ABSTRACT
Many of the behaviours that shape modern globalization were common to earlier periods and places (Feinman this volume). But some of the primary economic structures and technologies that drove early globalization of ancient Eurasia were of less signicance in the Ancient Andes. Latter pre-Hispanic Andean economies undoubtedly had a ‘complex connectivity’ (Jennings 2011: 2, citing Tomlinson 1999: 2) with a dense network of intense interactions and interdependencies that integrated disparate people through the long-distance movement of goods, ideas, and individuals. The primary forms of connectivity (Jennings this volume) and networking (Knappett this volume) that shaped Andean societies are expressed in the transfer of technologies and the borrowing of stylistic elements as well as the large-scale movement of people. Although the long-distance movement of artefacts reveals important aspects of cultural interaction in the Andes (Vaughn 2006), in comparison to Europe and Asia the range and quantity of goods moving long distances is exceedingly limited. At a Roman period villa in Britain we nd signicant quantities of heavy amphora from the Mediterranean, Samian dining wear from Gaul, and probably some colour-coated drinking vessels from Germany as well as a wide range of forms from Romano-British pottery industries from 10 to 200 km away. In contrast, in all the excavations of Inka period sites in the Mantaro valley, a region strongly re-organized under Inka rule, over 99 per cent of the pottery, including Inka-style pottery, was locally produced with only a few sherds from the Junín and Chimu, and two plate fragments of possible Cuzco origin. Shells from the Pacic coast, and bronze using tin from Bolivia were imported, although still in very small quantities (Earle 2001). While some prestige materials moved long distances there is little evidence that the economic systems of any period in the Andes facilitated the sequential trading of goods as seen along the Silk Road, and the quantity of artefacts that were being moved is minimal in comparison to what was happening in the Roman Empire. This is only partly due to the lack of navigable rivers and a ‘Middle Sea’ (Broodbank 2013) or the absence of traction animals and wheeled vehicles, for in the Andes llama caravans and people were capable of regular long-distance transport. When the Spanish arrived in South America they remarked that the Inka empire
had no money or markets – although recent debate has emphasized the existence of barter as a component within Ancient Andean economies (Hirth and Pillsbury 2013) – and speculated about the possibility of pre-Hispanic fairs (Stanish and Coben 2013). Ancient Andean economies cannot be described as market economies, but there is strong evidence for the transfer of technical skills, styles, ideologies, and languages to attest for strong social interactions across the Andean region. The Spanish reported how large parts of the Andean economies were structured through hierarchies of social obligations, where people gave their labour as a duty to kin groups, ethnic leaders, and the state in return for feasting, some redistribution of goods and infrastructure. Although no individual in the Andes could comprehend the full scale of connectivity that was taking place, many connections were being made through networks of structured social relations. This presents a challenge for how we identify labour exchange in the archaeological record, but it is also a challenge if we characterize globalization as a connectivity that is beyond the self-awareness of the individual. Within the wide region of the Pacic Coast and Andean highlands running from Chile and Argentina to Ecuador, there were a range of social and economic systems in place, and these changed over time. Craft specialization was most signicant in the polities on the Pacic coast of Peru, and the region of modern Ecuador and Northern Peru was engaged with more trading activity; both of these areas were engaged with by the Andean highlands long before their incorporation into the Inka Empire, forming an important part of Andean ‘complex connectivity’.
