Giancarlo Marcone

According to official Peruvian history, the change from the Prehispanic to the colonial period was so profound that it restructured the Andean space; nevertheless, experience shows that the roads have continued to be used by the various actors that make use of and/or inhabit the Peruvian territory. In this article, we question how it is possible that the roads have survived and continued to be used after the collapse of the Inca administrative system, and therefore their road system as well, and how much of the geopolitical and social organization of colonial Peru, and then of contemporary Peru, can be explained from the Prehispanic road. We have approached these questions from a perspective of territory, landscape, and movement, which provides a greater temporal vision and a wider spatial scale. Furthermore, observation of variations in some routes and traces has allowed us to carry out a diachronic analysis to understand the relationship between change and continuity present throughout the history of the Peruvian territory, and to discuss the impacts of the construction of a Peruvian history that has focused more on changes than continuities.

Pablo Adolfo Ochoa y Clarisa Otero

In this article, we discuss the rationales behind the mobility that determined the layout of the qhapaq ñan in the central area of Quebrada de Humahuaca. We present a functional, architectural and site analysis of the road system, with an emphasis on the routes crossing to Río Grande, where the main road was located. In addition to this analysis is the identification of numerous tambos articulating the road networks to connect the quebrada with other environments and to facilitate the flow of resources and goods. The results suggest that the layout of the main roads crossing the Inca route was shaped by the intensive production of agricultural resources and sumptuous objects in the Pucará de Tilcara, considered the capital of the wamani of Humahuaca. Furthermore, these branches may have had a principal role in the enactment of religious principles based on their configuration around the worship of the wakas. We propose that the quebrada was a particular case of Inca provincialism, where a region near the state border and distant from the center of the Empire had a high degree of intervention and direct control over local populations.

Verónica Isabel Williams and María Cecilia Castellanos

It has been suggested that, depending on local, environmental, and demographic conditions, the Inca state implemented diverse strategies of landscape appropriation in the middle Calchaqui Valley, Northwest Argentina..One of the direct strategies consisted in the intervention of agricultural infrastructure in areas with no evidence of either local habitational or pukara- style defensive settlements, which were very popular in the study area during the Regional Development Period (RDP) or Late Intermediate Period (LIP) and which could have become true Inca productive enclaves. Another strategy, of a more symbolic character, suggests that the Inca state appropriated places with a previous history, and that the pukaras acted as territorial milestones associated to a way of occupying the space, interweaving numerous practices and acting as referents of collective memory. In this article, we discuss the possibility that the strategies and ritual ceremonies were used as an expression of the territorial demarcation and annexation to the Inca policy in agricultural areas of the valleys and high gorges of Calchaqui, taking into account the concept of Capacocha.

Iván Muñoz

Studies carried out in the northernmost part of Chile’s puna indicate that Pueblo Viejo de Parinacota would be the highest settlement – 4,300 masl – built by shepherds linked to the Carangas populations approximately in 1,400 AD. They chose the foot of the Nevados de Payachatas as a place of settlement, harnessing the potential of the Parinacota wetlands and using the magnificence of the snow peaks as a protective entity. Pueblo Viejo de Parinacota established as a space of articulation, where road networks integrated, connecting different places and human settlements of the Chilean puna, like the tambos and wetlands of Caquena, Tacora, and Chungara, and those of the Bolivian central Altiplano as well, such as Caquiaviri, Turko, and Sabaya, among others.