Imperial Policies and Well‐Being in the Prehistoric Andes

Abstract

At European contact, the Inca dominated the Andes. Some colonial commentators described them as benevolent because of their policies to prevent starvation among cooperative subjects; however, this does not mean that there were no ill effects to the well‐being of conquered groups. Archaeological research focused on well‐being offers new avenues through which to understand the impacts of expansive polities on subject populations. In this article, I propose some ways that archaeologists may assess well‐being in prehistoric societies using relative measures of poverty and social exclusion to establish expectations. This approach is applied to the Inca and Wari Empires and uses archaeological data from human remains, landscapes, and households. Current evidence cannot dispute claims regarding Inca policies that prevented the starvation of subjects but indicates that some people physically suffered due to increased labor demands. Other groups experienced forms of social exclusion and perhaps felt terrorized by the destruction of ancestral remains and the co‐option of sacred sites. The Wari Empire probably pioneered these tactics. Archaeologists, in addition to examining health, can examine the material indicators of imperial policies and consider how a group's cosmology might be used as a means to exert political control when assessing the well‐being of populations in the past.