Imperial Expansion and Local Agency: A Case Study of Labor Organization Under Inca Rule

Imperial expansion can produce broad economic intensification throughout the provinces to provide key economic resources for the state. However, not all such economic intensification is the direct result of the imposition of an imperial political economy over subject populations. This article presents evidence for some cases where intensification occurred due to bottom‐up responses of small groups that were able to profit from imperial conquest. In the case of the Incas, although the imposition of a labor‐tax system, or mit'a , was an important economic device for their imperial expansion, we question its universality. This article addresses the economic changes that local communities experienced within the Tawantinsuyu by comparing the coexistence of attached and independent modes of production in two cases of mining production in the Atacama Desert, in northern Chile. This contributes to finding and elaborating on explicit archaeological indicators that enable us to contrast both modes of engagement with the political economy of the Inca Empire and to identify, archaeologically, alternative and independent local responses to imperial expansion. Our study thus energizes debates on how and to what extent local populations, under conditions of empire, can negotiate spaces and activities outside of state control. [ mit'a, prehistoric mining, bottom‐up dynamics, imperial expansion, Inca Empire ]