The Inkas were perhaps the quintessential highland state, and yet their interactions with the Amazonian lowlands were no minor footnote in understanding how the empire came about. What exactly were the Inkas’ interests in Amazonia? How did they go about pursuing them? I admit to being a skeptic when it comes to the idea that the Inka actually conquered any portion of the tropical lowlands. However, I do believe their exchange interactions across the Andes-Amazonia frontier were nonetheless very important and frequent. In this paper I will discuss what we currently know about the nature of Inka relationships with Amazonian peoples. In particular, it is important to consider what goods actually flowed between the highlands and lowlands, as well as the social structures that facilitated such exchanges. We also must not ignore the more metaphysical aspects of the Inka relationship to Amazonia. From a highland perspective, the tropical forests to the east were a place of chaos and danger; but also ritual power. For the Inkas, this power was something to be coveted, captured and harnessed in the pursuit of their broader imperial project.
Darryl Wilkinson is an assistant professor at Dartmouth College, where he joined the faculty in early 2020. A specialist in Andean archaeology, he received his PhD in anthropology from Columbia University in 2013. Since then he has held a number of postdoctoral fellowships, including an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Leverhulme Trust early career fellowship at the University of Cambridge. Wilkinson's research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and focuses on the cloud forests of the eastern Andes and Upper Amazonia during the late pre-colonial era.
