This study investigates relationships between political organization and land-use from Formative through early colonial times in the southern Andean highlands. The project combines a detailed synchronic view of agro-pastoral production and exchange with a diachronic view of how the cumulative effects of distinct land-use practices under autonomous and imperial rule transformed the built landscape and shaped later land-use and political economic strategies. The archaeological portion of the project is based on a 90 km2 systematic survey in the Colca valley of Arequipa Department, Peru. The ethnohistorical portion reconstructs the area’s local- and regional-scale economic relationships through spatial analysis of landholding and livestock declarations in a series of colonial censuses (visitas).

The survey findings reveal a marked expansion of settlement and irrigated agricultural infrastructure during the Late Intermediate Period (LIP; AD 1000-1450), when a series of villages with distinctive Collagua domestic architecture were established. During this period, inter-settlement political relations appear to have oscillated between competition and cooperation. Defensible settlement locations and fortifications signal conflict, while hydrological relationships among long primary canals indicate that water apportionment was coordinated at a supra-settlement scale. Upon imperial incorporation of the valley, Inka administration hierarchized previously heterarchical political relations. The Inkas established an administrative center, and major LIP settlements became secondary administrative sites, where rustic Inka imperial architecture was prominently situated in association with local elite domestic structures.

Analysis of Spanish visitas provides a complementary view of how local kindreds (ayllus) had been reordered into a nested administrative hierarchy under Inka rule. The formal ayllu structure mimicked Cuzco Inka norms unevenly, with startlingly close matches occurring in the lower moiety. Reconstructed early colonial ayllu land tenure patterns reveals dispersed household landholdings organized by ayllu affiliation. Comparison of ayllu land tenure constellations with the terminal prehispanic settlement pattern provides a basis for retrodicting Inka-era ayllu residence patterns. This analysis shows that the highest-ranking ayllus resided at the administrative center and at secondary administrative sites. At the regional scale, ayllus and their leaders articulated economic flows between high altitude herding populations and specialized maize production enclaves in low-lying valleys to the south.