ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates how control over exchange helped underpin Wanka chiefs and the Inka state. It focuses on an explicitly political perspective, little used to explain patterns of prehistoric exchange in the Andes. John V. Murra vertical archipelago model postulates that the Andes are environmentally varied with different ecological zones corresponding to changing elevation and to contrasting rainfall patterns such that each zone would produce locally specialized goods for exchange. Political models would predict that exchange in the Andes would be controlled by political institutions and would have shifted following conquest from control by the local Wanka chiefs to control by personnel of the Inka state. Throughout the Andes, gifting of valuables was important to build social relationships and personal prestige, and the Mantaro Valley was no exception. This chapter reviews an earlier published work: Timothy K. Earle, exchange and social stratification in the Andes: The Xauxa case.
