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Rethinking the Inka Empire

Posted On June 30, 2016 | 16:13 pm | by lainw | Permalink
A Collaborative Workshop in Santiago Looks Southward

The Pre-Columbian Studies program at Dumbarton Oaks, the Chilean Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica (CONICYT), and the Universidad de Chile supported an international group of scholars to meet for a workshop titled “Rethinking the Inka Empire: The View from Kollasuyu” from May 18 to 20, 2016. Led by Frances Hayashida (University of New Mexico), Andrés Troncoso (Universidad de Chile), and Diego Salazar (Universidad de Chile), this select group of archaeologists and ethnohistorians met in the beautiful setting of Pirque just south of Santiago. Engaging with recent research in the region of Kollasuyu—the southern province of the Inka empire, which encompassed much of northern Chile and Argentina—the workshop shifted the traditional focus from the central Andes to explore the ways in which research in the southern Andes raises new questions about the Inka empire as a whole.

The workshop facilitated a productive interaction, generating new dialogues between disciplines and intellectual traditions north and south of the equator. New data sets and theoretical positions were brought together in ways that will contribute to refining our models of Andean prehistory and Inka imperial expansion. The workshop participants included Felix Acuto (Argentina), Sonia Alconini (United States), Ian Farrington (Australia), Francisco Garrido (Chile), Marco Giovannetti (Argentina), Ana María Lorandi (Argentina), José Luis Martínez (Chile), Colin McEwan (United States), Axel Nielsen (Argentina), Daniel Pavlovic (Chile), Tristan Platt (United Kingdom), Claudia Rivera (Bolivia), and Verónica Williams (Argentina). Auditors included Noa Corcoran-Tadd, Ester Echenique, Cristián González Rodríguez, Natalia La Mura, Shelby Magee, Kelly McKenna, Beau Murphy, and César Parcero-Oubiña.