Reading Inca History Thoughts...

Catherine Julien's Reading Inca History is a work we rather struggled to complete. Due to our difficulties finding physical copies and the time to read, in full, Cabello Valboa and Murua (as well as a few of the hard to find Spanish chronicles), we were unsure how to tackle Julien's work. Her study of Inca historical consciousness and how it manifested in the sources used by the Spanish historical narratives or chronicles is fascinating, but does require a fuller familiarity with more of the Spanish sources. Nonetheless, Julien constructed an intriguing account of how Inca dynastic genealogy and life history of Inca rulers like Pachacuti were major sources of information used by the Spanish chroniclers. Tied to the panacas or descent groups of the Inca, mummies, songs, traditions, and even khipu were all part of the historical records of the Inca past. The use of paintings, ushered by Pachacuti, further establishes his central role in the development of Inca historical consciousness. 

Undoubtedly, an Inca historical consciousness existed. However, it was significantly changed or codified beginning with the reign of Pachacuti. Once Inca imperial expansion began, the need arose to establish descend from the patrilineage of Manco Capac and his sister (though sister marriage was not clearly established until much later) as the elite, power-holding group allegedly descended from the Sun. Using the Spanish chronicles and how they differ or share details about the early Inca past and the peoples of the Cuzco valley, Julien uncovers some hints at how the Incas were, at the beginning, just one of many groups in the Cuzco valley and their rulers engaged in marriage alliances with neighboring groups who even shared descent (or claimed it) from Pacaritambo and the Ayar brothers. But, with the expansion of Inca power and the need for a select group to consolidate its position, history and ritual were used to confer kingship to descendants from a more restricted kinship group that no longer had to rely so extensively on marriage alliances or acknowledge its shared origins with other groups in the valley. While much of the Inca source material that shaped the Spanish chronicles is still obscure, it is clear that historicist approaches to said Spanish chronicles can still be used to gain deeper glimpses of how the Inca constructed their own understanding of their past. The "mythic" elements and aspects that can perhaps be contextualized in the conflict between panacas or the growth of Christian influences on Andean belief may still reveal something of this historical consciousness that has been omitted or forgotten. 

Inka History in Knots

Gary Urton's Inka History in Knots: Reading Khipus as Primary Sources proposes the idea of using khipu as primary sources for reconstructing the history of Tawantinsuyu, or the Inca Empire. Doing so would also make it possible for future historians to write a history of the Inca Empire in the style of the Annales school. That is why he focuses on administrative or numerical khipu found at various sites across the Inca domains. In addition, focusing on the khipu as 'archive' and accounting system connects it to systems of power and hegemony of the Inka state. Alas, how khipu may have been related to earlier, pre-Inca states, such as Wari, is unknowable. Unfortunately, Urton's hypotheses and speculative reasoning are just that, too speculative. For instance, he tries to view one khipu from Chachapoyas as a biennial calendar recording tributaries in the region based on early colonial records enumerating around the same number as recorded on the khipu. But his interpretation of the Chachapoyas khipu, as well as the interpretations of the data linking some Khipus to censuses and even population decline across during the colonial period is still too speculative. 

As much as I would love for historians and specialists to be able to use khipu as primary source "documents" to record a history of the Inka in the style of the Annales school, we are still so far from understanding the khipu. It also seems that "cracking the code" for phonetic or narrative khipus may be helpful for interpreting the administrative khipu, particularly when the some of the notation and meaning of much of the numerical ones are still up for debate? Nonetheless, Urton's work and the Khipu Database Project does represent a significant step forward. His attempts to match some of them with known colonial records and Andean systems (such as dualism, ayllus, etc.) and possible matching colonial-era censuses raises a number of exciting questions about what may be achievable by future specialists.  

Daily Life in the Inca Empire

Source

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.