Tahuantinsuyu, or “the land of the four quarters,” as the Inca called their vast dominion, is the topic of voluminous literature in which this innovative volume on the history of the Inca accomplishment stands apart as a refreshing landmark. María Rostworowski is the first Andean ethnohistorian to clearly articulate a multilinear evolutionary perspective that separates mountain from coastal adaptations, thereby allowing Tahuantinsuyu to be understood as the political synthesis of markedly different highland and lowland lifeways. After reviewing fact and fiction in Inca historical lore, she makes the reader well aware that the coastal desert and the high cordillera represent contrasting extremes in environmental conditions which produced divergent evolutionary pathways of great antiquity. With original insight, she elucidates the very different types of economic adaptations that characterized responses to the contrasting environments. This is overlaid with an equally astute examination of the variable social and political formations within greater Tahuantinsuyu.
For more than a decade North American ethnohistorians have been captivated by a rather monotypical portrayal of Tahuantinsuyu. It was pictured as a polity based on a particular form of highland agropastoralism that entailed “vertical” colonization and control of altitudinally dispersed ecological holdings. The latter supposedly supported economically autonomous communities without recourse to trade and merchants. This model has all but ignored the evidence of thriving commerce on the coast, where Rostworowski has brought forth ever increasing documentation demonstrating that economic specialization and political differentiation were the norm among the largest states to contest Inca hegemony. Drawing on sound original work with both desert and mountain ethnohistorical sources, the author opens her readers’ eyes to a rich multidimensional vision of Tahuantinsuyu. In so doing, Rostworowski’s pioneering perspective marks a vital turning point in how the largest of native New World empires must be conceptualized as well as analyzed. It should be read by all scholars with central Andean concerns.
