Imperial ritual appropriation and violence?: the severed heads from Fiambalá and Copiapó during Inca times

Abstract

The appropriation of local ritual practices and their expansion as part of the Inca imperial ideology is a well-documented mode of dominance in the Central Andes. However, there is still no relevant evidence on how it worked in the southern areas of the empire. We show how the Incas might have appropriated some local ritual practices that consisted of burying caches of skulls with perforations, possibly associated with ancestor veneration cults. However, the meanings associated with this practice seem to have changed during the Inca expansion to Chile, serving as a device for coercion over local populations in the Copiapó valley.