Daily Life in the Inca Empire

Michael Malpass's Daily Life in the Inca Empire is perhaps too short and addressed at a younger reading audience to be very useful. However, it functions quite nicely as a modern (1990s) update to Rowe's work on Inca culture at the time of Spanish contact. Malpass is able to draw from more recent archaeological excavations and research on important topics like gender, the ceques and Inca calendars to fill in some of the gaps in older scholarship. Interestingly, the tone of Malpass's work is also somewhat more critical of Inca imperialism against subjugated peoples. Rowe, on the other hand, saw Inca rule favorably in contrast to the tyranny of Spanish colonialism in Peru. But Malpass, quite justly, points to the likely negative perceptions of the Incas on the part of their subjects, whose lives could be entirely upended to benefit their rulers at Cuzco. Indeed, having one's daughter taken as a "Chosen Women" or being forced to labor on various projects or in military service, perhaps far from home, must have been disruptive and unpopular with some of the Inca subjects. Sadly, without more sources on rebellions against Inca rule it is difficult to go further.