ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the different levels of territorial power that are expressed by heads, from the personal and familial levels up to ayllu levels and beyond, as well as the ways in which political power always included the ancestors. Today in the region of Qaqachaka, the cultural practices directed toward the communal or household chests of wood or hide that within living memory contained knotted kipu seem to replicate former practices directed toward the curation of heads. The chapter focuses on the contemporary ethnography of a specific region in the highland southern-central Andes, ayllu Qaqachaka, it illustrates the case of a predominantly centrifugal and expansive political system. Finally, the chapter considers the role of heads in the ritual hierarchy at the wider marka and regional levels, as expressed in some contemporary rituals and cultural practices.
