked by peasants who labored in relations of power are contested, identities asserted, and hierarchies
2
materialized (Hecht, Morrison, and Padoch 2014; Robbins 2011; Peet rights to land, agricultural practice on that land is nonetheless struc
and Watts 2004). Our approach in this paper is guided by political tured by exogenous political and ecological factors. Planting schedules
ecology work that emphasizes both socio-cultural and biological con for crops like maize, for example, are contingent on the availability of
tributions to the formation of human-environment relations (Escobar irrigation water—the product of ecological factors such as rainfall, field
1999) and that begins analytically by focusing on relationships between elevation, and temperature, as well as social hierarchies, participation in
land users, land managers, and the land itself (Blaikie and Brookfield the collective labor of canal maintenance, and negotiations for water
1987, 16). We understand the non-human environment as the product of rights at local and regional scales. Hence, nominally independent de
social action shaped by groups with highly variable political power, cisions such as when to plant a field are mediated in practice by a nexus
even as the environment is also a constraint on the range of potential of social and ecological demands. Moreover, for “articulated peasants”,
actions available to social actors (Erickson 2006; Vásquez-León and there is a recursive relationship between agricultural production and
Liverman 2004; Lohse 2013). patterns of domestic consumption. For instance—continuing the maize
In this vein, we consider the shifting social and ecological circum planting example—reduced maize consumption in domestic contexts
stances within which agriculturalists lived and worked as akin to might mean that some fields are no longer planted with the crop,
structures (sensu Giddens 1986) that shape the social practice of peasant attendant irrigation infrastructures are allowed to degrade, and other
producers, even as those structures were themselves the product of modes of production—dry cultivation or pasturing—gain prominence.
politically mediated human action. Social, cultural, ecological, and po Such a shift in practice would alter political articulations, rendering
litical structures are both externally imposed and internally constituted production less dependent on coordination across irrigation networks
through social practice (see Grant and Lane 2018 for a recent application and prompting infrastructural dereliction. Importantly, peasant articu
of these concepts in the Andes). As Zimmerer (1991; 444) writes: lations do not just constrain action, they also enable both political and
“structures are formed by the interaction of diverse social collectives and ecological agency; a community of articulated peasants might, for
individuals, including the persons that choose and carry out land-use instance, decide to construct a new terrace complex or begin wetland
strategies. Formative social practices contributing to the context of farming, just as they might band together to lobby governmental offi
local land use do not occur on a neutral ground but instead take place cials for resources, launch legal proceedings, or violently oppose in
through strategies of domination, accommodation, and resistance.” Our cursions onto their land (e.g., Allen 2002; de la Cadena 2015; Zimmerer
question in this paper then, is not how agricultural workers ‘resisted’ 1991). As such, articulated peasants are sophisticated political actors
Inka and Spanish domination by drawing on affordances of the local who actively shape the broader socio-political and ecological context in
ecology, but rather how they reshaped Ollantaytambo’s agroecology which they live and labor, even as they often do so within conditions of
through the labor of persistence within the shifting structural circum socio-political marginalization.
stances of servitude. Mayer’s (2002) analysis is built upon ethnographic foundations;
Given our focus on the transition from Inka to Spanish colonial here, we apply it to the past to interrogate how the archaeological as
governance, we are particularly attentive to the effects of socio-political semblages recovered from domestic contexts at Simapuqio-Muyupata
structures, especially the exigencies of land access and labor demands are reflective of shifting ‘articulations’ between the laborers who lived
mediated by Inka elites and Spanish hacienda landlords. More particu at the site and the socio-ecological contexts in which they lived and
larly, we are attentive to the shifting structural conditions of servitude worked under Inka and Spanish rule. We surmise shifting ‘articulations’
entailed by a transition from the Inka model of social control, predicated archaeologically by studying plant use in domestic contexts. In doing so,
on elite-sponsored redistribution, to a Spanish-hacienda model, predi we follow other archaeologists of imperialism in the Andes who link
cated on the extraction of labor in exchange for usufruct rights to land. shifting practices of agricultural production and domestic consumption
We are also mindful of the structuring effects of the biophysical foun to political transformations, including the consolidation of imperial
dations of agricultural production: affordances such as water access, soil power (Biwer 2019; Bray 2003; Chiou 2016; Cutright 2010; 2015;
fertility, and especially the stark temperature gradient of Andean D’Altroy and Hastorf 1984; deFrance 1996; Hastorf 1990; Jennings
verticality. Such ecological conditions constitute the foundation of local et al., 2023; Kennedy and VanValkenburgh 2016). As Mayer’s ethno
agriculture—the medium of production—however they are also the graphic analysis highlights, for Andean farmers, house and field are
recursively shaped outcome of agricultural practice (Crumley 1994; linked spaces that flow into one another through the movement of
Erickson 2006; Grant and Lane 2018; Guillet et al. 1987). These socio- people, animals, plants (as food, fodder, and fuel), and materials used as
ecological structures attain meaning and value through their incorpo fertilizer (see Goodman-Elgar 2009 for in depth discussion of conceptual
ration in social practice, and both constrain and enable political action. and matieral links between house and field). As such, we treat botanical
For instance, Langlie (2018) argues that Late Intermediate Period (CE data recovered from houses as evidence of shifting patterns of plant
1100–1450) farmers in southern Peru adopted farming practices, production and processing, from which we infer patterns of land use as
including the construction and maintenance of terraces by distinct structured by shifting ecological circumstances and the political realities
households, such that their agricultural labor congealed a landscape of of land access, as well as plant procurement through mechanisms such as
“ecological resistance” that facilitated the subversion of hierarchal au trade or elite redistribution. In this sense, by examining plant remains
thority. In the context of the Colonial Period at Ollantaytambo, our recovered from the houses of agricultural workers, we are also querying
analysis assumes that the social significance of ecological structures was relationships between those workers—land users—and the land itself, as
rapidly transforming as new modes of production, including pasturing mediated first by Inka elites and later by hacienda landlords.
newly introduced animals and farming introduced crops, afforded novel
socioecological configurations (Kosiba and Alexander Hunter 2017; 3. Agricultural labor at Ollantaytambo under Inka and colonial
Puente 2018). rule
This analytic framework is succinctly expressed from an Andean
perspective within Enrique Mayer’s (2002) characterization of Andean The archaeological site of Simapuqio-Muyupata is located approxi
farmers as “articulated peasants.” As Mayer argues, peasant households mately 40 km northwest of the city of Cusco immediately adjacent to the
are never isolated producers. Rather, peasant life—including practices Inka, Colonial, and contemporary settlement of Ollantaytambo (Fig. 1).
of agricultural production and domestic consumption—are shaped by During the Inka Era, Simapuqio-Muyupata was part of the Inka royal
multiple overlapping “articulations” to factors like markets, other estate at Ollantaytambo. Such Inka Royal estates combined opulent
community members, and broader political context, all of which are palaces with rich and expansive agricultural holdings intended to sup
deeply enmeshed with the non-human environment. For instance, port Inka rulers in life and after death. For instance, Yucay an estate
Mayer shows how even where agriculturalists might hold unambiguous associated with the ruler Huayna Capac, included pastures, forests,
3
eras: pollen and other microfossils speak to historical vegetation cover;

charcoal concentrations evince burning on the landscape; and
coprophilous mites clarify grazing patterns on surrounding pastures
(Chepstow-Lusty et al. 1998; Chepstow-lusty and Winfield 2000;
Chepstow-lusty 2011; Chepstow-Lusty et al. 2009; Sublette Mosblech
et al. 2012). These data show that when the Inka controlled the Ollan
taytambo region, they intensively managed the agrarian landscape and
the plants and animals that lived upon it. High concentrations of tree
pollen suggest Inka-directed agroforestry on hillsides surrounding the
lake. Relative concentrations of Ambrosia arborescens pollen—a ruderal
used as a proxy for erosion—are low in this era, indicating that agro
forestry combined with land management and the maintenance of ter
races stabilized the landscape. Coprophilous mite and plant-fossil
Fig. 1. Royal Inka estates along the lower Urubamba River, indicating the proxies suggest that camelids were pastured around the lake at higher
relative location of the city of Cusco (star) and the archaeological site of concentrations than before the ascent of Inka power (Chepstow-Lusty
Simapuqio-Muyupata (triangle). et al. 2009).
The approximately 40-year resolution of the core limits a precise
herds, and agricultural lands as well as pleasure gardens and hunting reconstruction of post-Invasion land use; however, indicators suggest a
lands reserved for Inka elites (Covey and Amado González 2008; Covey less intensively cultivated landscape, deforestation, and the dereliction
and Elson 2007; Niles 1999, 121-153). The workers who labored on Inka of agricultural infrastructures as Inka rule gave way to hacienda land
estate fields were quartered in purpose-built villages on the margins of management. Charcoal concentrations indicate a sustained increase in
agricultural land (Covey and Amado González 2008; Covey and Elson fire frequencies through the seventeenth century, with a peak around
2007; Niles 1999, 228–29). They produced some crops for their own 1750. Through the same interval, pollen signals of tree cover steadily
consumption; however, the majority of their labor power was dedicated decrease, with a particularly abrupt decline around 1700. Proxies for
to producing crops like maize, chili peppers, and potatoes to stock im erosion rise in parallel, suggesting that the loss of tree cover coincided
perial storehouses and reinforce the wealth of their Inka overlords (Hu with increasing slope instability (Chepstow-Lusty et al. 1998). Concen
and Quave 2020; Quave 2012). At Ollantaytambo, the royal estate trations of mites and other proxies for animals drop precipitously in the
encompassed an anthropogenic landscape of terraces and walled fields immediate aftermath of the Spanish invasion, likely in line with the
that stretched through the Urubamba Valley and its tributaries (Kosiba collapse of Inka animal husbandry, before spiking again around 1600—a
2018; Kosiba and Alexander Hunter 2017). The deep alluvial soils of the date Chepstow-Lusty and colleagues correlate with the proliferation of
valley floor—at an elevation of approximately 2800masl—offered ideal non-native grazing animals in the region (Chepstow-Lusty et. al. 2009).
growing conditions for valued crops, especially maize. However, hold In the context of Spanish colonialism these trends are not surprising: a
ings associated with the estate included fields at different ecological shift in practice towards increased field-burning may be related to
tiers: at lower altitudes, Inka subjects cultivated crops like yuca and changes in fertilizing techniques or may signal attempts to clear fields in
jungle fruits; and in higher altitudes, they pastured herds of camelids the context of population decline (Chepstow-lusty and Winfield 2000).
(Gonzales and Bauer 2022). Reduced tree cover is the likely result of the simultaneous collapse of
Like the Andes more broadly, the Ollantaytambo region was Inka edicts protecting trees and Spanish demands that tributaries deliver
dramatically transformed in the decades that followed the Spanish in wood to colonial cities for fuel and construction (Julien 2000). The
vasion. The population of the region plummeted during repeated initial decline of camelid caravanning and pasturing are predictable
devastating pandemics in the 16th and 17th centuries, and dispersed consequences of the Inka collapse, given that the Inka kept significant
hamlets were forcibly consolidated into a single tributary community camelid herds in high altitude fields above royal estates (Niles 1999).
(Glave and Remy 1983). Much of the best agricultural land in the region Subsequent increases in grazing accord with the expansion of Spanish-
was seized by colonists: former Inka fields were especially sought by owned estancia grazing stations (Hunter 2021). In the context of these
aspirant Spanish landowners, who desired those lands for their ecolog changes in land use, the increased erosion signaled by the presence of
ical fertility and because as the presumed property of deceased or ruderal pollen is unsurprising: cutting trees and grazing heavy-bodied
deposed owners, royal fields were considered available for appropria animals combined with less frequent maintenance of terrace walls
tion (Burns 1999; Julien 2000; Rostworowski de Diez Canseco 1962). would have destabilized the landscape. Collectively, this suite of
Haciendas, owned both by wealthy families and by institutions like ecological transformations suggests broad-scale agricultural dein
Cusco’s convents and monasteries, consolidated control of land around tensification during the era of hacienda land management: in the
Ollantaytambo through the 16th and 17th centuries. Labor on these remainder of this paper, we turn to archaeological data to consider how
immense estates was performed by residential workers (often referred to peasant agriculturalists participated in, and adjusted to, the new struc
as peones, colonos, or feudatarios), who worked in exchange for tenuous tural reality constituted by these agroecological transformations even as
rights to usufruct plots and landowner protection. Those workers pro they also managed the sociopolitical shift from Inka to hacienda
duced both native and introduced crops for commercial sale (Glave and servitude.
Remy 1983; Kosiba and Alexander Hunter 2017). At Ollantaytambo,
wheat, and especially maize, were the most important hacienda crops. In 4. The archaeological site of Simapuqio-Muyupata
especially labor-demanding seasons of planting and harvest, haciendas
augmented the residential workforce with wage laborers recrui Trajectories of land governance in the Ollantaytambo region are
ted—often under threat of force—from local communities (Glave and materialized in the archaeological site of Simapuqio-Muyupata (eleva
Remy 1983). In this way, hacienda production structured life both on tion 2800-3050masl). The site includes two distinct terrace complexes,
and beyond the boundaries of hacienda fields through the Colonial several clusters of mortuary structures, and residential buildings occu
Period. pied during both the Inka and Colonial eras (Fig. 2). In 2019, the
A series of overlapping stratigraphic cores extracted from the small Proyecto de Investigación Arqueológica Simapuqio-Muyupata excavated a
wetland of Markaqocha, approximately 10 km north of Ollantaytambo, sample of these buildings in collaboration with the local agrarian
provide a regional perspective on land use through the Inka and Colonial cooperative, the Asociación de Productores Agrícolas de Simapuqio
(Hunter 2021; Vera Mateos 2020). The excavation team opened sixteen
4
Fig. 2. The archaeological site of Simapuqio-Muyupata, with details of excavated areas. Ollantaytambo is located directly across the Urubamba River to
the northeast.
units, amounting to a total of 107 m2 at the site. The resulting data beginning of the 19th century. A lease agreement from 1821 makes no
clarify two sequential occupations, broadly aligned with the Inka and mention of people living on the land, suggesting that houses at the site
Colonial eras. were abandoned by that year (ARC. Protocolo Notarial 87, 1820–1821).
The first occupation (hereafter, “Occupation One”) documented
during excavations at Simapuqio-Muyupata is temporally aligned with 5. Methods
the Inka Period construction and occupation of the Ollantaytambo royal
estate. Excavated evidence indicates that the majority of buildings at the The two occupations at Simapuqio-Muyupata represent two distinct
site were raised during the Inka era and occupied by agricultural la groups of agrarian workers who labored in servitude for elites of sub
borers (Hunter 2021). In colonial era documents referencing pre- sequent imperial regimes. As such, archaeobotanical data from the site
Colonial land use, lands near Simapuqio are described as a garden offer a unique opportunity to compare worker plant use over time.
(“guerta” in the documents)—one of only two such places in Ollantay During 2019 excavations the research team sampled all excavated
tambo—suggesting that workers at the site may have been agricultural contexts for macrobotanical and microbotanical analysis. Excavators
specialists of particular skill (BNP: Manuscritos, B-1030, 1629, f.99v). also collected lithic artifacts for microbotanical residue analysis.
This occupation phase at Simapuqio-Muyupata lasted until very shortly Excavations targeted building interiors, although patio spaces and a
after the Spanish invasion, at which point, the site was abandoned midden were also sampled. Excavations sampled three distinct building
(Hunter 2021). groups (Fig. 2). Three units were opened in each group. One group
During the Colonial Period, Simapuqio-Muyupata was reoccupied by featured only Occupation 1 deposits, while the other two each included
a new group of agriculturalists (“Occupation Two”). This reoccupation is deposits from both occupations. The majority of sampled contexts were
signaled archaeologically by the renovation of Inka structures and the use surfaces—packed earth floors—inside buildings, although hearths
presence of colonial materials, including glazed ceramics, rooftiles, and from both occupations and structural fills were also sampled (Table 1).
non-native faunal remains. Temporally, the second occupation aligns Samples from floors should reflect a wide range of activities, including
with the incorporation of surrounding fields into the hacienda system at plant processing, storage, and accidental deposits. Hearths represent a
the beginning of the 17th century, when land surrounding the site was narrower set of activities associated with mistakes and spills during the
appropriated by a Spanish resident of Ollantaytambo named Miguel de final stages of food preparation, as well as intentional burning of trash
Mora. The de Mora family held the lands for roughly the next century, (Hastorf 1988). In general, sampled features were shallow. Floor levels
when the then “Hacienda Simapuqio” was purchased by Cusco’s Beth
lehemite Monastery, one of the region’s largest landlords (ARC: Colegio
Ciencias, L-26, 1555–1725; Glave and Remy 1979). Archival evidence, Table 1
which overwhelmingly highlights questions of land ownership, offers few Context types sampled for macrobotanical analysis.
details on the lives of residential workers who lived at the site and Context Type Occupation One Occupation Two
labored under hacienda direction across this era. It is also unclear Use Surface (floors) 11 4
exactly when occupations of excavated buildings at the site ceased. Construction Fill 1 8
However, local informants suggest those structures have not been Ritual Deposit 3 0
occupied within intergenerational memory, and no artifacts were Midden/Burning Event 4 3
Total 19 15
recovered from sub-surface contexts indicating occupation beyond the
5
were frequently encountered within 15–20 cm of surface in single this study, it still offers a measure of the relative distribution of taxa
occupation structures. Sampled contexts in buildings used during both within the site (D’Altroy and Hastorf 1984).
Occpation 1 and Occupation 2 were deeper: the lowest floor levels were Microbotanical Procedures: This study considers starch grain and
encountered between 30 and 40 cm below surface, while secondary phytolith microbotanical remains. Phytoliths are durable structures that
floor levels were at depths of approximately 10–15 cm (Fig. 3). Hunter plants make by depositing silica in their inter and extra cellular spaces
supervised all excavations and field-sampling, while Huamán directed during growth. As plants decay, mineralized phytoliths are preserved in
botanical analyses at his lab at the Palynology and Paleobotany Lab soil. These microfossils are frequently diagnostic of plant genus and can
(LPP) at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia (UPCH). also sometimes be identified to plant part, as in the case of Zea mays,
Macrobotanical Procedures: We designed the macrobotanical sam where cobs and leaves/stalks create differently shaped phytoliths.
pling protocol used in this study to assess diachronic change in plant use Starch grains are durable granules created by plants during photosyn
at the site. During excavations, the excavation team collected 6-liter thesis to store energy. They accumulate primarily in tubers, seeds, and
bulk soil samples from all excavated contexts. The excavation team root tissue—plant parts that are frequently valuable as foods—and so
used a pinch approach to sample across floors and construction fills and offer a useful perspective on diet, including for plants that do not pro
collected point samples from discrete archaeological features (D’Alpoim duce diagnostic phytoliths (Iriarte et al. 2020; Piperno 2009). Both
Guedes and Spengler 2014). Samples were processed on-site using a microfossil types are often present in residues on stone tools or ceramics
modified bucket-float system (see Hunter 2021). In the LPP, analysts and so can provide direct evidence of crop processing or food prepara
used a stereoscopic microscope (Zeiss model Stemi DV4) to sort mac tion (Logan, Hastorf, and Pearsall 2012; Louderback, Field, and Janetski
robotanical samples following the methods outlined in Pearsall (2015). 2015).
Carbonized remains were categorized by reference to the botanical Our field protocol for microbotanical sampling followed our mac
collection housed at the LPP, published databases, a specialized bibli robotanical approach: excavation teams collected 200 ml soil samples
ography (Mostacero, Mejia, and Gamarra 2002; Martin and Barkley from all excavation contexts following a pinch strategy wherein a given
2000), and the virtual herbarium of the Missouri Botanical Garden. sample was comprised of sediment from across excavated contexts
Our analysis considers 34 macrobotanical samples, comprising a (D’Alpoim Guedes and Spengler 2014). The excavation team also
total 196.25 L of sediment. The assemblage includes more samples from collected lithic grinding stones for residue analysis. Including grinding
Occupation One (n = 19; 122.25 L of sediment) than Occupation Two (n stones (n = 5) the microbotanical assemblage consists of a total of 32
= 15; 74 L of sediment). To alleviate potential sample biases we use the samples. Of the five stone tools, three are from contexts that were also
archaeobotanical metrics of ubiquity and density to compare the as sampled via soil, so the total number of distinct contexts sampled was
semblages. Density, plant part per liter of soil sample, offers a measure of 29. Of these contexts, 21 date to Occupation One, and 8 to Occupation
relative taxa abundance and is an important measure for this study given Two. To avoid double counting we consider soil samples and grinding
the different number of samples and total sample volume between the stones separately in our interpretations.1
two occupations (Marston 2014). Ubiquity, the percentage measure of Lab processing of both soil and lithic samples at UPCH followed the
the number of samples from a group that contain a given taxa, where combined technique described by Horrocks (2005) to extract phytoliths
whether the sample contains one or many of a given taxa, it counts as and starch grains.2 Analysts prepared all samples under an extraction
present, allows for an analysis of how widely distributed deposits con hood with sterilized equipment and talc-free gloves. They used solutions
taining a given taxon are within the site. Ubiquity is an appropriate of Zinc Bromide to recuperate starch (1.8 g/mL) and phytoliths (2.3 g/
comparative measure where preservation conditions and sampling mL) from samples. Phytolith samples were mounted using a Permount
procedures were similar, and where samples were taken from similar mounting medium and were observed under a normal light microscope.
kinds of contexts, as at Simapuqio-Muyupata (Hastorf 1990). It is a For starch grains, analysts used a glycerin mount medium and observed
useful measure for our study as it reduces the impact of biases intro samples using a polarizing light microscope (Piperno 2006). We fol
duced through variation in sample size, preservation, and sample pro lowed Madella et al. (2002) in aiming to count a minimum of 250
cessing (Marston 2014; VanDerwarker 2010). Ubiquity is a problematic phytoliths per sample. Samples were sorted and identified through
measure if the total number of samples is low—Hubbard (1976, 60) comparison with the LPP reference collection and published reference
suggests a minimum of 10 samples are needed to reduce the probability materials (Pearsall et al., 2003). Given the significant morphological
of sampling error. However, even with limited sample size available in overlap between microfossils from different plant taxa, phytoliths and
starch grains were counted according to the lowest securely identifiable
taxonomic rank (e.g., Logan et al. 2012).
6. Findings
Macrobotanical Results: The macrobotanical assemblage from

Simapuqio-Muyupata is comprised of unidentified carbon, wood char
coal, and seeds. In our analysis we exclude uncarbonized remains, but
include all carbonized botanical elements. In total we counted 1242
carbonized botanical elements during analysis. Here we focus on the
assemblage of seeds (n = 426) and concentrate on the most common
taxa in the assemblage (see Table 2).
The most frequently occurring cultigens in the Simapuqio-Muyupata
1
The total number of soil samples for microbotanical analysis (n=27) is
slightly lower than the macrobotanical sample because several microbotanical
Fig. 3. Representative profile drawing of a typical unit at Simapuqio- soil samples were contaminated before processing.
2
Muyupata. This unit was in a building adjoining a terrace wall. Context 1: One grinding stone sample was processed differently because it was
Overburden, Context 2: Colonial Floor (Occupation Two), Context 3: Con exceptionally large. Rather than sending the stone to UPCH, it was washed in
struction fill beneath floor, Context 4: Natural fill, Context 5: Inka-era floor Ollantaytambo with deionized water and the water used in the wash was sent to
(Occupation One), Context 6: Initial construction fill. the laboratory.
6
Table 2
Composition of the macrobotanical seed assemblage. Common names and plant uses are based on taxa most commonly encountered in the region today within the
given genus or family, and are not meant to imply an unambiguous identification of species.
Plant or Possible Common Possible Use Absolute Ocp. One Ocp. Two Total Ocp. One Ocp. Two
Morphotype Name Count Count Count Density Density Density
Seeds
Solanaceae Pepper Food - condiment 79 39 40 0.402 0.319 0.504
Capsicum sp.
Solanaceae Nightshades (e.g., Food - staple 60 0 60 0.305 0 0.81
Solanum sp. potato)
morph. 1
Solanaceae Nightshades (e.g., Food - staple 20 0 20 0.10 0 0.27
Solanum sp. potato)
morph. 2
Apocynaceae Naranja podrido Food – fruit 48 12 36 0.244 0.01 0.486
Parahancornia sp.
Passifloraceae Passiflora Passionfruit Food – fruit 8 0 8 0.041 0 0.108
sp.
Canabaceae Hackberry Food – fruit 8 0 8 0.04 0.0 0.108
Celtis sp.
Annonaceae Custard Apple Food – fruit 11 4 7 0.056 0.033 0.095
cf. Xylopia sp.
Solanaceae Aguaymanto Food – fruit 1 0 1 0.005 0 0.013
Physalis sp.
Salicaceae Woody plant 1 1 0 0.005 0.008 0
Hasseltia sp. -perhaps fuel
Euphorbiaceae Woody plant - 2 2 0 0.01 0.016 0
Nealchornea sp. perhaps fuel
Salicaceae Woody lant - perhaps 2 2 0 0.01 0.016 0
Prockia sp. fuel
Fabaceae Faique Woody plant - 1 1 0 0.005 0.008 0
Acacia sp. perhaps fuel
Euphorbiaceae Sapium Woody plant - 2 0 2 0.01 0 0.02
sp. produces latex
Weeds/Forage group
Asteraceae Forage 139 137 2 0.70 1.12 0.02
Tilesia sp.
Malvaceae Mallows Forage 7 0 7 0.035 0 0.094
Poaceae Grass Forage 1 1 0 0.005 0.008 0
Weeds/Forage total sub- 148 138 10 0.738 1.12 0.095
total
Yungas group
Fabaceae ‘ice-cream bean’, Food - condiment 16 0 16 0.082 0 0.251
Inga sp. guaba, pacae
Moraceae Woody plant - 2 2 0 0.01 0.016 0
Clarisia sp. perhaps fuel
Boraginaceae Cordia sp. Woody plant - 1 0 1 0.005 0 0.013
perhaps fuel
Ulmaceae Ampelocera Woody plant - 3 0 3 0.015 0 0.04
sp. perhaps fuel
Sapindaceae Woody plant -edible 1 1 0 0.005 0.008 0
Talisia sp. drupe
Anacardiaceae Spondias Woody plant -edible 1 1 0 0.005 0.008 0
sp. fruit
Yungas sub-total 22 11 11 0.10 0.09 0.135
Indeterminate Seed 12 2 10 0.016 0.135 0.061
Seed Total 426 205 221 2.17 1.67 2.98
Other Botanical
Elements
Unidentified Carbon 810 464 346 4.13 3.8 4.67
Wood Charcoal 49 49 0 0.249 0.399 0
Unidentified plant part 48 43 5 0.244 0.35 0.07
Leaf 9 3 6 0.045 0.025 0.08
Cactus Spine 2 2 0 0.01 0.015 0
Inflorescence 1 0 1 0.005 0 0.014
Total Botanical 1242 679 563 6.33 5.55 7.60
Specimens
seed assemblage are Capsicum sp. “chili pepper” and two distinct mor Macrobotanical samples also yielded a high raw count of the fruit Par
phologies of Solanum sp. seeds. Solanum sp. seeds may be Solanum ahancornia sp., possibly Parahancornia peruviana “naranja podrida”, a
tuberosum “potato,” given the importance of that crop to contemporary semi-domesticated fruit with a sweet citrus-like taste that grows in the
and historical diets and production regimes, or may be from closely low and mid altitude jungle of the eastern Andes (Vasquez and Gentry
related wild plants. Indeed, as Bruno (2014) discusses, studies of 1989). Taxa with culinary uses that are less frequent in the assemblage
contemporary potato production demonstrate that Solanum tuberosum include Inga sp., a leguminous tree with a wide range of culinary and
and related wild plants frequently co-occur in the same fields, and so medicinal uses that grows best below 1900 masl (Gade 1975), Passiflora
increases in the prevalence of those taxa my be coincident. sp. “granadilla” or “passionfruit”, Celtis sp. “hackberry”, and Physalis sp.
7
“aguaymanto berry”. In our interpretations we group together taxa that a single Occupation One sample.
were more likely to have grown at lower elevations as “Yungas taxa,” The phytolith assemblage from grinding stones is dominated by
following the geographer Pulgar Vidal’s (1967) term for the cloud for various genera of grasses, including bamboos. Food taxa present as
ests of the eastern Andean slopes, where warmer and more humid phytoliths include Zea mays and cf. Canna sp., possibly Canna edulis
conditions permit the cultivation of a wide range of taxa that cannot be “achira”, a lily that produces a large edible tuber and which grows best
grown in the Andean highlands. Passes through several nearby valleys well below 2100 masl (Gade 1975, 66). Maize phytoliths are present in
afford access to this region from Ollantaytambo. Although Para the assemblage in both rondel (cob) and cross (leaf) morphologies
hancornia sp. is a lowland plant, we separate it from the broader Yungas (Fig. 5).
group because it is especially common in the assemblage. We group Microbotanical Soil Sample Data: Starch grain data from soil samples
several rarer taxa together as “weeds and forage” (including mallows, confirms that people living at the site during both occupations used
grasses, and Tilesia sp.). The mallows in the assemblage are likely from Cheno-Ams, cucurbits, beans, and maize (Table 4). However, two of the
forage plants which flourish in high altitude Andean pastures. The Occupation One samples also yielded starch grains from Manihot escu
flowering vine Tilesia sp. is especially common in assemblage raw lenta (manioc, locally yuca), a tuber with an effective upper altitudinal
counts, however, those seeds were concentrated in a single ritual deposit range of approximately 2000masl (Gade 1975, 183). It is particularly
associated with the abandonment of a house (Hunter 2021). For this interesting that Cheno-Am starch grains are present in high ubiquities in
reason, while we include Tilesia sp. with the forage group, we temper our both occupations given the absence of Cheno-Am or Chenopodium seeds
interpretations to account for the low overall ubiquity of those seeds. in the macrobotanical assemblage. These highly durable seeds are
There are several notable trends in these data. Most striking is the common finds in Andean contexts (e.g., Langlie 2018; 2020), and the
dramatic increase in the density and ubiquity of both morphologies of plant is a common cultigen near Ollantaytambo today. Strikingly, both
Solanum sp. from Occupation One to Occupation Two, suggesting that raw counts and ubiquities of Cheno-Am starch grains are more than
those plants became more prevalent at the site over time (Fig. 4). quadruple in Occupation Two contexts as compared to Occupation One
Although there is a notable increase in Capsicum sp. density between (Fig. 6).
occupations, Capsicum sp. seeds decreased in ubiquity in the later The phytolith assemblage recovered from sedimentary samples is
occupation (only present in 8.3% of samples (n = 1) by contrast with overwhelmingly dominated by canes and grasses, however, the data also
18% (n = 4) of earlier occupation samples), indicating that the plant evince food taxa at the site, including maize (ubiquitous in both rondel
became less widely distributed at the site over time. Similarly, the in and cross morphologies). As in samples from grinding stones, the ma
crease in the overall density of Yungas taxa between the assemblages is jority of the phytoliths counted could not be identified to the genus level.
largely the result of high counts of Inga sp. in Occupation Two contexts Given high measures of Poaceae and Bromeliaceae phytoliths (Fig. 7),
(n = 16), even though that plant was ubiquitous in only a single Occu the majority of the phytoliths in soil samples likely originated in con
pation Two context. The overall ubiquity of the Yungas category—of struction materials or fodder that decayed in place on floors during
which Inga sp. is a part—is stable across the two occupations, indicating building use and after abandonment.
even distribution of lowland taxa over time. The decrease over time in
the density of weed/forage seeds is deceptive; excluding a single 7. Discussion and interpretation
anomalous Occupation One sample which yielded 138 Tilesia sp. seeds,
all of the weed/forage seeds counted in this study were recovered from Occupation One: Botanical remains from Occupation One contexts
Occupation Two contexts. The most important trend in these data is indicate that the agricultural workers who lived at Simapuqio-Muyupata
likely the overall increase in the density of macrobotanical remains under Inka rule made use of locally produced food crops including chili
(5.55 count/l to 7.60 count/l), indicating a shift in plant processing peppers, beans, gourds and squashes, as well as Cheno-Ams. However,
practices that made carbonized remains more likely to preserve in do life as a laborer on the Inka estate did not preclude access to plants from
mestic contexts—perhaps a shift towards using dung or herbaceous the lower and warmer Yungas region—worker diet included lowland
plants as fuel, or a shift in cultivation practice towards more frequent plants such as yucca and Parahancornia sp. Notably, the Occupation One
field burning. The overall increase in the density of unidentified char assemblage includes scant evidence of crop processing and storage,
coal (3.8 count/l to 4.67 count/l) and decrease in the density of wood including by-products such as weed or forage seeds, suggesting that
charcoal (0.399 count/l to 0 count/l) supports both possibilities. While worker-subjects processed estate crops in public spaces rather than in
many of the taxa in the Simapuqio-Muyupata seed assemblage are their houses.
common finds in Andean archaeobotanical studies, both the frequency The absence of maize macrobotanicals at Simapuqio-Muyupata is
of low altitude products and the absence of maize set this assemblage notable. Maize cobs, kernels, and cupules are common at mid and low
apart (e.g., Hastorf, 1990; Hastorf and Johanneson, 1993; Langlie, 2019, altitude archaeological sites in the Andes, including at nearby sites with
2020; Quave, 2012; Bruno, 2008). very similar preservation conditions (Kosiba 2010; Quave 2012). Maize
Microbotanical Results: Microbotanical data are most useful as in was important within the royal estate system—isotopic studies of the
dicators of the presence of a given taxa rather than as indicators of rates retainer population at Machu Picchu by Burger et al. (2003) indicate
of consumption. However, here we include both raw counts and that maize was a staple crop for workers on that estate—however, at
percentage-counts of discussed microbotanical types to indicate relative least in some circumstances, access to the crop was controlled by Inka
abundance. We first discuss the results from grinding stone samples, and elites. For instance, in a document from 1555 published by Rostwor
then turn to data from soil samples. owski de Diez Canseco (1962), local elites living near another royal
Grinding Stone Residue Results: The five grinding stones analyzed for estate in the Sacred Valley described how under Inka rule, workers who
this study yielded phytoliths and starch grain indicators of plant use grew large quantities of maize on estate fields did not have direct access
(Table 3). Starch remains on these stones include Cucurbita sp. (gourds to the crop. Rather, the grain was taken directly to state storage facilities
and squashes), Phaseolus sp. (beans), and Zea mays (maize) as well as a following harvest. At Ollantaytambo, maize was certainly cultivated on
complex of morphologically similar taxa collectively referred to as the hundreds of hectares of ideal land developed by the Inka. Indeed,
Cheno-Ams.3 Of these taxa, all were present on samples from both oc microbotanical evidence indicates that the plant was present at
cupations with the exception of Cheno-Ams, which were only present on Simapuqio-Muyupata during the Inka period. Logan et al. (2012, 240)
outline material correlates of specific production, processing, and use
patterns associated with archaeological maize finds in the Andes, noting
3
The Cheno-Am group includes domesticates such as kañiwa (Chenopodium that charred corn and cooking residues—absent from the Simapuqio-
pallidicaule), quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa), and kiwicha (Amaranthus caudatus). Muyupata assemblage—are evidence of household level processing.
8
Fig. 4. Ubiquities of common taxa from Simapuqio-Muyupata. Taxa are included here if they are likely economically important taxa ubiquitous in more than 5% of
contexts across the site.
Table 3
Grinding stone microbotanical ubiquities and raw counts for select taxa and morphologies.
Microbotanical Plant (lowest identified Ubiquity Raw Count Count Percentage (of occupation)
Type taxonomic rank)
Occupation One (n Occupation Two (n Occupation Occupation Occupation Occupation
= 3) = 2) One Two One Two
Starch Grains Cheno-Am 1 0 6 0

Cucurbita sp. 2 1 2 3
Phaseolus sp. 2 3 4 10
Zea mays 2 2 2 2
Phytoliths (Poaceae) 2 1 16 8 7.9 2.7
Panicoideae
(Poaceae) 2 2 8 22 3.9 7.5
Bambusoideae
Bromeliaceae 2 2 27 15 13.3 5
Zingiberaceae cf. Canna sp. 1 0 2 0 1 0
Zea mays rondel (cob) 1 1 2 1 1 0.4
Zea mays cross (stalk/leaf) 0 1 0 2 0 0.7
They suggest that, in the absence of macrobotanical indicators of Spanish chronicler of Inka history Juan de Betanzos, who noted that Inka
household processing, maize presence on grinding tools and in micro rulers distributed farmland near Cusco to their subject laborers so they
botanical samples recovered from floors may indicate household level could provide for their own subsistence (1996 [1557], Part 1, XVII, 112).
ritual consumption. This evidentiary pattern is present at Simapuqio- In another case, La Lone and La Lone (1987) argue that workers at Inka
Muyupata, consistent with an interpretation that while maize was “production enclaves” such as state farms were allotted plots on the
collectively cultivated and processed within the Inka estate, worker margins of imperial tracts for their own subsistence. Redistribution is
families may have been allotted shares of the grain that they boiled for also commonly referenced in ethnohistorical sources, which indicate
consumption or processed into chicha independently. Alternatively, that the Inka assembled vast stockpiles of staple goods and wealth
maize may have been predominantly consumed in public settings, which items—including plants like maize, potato, and quinoa—to fuel
would leave few macrobotanical indicators in domestic contexts. commensal feasts and feed both imperial elites and imperial subjects (e.
In toto, these data are consistent with extant models for agricultural g., Cobo 1994, 218–22; see Covey et al. 2016; D’Altroy and Hastorf
organization under Inka rule wherein workers labored to grow crops for 1984; Murra 1980, 13). By positioning themselves as mediators between
the state and were provisioned through a mix of independent production labor and subsistence within a social system organized around the top-
and elite-sponsored redistribution. Independent production by Inka down redistribution of foods, Inka elites ensured their authority over
workers is indicated in ethnohistorical data such as the writings of the laboring subjects. Such elite-sponsored redistribution within Inka
9
Fig. 5. Phytoliths from Simapuqio-Muyupata, a. Zea mays rondel (cob); b. Zea mays cross (stalk/leaf); c. Phaseolus sp.; d. Phaseolus sp.. Black lines correspond to
indicated measurement.
Table 4
Soil Sample microbotanical ubiquities and raw counts for select taxa and morphologies.
Total Counts Percentage of Count
Occupation Occupation Occupation One Occupation Two

One Two
Starch Grains Cheno-Am 49 208 41.8 67

(Occupation 1: n = 132, Occupation 2: n = 314) Cucurbita sp. 40 64 34 20
Phaseolus sp. 14 35 11.9 11.29
Manihot esculenta 2 0 1.7 0
Zea mays 0 3 0 0.97
Phytoliths (Poaceae) Pooideae 1093 369 16.2 12.1
(Occupation 1: n = 6740, Occupation 2: n = 3038) (Poaceae) Panicoideae 244 183 2.8 2.0
(Poaceae) 701 261 10.8 8.5
Bambusoideae
Zea mays rondel (cob) 50 0 0.77 0
Zea mays cross (leaf) 21 40 0.3 1.3
Bromeliaceae 686 266 10.5 8.7
Solanum sp. 5 0 0.1 0
estates is well documented archaeologically. For instance, Quave’s worked primarily for the estate, but also produced some goods inde
(2012) detailed archaeological study of retainer households at the pendently. By contrast, highly valued plants like maize and plants from
archaeological site of Cheqoq, within the royal Inka estate at Yucay, distant production zones, including Yungas plants, may have been
yielded evidence of redistribution, including plants that could not be accessed through elite redistribution. By supervising the movement of
cultivated locally such as coca and maize. Notably, Quave only recov materials between fields in different ecological zones and by controlling
ered maize kernels and stalks in retainer houses, suggesting that the crop access to the most ritually important plant products elites exercised
was processed prior to redistribution to workers. social control over estate workers. As Ramírez argues, such systems were
If such a model was in place in Inka Ollantaytambo, workers at anchored by a cosmology of reciprocity in which Inka rulers were
Simapuqio-Muyupata would have accessed plants through both elite godlike figures; if laborers “worked to feed the gods, they, in turn, would
redistribution and independent cultivation. In such a scenario, laborers be fed” (Ramírez 2005, 107). More concretely, as Hu and Quave (2020,
10
Fig. 6. Starch grain ubiquities from sedimentary samples identified to lowest secure taxonomic rank. Note that the Occupation Two sample size is small, so those
results should be treated with caution.
Fig. 7. Phytolith percentage ubiquity from soil samples, identified to lowest secure taxonomic rank.
11
9) highlight, redistribution left laborers “structurally dependent on the with Chepstow-Lusty and colleagues’ (2009) suggestion that Colonial-
Inka for land, food, and security.” Workers—many of whom likely era workers burned fields more commonly than their predecessors to
originated in distant communities—were articulated to one another, and expediently clear land for planting and pasture.
to the agroecology of the estate system, through networks that centered The final key diachronic trend in the botanical data is the overall
imperial authority. The result was an agro-ecological system that rein stability in the density of Yungas group taxa. Like their Inka-era pre
forced Inka power both materially, through the production and redis decessors, hacienda workers accessed and used taxa from lower eleva
tribution of surplus, and conceptually, through the reification of an tions. However, the specific taxa comprising the group shifted (Clarisia
ideology that centered elite mediation of labor and subsistence. sp., Talisia sp., and Spondias sp. are present in Occupation One, while
Occupation Two: The range of ubiquitous taxa at Simapuqio- Cordia sp., Sapium sp., and Ampelocera sp. are present in Occupation
Muyupata is largely constant between Occupation One and Occupa Two; Parahancornia sp. is more common in later occupation samples).
tion Two, suggesting that many taxa were consistently used across the This change in assemblage composition may be indicative of shifting
socio-political shift from Inka to Colonial rule. Nevertheless, there are mechanisms of access to products from lower altitudes. Many of Ollan
several indications of shifting practices of plant use within the trans taytambo’s hacienda landlords also owned sugar mills and coca fields at
forming colonial ecology. lower altitudes and workers may have spent time laboring on those
The most striking difference between the Occupation One and lower altitude holdings (Glave and Remy 1983; ARC: Protocolos Nota
Occupation Two assemblages are increases in the overall density of total riales, N:260, 1618–1619). Otherwise, they may have accessed such
plant parts (5.55 to 7.608 fragments/l), density of seeds (1.67 to 2.98 products through trade or in emerging markets. Regardless, the presence
seeds/l), and density of unidentified carbon (3.8 to 4.67 count/l). These of Yungas taxa in worker homes affirms that the hacienda was not a self-
trends indicate a shift in plant use that made remains more likely to contained territorial institution; hacienda boundaries were porous, and
preserve; namely, either increased intentional combustion of plants and workers made use of a range of plants they were unable to produce on
plant parts in private household spaces or increased processing and their own usufruct plots. More pertinently, while the specific mecha
incidental burning of processing byproducts in those spaces. This pattern nisms of access remain opaque, the presence of these plant products
may indicate a decentralization of production: as Inka control over crop indicates social arrangements through which hacienda workers miti
processing collapsed, processing activities were increasingly coordi gated the structural constraints of verticality.
nated at the household level and were spatially relocated to the interior The historical record offers context for these archaeological findings.
of houses. Alternatively, this shift may signal a change in fuel from Haciendas at Ollantaytambo—including the hacienda that controlled
woody plants (more prevalent in Occupation One) towards dried crop lands around Simapuqio-Muyupata—focused on commercial production
stalks or dung; the increased prevalence of weed seeds in Colonial-era of higher value grains, predominately maize (Glave and Remy 1979,
contexts (Tilesia sp. excepted) lends support to this interpretation. This 1983). The area of ideal agricultural land for maize production around
change in practice may have been a response to deforestation that fol Ollantaytambo shrank during the Colonial Period as irrigation in
lowed Spanish tributary demands for wood in the Colonial Period frastructures failed and the climate cooled during the Little Ice Age. The
(Chepstow-Lusty and Winfield 2000). Finally, there may simply have population of the region (and thus the labor force) also fell in the face of
been more frequent fires on the landscape during the Colonial Period, disease, colonial violence, and outmigration (Glave and Remy 1983;
and thus more incidentally charred seeds in in archaeological Hunter 2021; Kosiba and Alexander Hunter 2017). In the context of
assemblages. labor and land constraints on production, landowners dedicated ideal
Another important diachronic change in the composition of the seed lands for maize and wheat to the production of those valued crops and
assemblage from Occupation One to Occupation Two is the shift from prioritized labor on those fields. Unlike under Inka rule, where crops
total absence of Solanum sp. seeds in earlier contexts to high counts and were redistributed to workers, now the vast majority of yields were sold
ubiquities of two morphologies in the later occupation, indicating that into commercial markets. For instance, in the 1680s and 1690s workers
those taxa became both more common and more widespread over time. at the Hacienda Sillque, seven kilometers west of Ollantaytambo, pro
We cannot say for certain, however, given the local context these seeds duced an average of approximately 150 000 kilos of maize each year.
are likely from Solanum tuberosum (potato) or closely related taxa. Such Roughly 80% of the yield was sold into commercial markets, and much
seeds are not eaten—they are mildly toxic—so their presence in do of the rest was retained by hacienda managers (see Glave and Remy
mestic contexts cannot be directly related with an increase in dietary 1983, pp. 238-239).
importance. However, it is reasonable to expect that the relative pres For agricultural workers obligated to work on hacienda fields in
ence of those seeds is a proxy for cultivation (Bruno 2014). If these seeds order to access land for their own subsistence, both the seasonal de
are from potato, the increasing importance of the crop may represent a mands of commercial maize production and the specific affordances of
shift in modes of subsistence wherein workers were increasingly reliant their own usufruct plots would have shaped subsistence production.
on foods they could produce for themselves in the context of onerous While maize likely never disappeared entirely from the diet of those
hacienda labor demands and in the absence of Inka redistributive hacienda workers—indeed, microbotanical evidence demonstrates its
networks. continued presence at Simapuqio-Muyupata—data from the site suggest
More broadly, the increased ubiquity and density of Solanum sp. that Solanum sp. became a more important staple over time. Hacienda
seeds in colonial contexts is another indicator of shifts in practice that labor demands likely prompted this shift. Golte (1987) highlights that in
resulted in increased preservation of botanical matter in houses through the context of the starkly seasonal Andean climate, where crops planted
charring. Possible mechanisms for higher rates of seed charring include too early in the year will not germinate for lack of rain, and planting too
feeding plants to animals and using dung as fuel, directly using dried late risks losing harvests to frost, agricultural production is limited less
plants as fuel, and burning stubble in fields and inadvertently trans by the availability of labor than it is the availability of labor at the right
porting charred seeds into homes. Each of these deposition pathways is time of strictly circumscribed growing seasons. As Bandy (2005) argues,
plausible, however, the ethnographic record lends particular support to this situation creates a labor crunch during especially demanding sea
the first two. In Gade’s (1970, 209–210) study of plant use in the Uru sons of the agricultural cycle, especially during harvests. Ollantay
bamba Valley he noted that potato plants were commonly used as fuel in tambo’s haciendas managed this crunch by hiring wage laborers from
the months after harvest and observed potato stalks used as fodder. nearby communities—often under duress—and by increasing the labor
Dung burning in the Andes has been recorded ethnographically and demanded of resident laborers (Glave and Remy 1983). For workers
archeologically (Bruno and Hastorf 2016). In either case, this change compelled to labor on hacienda fields during critical times in the maize
may again be a response to colonial-era deforestation. The final possi production cycle, crops like potatoes—calorie-dense foods with much
bility—incidental inclusion in deposits following field burning—aligns less rigid scheduling demands than maize—may have become
12
increasingly important for subsistence.4 historical studies that consider landscape scale transformations by of
How then, might these patterns of domestic plant use be related to fering a view from the houses of the politically and ecological articulated
regional patterns of ecological transformation documented in the local agriculturalists that most intimately experienced and participated in the
palaeoecological record? Regional shifts recorded in the core at Mar agroecological transformations of the colonial era. More broadly, our
kaqocha, including increasing rates of erosion, and increased frequency data demonstrate how different mechanisms of political control over
of landscape fires suggest regional de-intensification of production. land prompted changes in land use that reverberated through the do
During the Colonial era at Ollantaytambo, haciendas continued to mestic sphere and refracted back onto the landscape as ecological
intensively farm tracts of the richest valley-bottom land around the transformation. Finally, our findings show that drawing on multiple
town, suggesting that deintensification may have been localized on less datasets and contextualizing data with historical and ecological research
productive hillside fields, which, while used for irrigated maize pro can shed light on historical agricultural practices, even in situations
duction under the Inka, were instead dry-farmed or used as pasture in where data are limited.
the Colonial era. Ultimately, these shifts consolidated in a mixed colo The shift from Inka to Spanish governance in the Andes brought
nial agro-ecology of intensive commercial grain production on valley- numerous factors that influenced patterns of plant use. Farmers con
bottom hacienda fields and less intensive agro-pastoral production on tended with new political arrangements, including hacienda land
hillsides and at higher altitudes (Hunter 2021, 202). Data from ownership and attendant labor requirements. At the same time, these
Simapuqio-Muyupata gesture towards some of the ways indentured la workers witnessed and participated in agro-ecological transformations
borers on hacienda estates participated in the constitution of this new that followed from climactic shifts and environmental factors such as the
agrarian reality. For workers, hacienda servitude prompted labor-saving introduction of non-native plants and animals. At Ollantaytambo,
subsistence strategies, potentially including an increased dietary reli peasant farmers responded to the shifting structural circumstances of
ance on tubers and increasingly frequent field-burning. In turn, these servitude in the Colonial era, including population loss caused by the
shifts in practice altered land management and transformed the broader intertwined colonial violences of disease, resettlement, and forced labor.
agroecology. For instance, increased reliance on tubers, which can be Comparing Inka and Colonial era macro- and microbotanical datasets
cultivated without irrigation, would have freed farmers from the labor of from Simapuqio-Muyupata clarifies how the agriculturalists who lived
maintaining irrigation canals and terrace infrastructures on lands at the site responded to these structural transformations. Our data
dedicated to those crops. Such changes in land management would have indicate only minimal shifts in plant availability to agricultural workers
de-valued land from the perspective of Spanish landlords, as they meant over time, but do suggest significant shifts in practice. Workers main
fields would be less productive for commercial maize or wheat culti tained a reliance on locally produced crops, including beans and cu
vation. Indeed, colonial surveyors at Simapuqio-Muypata noted the curbits, even as they also continuously drew on products from lower
dereliction of former Inka fields as early as the 17th century; during a altitude production zones. At the same time, they changed land use
1659 survey, colonial officials described fields once used to cultivate practices in the face of hacienda land management by increasing their
maize under the Inka as “tierras de poco fruto”—poorly productive lands reliance on tubers—a crop that requires less labor of field preparation,
upon which little could be grown (ARC, Colegio Ciencias, L. 26, Libro 16, irrigation, and plant care than alternatives—changing how they pro
1555–1725, f.443v). Seemingly, a half-century of hacienda land man cured fuel, and burning fields to clear vegetation and rejuvenate pasture
agement had fundamentally degraded the land surrounding the site. Put for newly introduced grazers. We do not view these transformations in
in other terms, the shifting political ecological context of hacienda agricultural practice as the result of direct imperial interventions in
domination altered peasant articulations and demanded a reconfigura worker subsistence strategies. Rather, we understand them as strategic
tion of household economies. In order to meet labor demands, peasants responses to colonial landholding and labor demands through which
modified subsistence practices. In doing so, they participated in the re- workers ensured their survival in the face of Spanish domination and the
constitution of Ollantaytambo’s agrarian ecology. Considering these structural imposition of hacienda labor obligations. As they labored
processes from the perspective of worker’s houses recalibrates questions within an emergent socio-political context, Ollantaytambo’s peasants
of agricultural deintensification and degradation in this colonial setting. produced not only crops, but also the new colonial agroecology that
In context, ecological transformations were not solely the inevitable emerged in the region in the 16th and 17th centuries.
result of colonization and population loss, nor was ‘degradation’
necessarily the product of land mismanagement; rather, in part, CRediT authorship contribution statement
ecological shifts can be understood as the result of intentional strategies
of labor reallocation through which workers ensured survival in contexts R. Alexander Hunter: Conceptualization, Data curation, Funding
of extreme exploitation. acquisition, Investigation, Project administration, Writing – original
draft, Writing – review & editing. Luis Huamán Mesía: Formal analysis,
8. Conclusion Writing – review & editing.
In this paper we compared botanical data sets from Inka and Colonial
era occupations at the site of Simapuqio-Muyupata to understand how Declaration of Competing Interest
agricultural workers living at the site under Inka and Colonial rule
shifted their practices of plant use over time. We considered how varying The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
botanical assemblages from subsequent occupations reflect differing interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
patterns of land use, and by extension, indicate how agricultural workers the work reported in this paper.
in servitude contributed to the constitution of local ecologies under
successive imperial regimes. Our data complement paleoecological and
Acknowledgments
4 The authors are especially grateful to the socios of the Asociación de

Maize and potatoes have similar planting and harvest schedules around
Ollantaytambo, both are generally planted in September or October and har Productores Agrícolas de Simapuqio and to Justo Ccawa for hosting
vested in May or June, however, potatoes offer considerable scheduling flexi archaeological research. They also thank Lic. Eliana Vera for archaeo
bility compared to the rigid demands of maize. Critically, potato harvesting is logical contributions, and M. Elizabeth Grávalos for comments on an
particularly flexibile whereas maize harvesting offers essentially no flexibility early draft. We are also grateful for thoughtful comments by anonymous
(Gade 1970). reviewers, which improved the manuscript considerably.
13
Funding Crumley, Carole L., ed., 1994. Historical Ecology: Cultural Knowledge and Changing
Landscapes. 1st ed. School of American Research Advanced Seminar Series. Santa Fe,
N.M. School of American Research Press; Distributed by the University of
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (grant Washington Press.
number 1834850), the Rust Family Foundation (grant number RFF- Cutright, R., 2015. Eating Empire In The Jequetepeque: A Local View Of Chimú
2018-60), and a University of Chicago Mellon Dissertation Fellowship. Expansion On The North Coast Of Peru. Lat. Am. Antiq. 26 (1), 64–86.
Cutright, R., 2010. Food, Family, and Empire: Relating Political and Domestic Change in
the Jequetepeque Hinterland. In: Comparative Perspectives on the Archaeology of
References Coastal South America. University of Pittsburg.
D’Alpoim Guedes, Jade, and Robert Spengler. 2014. ‘Sampling Strategies in
Paleoethnobotanical Analysis’. In Method and Theory in Paleoethnobotany, edited by
Acabado, S.B., Koller, J.M., Liu, C., Lauer, A.J., Farahani, A., Barretto-Tesoro, G.,
John Marston, Jade D’Alpoim Guedes, and Christina Warinner. Boulder: University
Reyes, M.C., Martin, J.A., Peterson, J.A., 2019. The Short History of the Ifugao Rice
Press of Colorado.
Terraces: A Local Response to the Spanish Conquest. J. Field Archaeol. 44 (3),
D’Altroy, T.N., Hastorf, C.A., 1984. The Distribution and Contents of Inca State
195–214. https://doi.org/10.1080/00934690.2019.1574159.
Storehouses in the Xauxa Region of Peru. Am. Antiq. 49 (2), 334–349. https://doi.
Allen, C.J., 2002. The Hold Life Has: Coca and Cultural Identity in an Andean
org/10.2307/280022.
Community, 2nd ed. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C.
D’Altroy, T.N., Hastorf, C.A., 2011. Empire and Domestic Economy. Springer, New York;
Bandy, M.S., 2005. Energetic efficiency and political expediency in Titicaca basin raised
London.
field agriculture. J. Anthropol. Archaeol. 24 (3), 271–296. https://doi.org/10.1016/
de la Cadena, M., 2015. Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice across Andean Worlds. Duke
j.jaa.2005.03.002.
University Press, Durham.
Biblioteca Nacional del Perú: Manuscritos, B-1030, 1629. Expediente Sobre La Peticion
deFrance, S., 1996. Iberian Foodways in the Moquegua and Torata Valleys of Southern
presentada por el Licenciado Luis Enriquez para Que no se Adjudique Unas Tierras a
Peru. Hist. Archaeol. 30 (3), 20–48.
Pedro de Soria.
deFrance, S., Wernke, Steven A., Sharpe, Ashley E., 2016. Conversion and Persistence:
Biwer, Matthew. 2019. ‘Colonialism, Cuisine, and Culture Contact: An Analysis of
Analysis of Faunal Remains from an Early Spanish Colonial Doctrinal Settlement in
Provincial Foodways of the Wari Empire (A.D. 600 – 1000)’. Doctoral Dissertation,
Highland Peru. Lat. Am. Antiq. 27 (3), 300–317. https://doi.org/10.7183/1045-
UC Santa Barbara.
6635.27.3.300.
Blaikie, P., Brookfield, H., 1987. Land Degradation and Society. Metheun, London.
Demuth, B., 2019. The Walrus and the Bureaucrat: Energy, Ecology, and Making the
Bray, T.L., 2003. Inka Pottery as Culinary Equipment: Food, Feasting, and Gender in
State in the Russian and American Arctic, 1870–1950. Am. Hist. Rev. 124 (2),
Imperial State Design. Lat. Am. Antiq. 14 (1), 3–28. https://doi.org/10.2307/
483–510. https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhz239.
972232.
Erickson, Clark L. 2006. ‘Intensification, Political Economy, and the Farming
Bruno, M., 2014. Beyond raised fields: exploring farming practices and processes of
Community; In Defense Of A Bottom-Up Perspective Of The Past’, 33.
agricultural change in the ancient Lake Titicaca basin of the Andes. Am. Anthropol.
Escobar, A., 1999. After Nature : Steps to an Antiessentialist Political Ecology1. Curr.
116 (1), 130–145. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.12066.
Anthropol. 40 (1), 1–30. https://doi.org/10.1086/515799.
Bruno, M. 2008. ‘Waranq Waranqa: Ethnobotanial Perspectives on Agricultural
Estes, Nick. 2019. Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock versus the Dakota Access
Intensification in the Lake Titicaca Basin (Taraco Penin/Sula, Bolivia)’. Doctoral
Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance. New York: Verso.
Dissertation, Washington University St. Louis.
Gade, Daniel W., 1975. Plants, Man and the Land in the Vilcanota Valley of Peru.
Bruno, M. and Christine Hastorf, 2016. ‘Gifts from the Camelids: Archaeobotanical
Biogeographica, v. 6. The Hague: W. Junk.
Insights into Camelid Pastoralism Through the Study of Dung’. The Archaeology of
Giddens, Anthony. 1986. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of
Andean Pastoralism, January. https://scholar.dickinson.edu/faculty_publications
Structuration. First paperback edition. Berkeley Los Angeles: University of California
/393.
Press.
Burger, Richard, Julia Lee-Thorp, and Nikolaas van der Merwe. 2003. ‘Rite and Crop in
Glave, Luis Miguel, and Maria Isabel Remy. 1983. Estructura Agraria y Vida Rural En Una
the Inca State Revisited: An Isotopic Perspective from Machu Picchu and Beyond’.
Region Andina: Ollantaytambo Entre Los Siglos XVI-XIX. Centro de estudios rurales
YUPA.
andions, ‘Bartolome de las casas’.
Burns, K., 1999. Colonial Habits: Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco, Peru.
Golte, J., 1987. la racionalidad de la organización andina. Instituto de Estudios Peruanos.
Duke University Press, Durham, NC.
Amado Gonzales, Donato, and Brian S. Bauer. 2022. ‘The Ancient Inca Town Named
Candiani, V.S., 2014. Dreaming of Dry Land: Environmental Transformation in Colonial
Huayna Picchu’. Ñawpa Pacha 42 (1): 17–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/
Mexico City. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California.
00776297.2021.1949833.
Carney, J.A., 2001. Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas.
Goodman-Elgar, M., 2009. Places to Partake. In: Jennings, J., Bowser, B.J. (Eds.), Drink,
Harvard University Press.
Power, and Society in the Andes. University Press of Florida, pp. 75–107. https://
Chepstow-lusty, A., 2011. Agro-Pastoralism and Social Change in the Cuzco Heartland of
doi.org/10.5744/florida/9780813033068.003.0004.
Peru: A Brief History Using Environmental Proxies. Antiquity 85 (June), 570–582.
Grant, Jennifer, and Kevin Lane. 2018. ‘The political ecology of late South American
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X0006796X.
pastoralism: an Andean perspective A.D. 1,000-1,615’. J. Polit. Ecol. 25 (1). https://
Chepstow-Lusty, A.J., Bennett, K.D., Fjeldså, J., Kendall, A., Galiano, W., Tupayachi
doi.org/10.2458/v25i1.23071.
Herrera, A., 1998. Tracing 4,000 Years of Environmental History in the Cuzco Area,
Guillet, D., Browman, D.L., D’Altroy, T.N., Hunt, R.C., Knapp, G.W., Lynch, T.F.,
Peru, from the Pollen Record. Mt. Res. Dev. 18 (2), 159–172. https://doi.org/
Mitchell, W.P., et al., 1987. Terracing and Irrigation in the Peruvian Highlands [and
10.2307/3673971.
Comments and Reply]. Curr. Anthropol. 28 (4), 409–430.
Chepstow-Lusty, A.J., Frogley, M.R., Bauer, B.S., Leng, M.J., Boessenkool, K.P.,
Hastorf, C.A., 1988. The Use of Paleoethnobotanical Data in Prehistoric Studies of Crop
Carcaillet, C., Ali, A.A., Gioda, A., 2009. Putting the Rise of the Inca Empire within a
Production, Processing, and Consumption. In: Hastorf, C.A., Popper, V.S. (Eds.),
Climatic and Land Management Context. Clim. Past 5 (3), 375–388. https://doi.org/
Current Paleoethnobotany: Analytical Methods and Cultural Interpretations of
10.5194/cp-5-375-2009.
Archaeological Plant Remains. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Chepstow-lusty, A., Winfield, M., 2000. Inca Agroforestry: Lessons from the Past. Ambio
Hastorf, C.A., 1990. The Effect of the Inka State on Sausa Agricultural Production and
29 (September), 322–338. https://doi.org/10.1639/0044-7447(2000)029[0322:
Crop Consumption. Am. Antiq. 55 (2), 262–290. https://doi.org/10.2307/281647.
IALFTP]2.0.CO;2.
Hastorf, C.A., Johanneson, S., 1993. Pre-hispanic political change and the role of maize
Chiou, Katherine L. 2016. ‘Common Meals, Noble Feasts: An Archaeological
in the central Andes of Peru. Am. Anthropol. 95 (1), 115–138. https://doi.org/
Investigation of Moche Food and Cuisine in the Jequetepeque Valley, Peru’.
10.1525/aa.1993.95.1.02a00060.
Cobo, B., 1994. Inca Religion and Customs. In: Hamilton, R. (Ed.), Texas Pan American
Hauser, M.W., 2017. A Political ecology of water and enslavement: water ways in
Series. Univ. of Texas Press, Austin.
eighteenth-century Caribbean plantations. Curr. Anthropol. 58 (2), 227–256.
Cossin, Z.A., 2019. Community and the contours of empire: the hacienda system in the
https://doi.org/10.1086/691053.
northern highlands of Ecuador. Int. J. Hist. Archaeol. 23 (4), 1039–1062. https://
Hecht, Susanna, Kathleen D. Morrison, and Christine Padoch. 2014. The Social Lives of
doi.org/10.1007/s10761-018-0488-8.
Forests: Past, Present, and Future of Woodland Resurgence. University of Chicago
Covey, A., Elson, C.M., 2007. Ethnicity, Demography, and Estate Management in
Press.
Sixteenth-Century Yucay. Ethnohistory 54 (2), 303–335. https://doi.org/10.1215/
Hernández Garavito, Carla, and Carlos Osores Mendives. 2019. ‘Colonialism and
00141801-2006-064.
Domestic Life: Identities and Foodways in Huarochirí During the Inka Empire’.
Covey, and Donato Amado González, eds. 2008. Imperial Transformations in Sixteenth-
International Journal of Historical Archaeology 23 (4): 832–67. https://doi.org/
Century Yucay, Peru. Memoirs of the Museum of Anthropology, University of
10.1007/s10761-018-0490-1.
Michigan, no. 44. Ann Arbor: Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan.
Hobsbawm, E.J., 1973. Peasants and politics. J. Peasant Stud. 1 (1), 3–22. https://doi.
Covey, A., Quave, K.E., Covey, C., 2016. Inka Storage Systems in the Imperial Heartland
org/10.1080/03066157308437870.
(Cuzco, Peru): Risk Management, Economic Growth, and Political Economy. In:
Horrocks, M., 2005. A combined procedure for recovering phytoliths and starch residues
Storage in Ancient Complex Societies. Routledge, pp. 167–188. https://doi.org/
from soils, sedimentary deposits and similar materials. J. Archaeol. Sci. 32 (8),
10.4324/9781315520971-13.
1169–1175. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2005.02.014.
Covey, A., 2021. Imperial Appetites and Altered States: The Spanish Transformation of
Hu, D.i., Quave, K.E., 2020. Prosperity and prestige: archaeological realities of unfree
the Inca Heartland’. In: Andean Foodways Pre-Columbian, Colonial, and Contemporary
laborers under Inka imperialism. J. Anthropol. Archaeol. 59 (September), 101201
Food and Culture.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2020.101201.
Cronon, W., 1996. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New
Hu, 2021. Indigenous Persistence in the Face of Imperialism: Andean Case Studies. In:
England, 1st rev. ed., 20th-Anniversary ed. Hill and Wang, New York.
The Routledge Handbook of the Archaeology of Indigenous-Colonial Interaction in
Crosby, Alfred W., 1986. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe,
900-1900. Studies in Environment and History. Cambridge University Press.
14
the Americas, edited by Lee M. Panich and Sara L. Gonzalez, 1st ed. London: Panich, Lee M., 2021. Narratives of Persistence: Indigenous Negotiations of Colonialism
Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429274251. in Alta and Baja California. First paperback edition. Tucson, AZ: University of
Hubbard, R.N.L.B., 1976. On the strength of the evidence for prehistoric crop processing Arizona Press.
activities. J. Archaeol. Sci. 3 (3), 257–265. https://doi.org/10.1016/0305-4403(76) Pearsall, D.M., 2015. Paleoethnobotany: A Handbook of Procedures, Third edition. Left
90059-5. Coast Press Inc., Walnut Creek, California.
Hunter, R. Alexander, 2021. Colonial Agrarianism: A Historical Archaeology of Land and Pearsall, D., Karol Chandler-Ezell, AlexChandler-Ezell, (May) 2003. Identifying Maize in
Labor in Cusco, Peru’. Dissertation. The University of Chicago. Neotropical Sediments and Soil susing Cob Phytoliths. J. Archaeol. Sci. 30, 611–627.
Iriarte, J., Sarah Elliott, S., Maezumi, Y., Alves, D., Gonda, R., Robinson, M., Gregorio, J., https://doi.org/10.1016/S0305-4403(02)00237-6.
de Souza, J., Watling and Josephine Handley, 2020. The origins of Amazonian Peet, R., Watts, M., 2004. Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, and Social
landscapes: plant cultivation, domestication and the spread of food production in Movements. Routledge, London.
tropical South America. Quat. Sci. Rev. 248 (November), 106582 https://doi.org/ Piperno, D.R., 2009. Identifying Crop Plants with Phytoliths (and Starch Grains) in
10.1016/j.quascirev.2020.106582. Central and South America: A Review and an Update of the Evidence. Quat. Int. 193
Jennings, Justin, Aleksa K. Alaica, and Matthew E. Biwer. 2023. ‘Beer, Drugs and Meat: A (1–2), 146–159. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2007.11.011.
Reconsideration of Early Wari Feasting and Statecraft’. Archaeol. Food Foodways, Puente, Javier. 2018. ‘Livestock, Livelihood, and Agrarian Change in Andean Peru’. In
January. https://doi.org/10.1558/aff.20801. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History, by Javier Puente. Oxford
Julien, C., 2000. Inca estates and the encomienda: Hernando Pizarro’s holdings in Cusco. University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199366439.013.501.
Andean Past 48. Pulgar Vidal, Javier, 1967. Geografía del Peru: ‘las ocho regiones naturales del Peru’.
Kennedy, S.A., VanValkenburgh, P., 2016. Zooarchaeology and Changing Food Practices Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima.
at Carrizales, Peru Following the Spanish Invasion. Int. J. Hist. Archaeol. 20 (1), Quave, K., 2012. Labor And Domestic Economy On The Royal Estate In The Inka.
73–104. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-015-0319-0. Imperial Heartland (Maras, Cuzco, Peru)’. Doctoral Dissertation, Southern Methodist
Kosiba, S., 2018. Cultivating Empire. The Oxford Handbook of the Incas. https://doi.org/ University.
10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190219352.013.22. Quave, K., 2014. Reconstructing Colonial Migration and Resettlement in the Cuzco
Kosiba, Steve. 2010. ‘Becoming Inka: The Transformation of Political Place and Practice Region’. In Regional Archaeology in the Inca Heartland. In: Alan, R. (Ed.), Covey,
during Inka State Formation (Cusco, Peru). Doctoral Dissertation. University of 193–212. The Hanan Cuzco Surveys. University of Michigan Press. https://www.jst
Chicago. or.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.11395593.19.
Kosiba, S., Alexander Hunter, R., 2017. Fields of conflict: a political ecology approach to Quave, K.E., Kennedy, S.A., Covey, A.R., 2019. Rural Cuzco before and after Inka
land and social transformation in the colonial Andes (Cuzco, Peru). J. Archaeol. Sci. Imperial Conquest: Foodways, Status, and Identity (Maras, Peru). Int. J. Hist.
84 (August), 40–53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2017.06.001. Archaeol. 23 (4), 868–892. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-018-0483-0.
Langlie, B.S., 2018. Building Ecological Resistance: Late Intermediate Period Farming in Ramirez, S., 1985. Provincial Patriarchs: Land Tenure and the Economics of Power in
the South-Central Highland Andes (CE 1100–1450). J. Anthropol. Archaeol. 52 Colonial Peru. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.
(December), 167–179. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2018.06.005. Robbins, P., 2011. Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction. Blackwell, Malden, MA.
Langlie, B.S., 2019. Morphological Analysis of Late Pre-Hispanic Peruvian Chenopodium Roberts, S.E., 2019. Colonial Ecology, Atlantic Economy: Transforming Nature in Early New
Spp. Veg. Hist. Archaeobotany 28 (1), 51–63. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00334-018- England. Early American Studies. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia,
0677-8. Pennsylvania.
Langlie, B.S., 2020. Late Intermediate Period Plant Use at a Colla Hillfort, Puno, Peru (AD Rosenzweig, M.S., Marston, J.M., 2018. Archaeologies of Empire and Environment.
1300–1450). Lat. Am. Antiq. 31 (4), 702–719. https://doi.org/10.1017/laq.2020.28. J. Anthropol. Archaeol. 52 (December), 87–102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
Lightfoot, K.G., Gonzalez, S.L., 2018. The Study of Sustained Colonialism: An Example jaa.2018.08.004.
from the Kashaya Pomo Homeland in Northern California. Am. Antiq. 83 (3), Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, Mariá. 1962. Nuevos Datos Sobre Tenencia de Tierras
427–443. https://doi.org/10.1017/aaq.2018.17. Reales En El Incario ... Revista del Museo Nacional.
Lightfoot, K.G., Panich, L.M., Schneider, T.D., Gonzalez, S.L., 2013. European Scott, J.C., 1985. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. Yale
Colonialism and the Anthropocene: A View from the Pacific Coast of North America. University Press, New Haven.
Anthropocene 4 (December), 101–115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. Silliman, Stephen W. 2012. ‘Between the Longue Durée and the Short Purée’: In
ancene.2013.09.002. Decolonizing Indigenous Histories, edited by Maxine Oland, Siobhan M. Hart, and Liam
Logan, A., Hastorf, C., Pearsall, D., 2012. “Let’s Drink Together”: Early Ceremonial Use of Frink, 113–31. Exploring Prehistoric/Colonial Transitions in Archaeology.
Maize in the Titicaca Basin. Lat. Am. Antiq. 23 (September), 235–258. https://doi. University of Arizona Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt180r3pz.8.
org/10.7183/1045-6635.23.3.235. Silliman, Stephen W. 2014. ‘2 Archaeologies of Indigenous Survivance and Residence:
Lohse, J.C. (Ed.), 2013. Classic Maya Political Ecology: Resource Management, Class Navigating Colonial and Scholarly Dualities’.
Histories, and Political Change in Northwestern Belize. Cotsen Institute of Spielmann, K.A., Clark, T., Hawkey, D., Rainey, K., Fish, S.K., 2009. “…being Weary,
Archaeology Press, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles. They Had Rebelled”: Pueblo Subsistence and Labor under Spanish Colonialism.
La Lone, Mary B., La Lone, Darrell E., 1987. The Inka State in the Southern Highlands: J. Anthropol. Archaeol. 28 (1), 102–125. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
State Administrative and Production Enclaves. Ethnohistory 34 (1), 47–62. https:// jaa.2008.10.002.
doi.org/10.2307/482265. VanDerwarker, Amber M. 2010. ‘Correspondence Analysis and Principal Components
Louderback, L.A., Field, J., Janetski, J.C., 2015. Curation Practices and Extraction Analysis as Methods for Integrating Archaeological Plant and Animal Remains’. In
Methods in Relation to Starch Grain Yields from Ground Stone Artifacts. J. Archaeol. Integrating Zooarchaeology and Paleoethnobotany, edited by Amber M. VanDerwarker
Sci. Rep. 4 (December), 535–540. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2015.10.011. and Tanya M. Peres, 75–95. New York, NY: Springer New York. https://doi.org/
Marston, John. 2014. ‘Ratios and Simple Statistics in Paleoethnobotanical Analysis: Data 10.1007/978-1-4419-0935-0_5.
Exploration and Hypothesis Testing’. In Method and Theory in Paleoethnobotany, Vasquez, R., Gentry, A.H., 1989. Use and Misuse of Forest-Harvested Fruits in the Iquitos
edited by John Marston, Jade D’Alpoim Guedes, and Christina Warinner. Boulder: Area. Conserv. Biol.: J. Soc. Conserv. Biol. 3 (4), 350–361. https://doi.org/10.1111/
University Press of Colorado. j.1523-1739.1989.tb00241.x.
Martin, A.C., Barkley, W.D., 2000. Seed Identification Manual. Blackburn Press, Vásquez-León, Marcela, Diana Liverman, 2004. The political ecology of land-use change:
Caldwell, NJ. affluent ranchers and destitute farmers in the Mexican municipio of alamos. Human
Mayer, E., 2002. The Articulated Peasant: Household Economies in the Andes. Westview Org. 63(1), 21–33. https://doi.org/10.17730/humo.63.1.urh0lujh3ea9gy7n.
Press, Boulder, Colo. Vera Mateos, Cinthia Eliana. 2020. ‘Informe Final Proyecto de Investigación
McLeester, M., Schurr, M.R., Martin, T.J., Wheeler, J., 2022. ‘From Wet Lands to Dry Arqueológica Con Excavacion Simapuqio-Muyopata’. Cusco Ministry of Culture.
Spaces (and Back Again): Archaeological Perspectives on the Use, Drainage, and Weaver, B.J.M., Muñoz, L.A., Durand, K., 2019. Supplies, Status, and Slavery: Contested
Restoration of the Kankakee Wetlands, USA’. Journal of Wetland. Archaeology May, Aesthetics of Provisioning at the Jesuit Haciendas of Nasca. Int. J. Hist. Archaeol. 23
1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/14732971.2022.2075194. (4), 1011–1038. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-018-0485-y.
Melville, E.G.K., 1997. A Plague of Sheep: Environmental Consequences of the Conquest Wernke, S., 2010. A Reduced Landscape: Toward a Multi-Causal Understanding of
of Mexico. Cambridge University Press. Historic Period Agricultural Deintensification in Highland Peru. J. Lat. Am. Geogr. 9
Morrison, K.D., 2018. Empires as Ecosystem Engineers: Toward a Nonbinary Political (January), 51–83. https://doi.org/10.1353/lag.2010.0031.
Ecology. J. Anthropol. Archaeol. 52 (December), 196–203. https://doi.org/10.1016/ Wernke, S., 2013. Negotiated Settlements: Andean Communities and Landscapes under
j.jaa.2018.09.002. Inka and Spanish Colonialism. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.
Mosblech, S., Nicole, A., Chepstow-Lusty, A., Valencia, B.G., Bush, M.B., 2012. Wightman, A.M., 1990. Indigenous Migration and Social Change: The Forasteros of
Anthropogenic Control of Late-Holocene Landscapes in the Cuzco Region, Peru. The Cuzco, 1570–1720. Duke University Press, Durham.
Holocene 22 (12), 1361–1372. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959683612449760. Winchell, M., 2022. After Servitude: Elusive Property and the Ethics of Kinship in Bolivia.
Mostacero, L., Mejia, C., Gamarra, T., 2002. Taxonomía de Las Fanerógamas Útiles Del University of California Press, Oakland, California.
Perú. CONCYTEC, Lima. Zimmerer, K.S., 1991. Wetland Production and Smallholder Persistence: Agricultural
Murra, J.V., 1980. The Economic Organization of the Inka State. Research in Economic Change in a Highland Peruvian Region. Ann. Assoc. Am. Geogr. 81 (3), 443–463.
Anthropology 1, 1979 ed. JAI Press, Greenwich, Conn.
Niles, S.A., 1999. The Shape of Inca History: Narrative and Architecture in an Andean
Empire. University of Iowa Press, Iowa City.
Oas, S.E., Hauser, M.W., 2018. The Political Ecology of Plantations from the Ground Up.
Environ. Archaeol. 23 (1), 4–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/14614103.2017.1347997.
Panich, Lee M., Sara L. Gonzalez, 2021. The Routledge Handbook of the Archaeology of
Indigenous-Colonial Interaction in the Americas. 1st ed. London: Routledge. https://
doi.org/10.4324/9780429274251.
15
Further reading Archivo Regional de Cusco: Colegio Ciencias, Legajo: 26, 1555-1725. Salvador de Mora
vecino del pueblo de Ollantaytambo, ocurrio con su pedimento al Maestro Reverendo
Padre Fray Domingo Cabrera de Lartaun, solicitando amparo de los terrenos que poseía.
Archivo Regional de Cusco: Protocolos Notariales: N: 260, 1618-1619. Transaccion don
Archivo Regional Del Cusco: Protocolo Notarial 87. Gamarra, Pedro Joaquin, 1820-1821.
Alvaro Cimbron de Mendoza con don Francisco Mayontopa.
Arrendamiento De Las Tierras Y Andenerias De Simapuquio.
16

Plant Use and Peasant Politics Under Inka and Spanish

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Plant Use and Peasant Politics Under Inka and Spanish

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 71 (2023) 101529

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology

eras: pollen and other microfossils speak to historical vegetation cover;

Macrobotanical Results: The macrobotanical assemblage from

Starch Grains Cheno-Am 1 0 6 0

Occupation Occupation Occupation One Occupation Two

Starch Grains Cheno-Am 49 208 41.8 67

4 The authors are especially grateful to the socios of the Asociación de

You might also like