Conclusions: Inca Imperial Identities

This chapter provides commentary on the central themes emerging in the chapters in Part 4, which emphasize the bottom-up reconstruction of imperial negotiations in the Inca Empire. Scholars approach such analysis in different ways, depending on theoretical orientations, archaeological methodologies, and the available evidence from colonial ethnohistory and archaeology. A consistent theme across several diverse local cases is the symbolic management of local landscapes, which served as a source of local identity and power during Inca imperial interventions. Local elites influenced the spread of imperial power on provincial landscapes, and many of them appropriated elements of Inca aesthetics as they produced new hybrid craft goods and architecture. Frontier regions were particularly dynamic spaces for evolving local and imperial identities, and the Incas widely resettled populations to contested landscapes to transform frontiers into provincial spaces.