ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that the invisibility of embodied labour and other resources is as pervasive in premodern economies as in industrial capitalism. It uses ethnohistorical information on prehispanic Andean kingdoms to illuminate how semiotic and material aspects of political economy are entwined in both premodern and modern societies. It argues that both anthropologists and mainstream economists tend to focus on semiotic aspects of human societies while largely ignoring their material conditions and repercussions. In specialising on understanding nonmodern ontologies in their own terms and jettisoning any conceivable metacultural standard of truth, anthropology has become incapable of deconstructing modern concepts such as economy and technology. It is also incapable of understanding power shifts in history in terms of the interpenetration of the semiotic and the material. Structural changes in sociometabolic flows may alter the conditions for material accumulation without becoming apparent to the people involved. The chapter provides a brief overview of the emergence and expansion of the Inca Empire, focusing on how the material signs of elite status were procured and produced. It provides some indications of the great quantities of labour time and other resources that were invested in ancient Andean prestige goods.
