Prestige ceramics in Inca Qollasuyu : Production and distribution of imperial and regional ceramics in the southern Andes

Abstract

Among the hundreds of polities in the pre-­ European Americas, the Inca realm stood out for its scale and organizational capacities. By AD 1532, the Incas had created the most sophisticated administration of any indigenous American polity. Built on a pyramid of Inca overlords and provincial ethnic elites, Tawantinsuyu (“The Four Parts United”) encompassed 10–12 million closely tabulated inhabitants from hundreds of distinct ethnic groups (Figure 18.1). Together, they occupied a territory that covered about 1,000,000 km2 in Andean South America.