essay
The MIT'A obligations of ethnic groups to the Inka state
inca and aztec states, 1400-1800 : anthropology and history • New York • Published In 1982 • Pages: 237-262
By: Murra, John V..
Abstract
John Murra argues that the Inka state exacted prestations in energy, not 'tribute' in kind. He also claims that Tawantinsuyu's impact on the local ethnic level has been overstressed. Many ethnic groups endured without much change at the local productive level; after articulation into the Inka state, indirect rule was the norm in politics and administration. Murra draws on the evidence of KHIPU (knotted strings recording administrative obligations), submitted as testimony by the native lords as part of sixteenth-century litigation in the colonial courts. We still cannot infer whether the state appropriated ethnic lands only at the moment of incorporqtion or later as well, but subsistence and herding activities , notably road building, military duties far from home and weaving vast quantities of cloth for state purposes. Otherwise, most farming and craftwork continued to exploit the diverse eco-niches they had controlled before articulation. The categories of state-imposed decimal administration appear only sporadically in the KHIPU records, particulalrly as one moves toward the altiplano, in the south. Murra refers to them as part of a bookkeeping vocabulary, rather than as indicating administrative reorganization of ethnic polities. He regards this stress on the local, ethnic level as a corrective to Cusco-centered interpretations of Tawantinsuyu, which tend to exaggerate the nature of the changes imposed during the Inka period (p. 237).
- HRAF PubDate
- 2005
- Region
- South America
- Sub Region
- Central Andes
- Document Type
- essay
- Evaluation
- Creator Type
- Ethnologist
- Document Rating
- 4: Excellent Secondary Data
- Analyst
- John Beierle ; 2003
- Field Date
- no date
- Coverage Date
- 1532-1600
- Coverage Place
- Peru
- Notes
- John V. Murra
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 260-262)
- LCCN
- 82006760
- LCSH
- Incas