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The vertical archipelago is a term coined by sociologist and anthropologist
John Victor Murra John Victor Murra (24 August 1916 – 16 October 2006) was a Ukrainian-American professor of anthropology and a researcher of the Inca Empire. Biography Born Isak Lipschitz in Odessa, Ukraine, Russian Empire, in 1916, Murra emigrated to the Un ...
under the influence of economist
Karl Polanyi Karl Paul Polanyi (; hu, Polányi Károly ; 25 October 1886 – 23 April 1964),''Encyclopædia Britannica'' (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. 2003) vol 9. p. 554 was an Austro-Hungarian economic anthropologist and politician, best known ...
to describe the native Andean agricultural economic model of accessing and distributing resources. While some cultures developed
market Market is a term used to describe concepts such as: *Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand *Market economy *Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market Geography *Märket, an ...
economies, the predominant models were systems of
barter In trade, barter (derived from ''baretor'') is a system of exchange in which participants in a transaction directly exchange goods or services for other goods or services without using a medium of exchange, such as money. Economists disti ...
and shared labor. These reached their greatest development under the
Inca Empire The Inca Empire (also known as the Incan Empire and the Inka Empire), called ''Tawantinsuyu'' by its subjects, ( Quechua for the "Realm of the Four Parts",  "four parts together" ) was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The adm ...
. Scholars have identified four distinct ecozones, at different elevations.


Overview

Aside from certain cultures, particularly in the arid northwest coast of Peru and northern
Andes The Andes, Andes Mountains or Andean Mountains (; ) are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is long, wide (widest between 18°S – 20°S ...
, pre-colonial
Andean civilizations The Andean civilizations were complex societies of many cultures and peoples mainly developed in the river valleys of the coastal deserts of Peru. They stretched from the Andes of southern Colombia southward down the Andes to Chile and northwest ...
did not have strong traditions of
market Market is a term used to describe concepts such as: *Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand *Market economy *Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market Geography *Märket, an ...
-based
trade Trade involves the transfer of goods and services from one person or entity to another, often in exchange for money. Economists refer to a system or network that allows trade as a market. An early form of trade, barter, saw the direct exc ...
. Like Mesoamerican ''
pochteca ''Pochteca'' (singular ''pochtecatl'') were professional, long-distance traveling merchants in the Aztec Empire. The trade or commerce was referred to as ''pochtecayotl''. Within the empire, the ''pochteca'' performed three primary duties: market ...
'' traders, there was a trading class known as ''mindaláes'' in these northern coastal and highland societies. A system of barter known as ''trueque'' is also known to have existed in these coastal societies as a means of exchanging goods and food stuffs between farmers and fisherman. A simple currency, known to archaeologists as
axe-monies Axe-monies (Spanish: ''Tajaderos'') refer to bronze artifacts found in both western Mesoamerica and the northern Andes. Based on ethnohistorical, archaeological, chemical, and metallurgical analyses, the scholars Hosler, Lechtman and Holm have ...
, were also present in the area (as well as western
Mesoamerica Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area in southern North America and most of Central America. It extends from approximately central Mexico through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica. Wit ...
). By contrast, most highland Andean societies, such as the
Quechua Quechua may refer to: *Quechua people, several indigenous ethnic groups in South America, especially in Peru *Quechuan languages, a Native South American language family spoken primarily in the Andes, derived from a common ancestral language **So ...
and
Aymara Aymara may refer to: Languages and people * Aymaran languages, the second most widespread Andean language ** Aymara language, the main language within that family ** Central Aymara, the other surviving branch of the Aymara(n) family, which today ...
, were organized into moietal lineage groups, such as ''
ayllu The ''ayllu'', a family clan, is the traditional form of a community in the Andes, especially among Quechuas and Aymaras. They are an indigenous local government model across the Andes region of South America, particularly in Bolivia and Peru. ...
s'' in the Quechua case. These lineages internally shared local labor through a system called ''mink'a''. The
mink'a ''Mink'a'', ''Minka'', ''Minga'' (from Quechua ''minccacuni'', meaning "asking for help by promising something") also ''mingaco'' is an Inca tradition of community work/voluntary collective labor for purposes of social utility and community infras ...
labor system itself rested upon the concept of ''
ayni Ayni (Quechua and Aymara also spelled ''Ayniy'' or ''Aini'') can refer to either the concept of reciprocity or mutualism among people of the Andean mountain communities or the practice of this concept. As a noun, the law of ayni states that every ...
'', or reciprocity, and did not use any form of money as in the case of the coastal Andean traders. All members of the village, the ''Allyu'', had to contribute a certain amount of labor (usually one day a week) to a communal project such as the construction of common use buildings, maintenance, herding the communally owned animals or sowing and harvesting communally owned farmland. Fundamentally, it is a concept of "ecological complementarity" mediated through cultural institutions. Some scholars, while accepting the structure and basic nature of the vertical archipelago, have suggested that inter-ethnic trade and barter may have been more important than the model suggests, despite the lack of evidence in the archaeological and ethnohistoric record. Absent the use of trade to access resources, economic transactions were essentially intra-lineage obligations of labor. These lineages required a base level of self-sufficiency to achieve
autarky Autarky is the characteristic of self-sufficiency, usually applied to societies, communities, states, and their economic systems. Autarky as an ideal or method has been embraced by a wide range of political ideologies and movements, especiall ...
. In the Andes, a long mountain range with a great variety of
ecozone An Ecozone may refer to: * Ecozone (Canada), one of 15 first-level ecological land classifications in Canada * Biogeographic realm, the broadest biogeographic division of Earth's land surface (referred to as ''ecozone'' by BBC) * Biome, a large ...
s and resources, the need to access the proper lands for specific crops or animals meant lineages created miniature
colonies In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the '' metropolitan state'' ...
or sent seasonal migration (such as
transhumance Transhumance is a type of pastoralism or nomadism, a seasonal movement of livestock between fixed summer and winter pastures. In montane regions (''vertical transhumance''), it implies movement between higher pastures in summer and lower val ...
) in different
ecoregion An ecoregion (ecological region) or ecozone (ecological zone) is an ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than a bioregion, which in turn is smaller than a biogeographic realm. Ecoregions cover relatively large areas of ...
s. As the Andes are a relatively young mountain range, there is especially great variation in rainfall and temperature, which has great importance for agriculture. This is all the more important as only about 2% of the land in the Andes is arable.


Ecozones

Headed from the arid, western coast to the humid, eastern slopes bordering the
Amazon basin The Amazon basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries. The Amazon drainage basin covers an area of about , or about 35.5 percent of the South American continent. It is located in the countries of Boli ...
, there are four basic
ecozone An Ecozone may refer to: * Ecozone (Canada), one of 15 first-level ecological land classifications in Canada * Biogeographic realm, the broadest biogeographic division of Earth's land surface (referred to as ''ecozone'' by BBC) * Biome, a large ...
s which highland Andean communities exploit: *The ''quechua'' zone refers to relatively warm, relatively low valleys falling between . This area shares its name with the Quechua people and languages and was especially sought after for growing
maize Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American English, North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples of Mexico, indigenous ...
. *The ''suni'' zone rises from and is suitable for the production of native tubers and grains such as
quinoa Quinoa (''Chenopodium quinoa''; , from Quechua ' or ') is a flowering plant in the amaranth family. It is a herbaceous annual plant grown as a crop primarily for its edible seeds; the seeds are rich in protein, dietary fiber, B vitamins, ...
,
kaniwa ''Chenopodium pallidicaule'', known as ''cañihua'', ''canihua'' or ''cañahua'' (from Quechua ''qañiwa, qañawa or qañawi'') and also kaniwa, is a species of goosefoot, similar in character and uses to the closely related ''quinoa'' ''(Cheno ...
, and
kiwicha ''Amaranthus caudatus'' (also known as ''Amaranthus edulis'' and ''Amaranthus mantegazzianus'') is a species of annual flowering plant. It goes by common names such as love-lies-bleeding, pendant amaranth, tassel flower, velvet flower, foxtail a ...
. Given the innumerable valleys and micro-climates of the Andes, over the millennia Andean farmers developed over 1,000 varieties of
potato The potato is a starchy food, a tuber of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'' and is a root vegetable native to the Americas. The plant is a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae. Wild potato species can be found from the southern Uni ...
es, as well as other tuber species, such as
mashua ''Tropaeolum tuberosum'' (mashua, see below for other names) is a species of flowering plant in the family Tropaeolaceae, grown in the Andes, particularly in Peru and Bolivia, and to a lesser extent in Ecuador as well as in some areas of Colombi ...
, ulluco,
oca OCA or Oca may refer to: Places and jurisdictions * The ancient town and bishopric Oca in Asia Minor (present Asia Turkey), now a Latin Catholic titular see * The former Spanish Oca, modern Villafranca Montes de Oca, also see of a medieval bis ...
, and achira. *The '' puna'' zone is composed of high, cold grasslands, suitable largely for pasture by camelids, the domesticated
llama The llama (; ) (''Lama glama'') is a domesticated South American camelid, widely used as a meat and pack animal by Andean cultures since the Pre-Columbian era. Llamas are social animals and live with others as a herd. Their wool is soft ...
and
alpaca The alpaca (''Lama pacos'') is a species of South American camelid mammal. It is similar to, and often confused with, the llama. However, alpacas are often noticeably smaller than llamas. The two animals are closely related and can success ...
, as well as the wild
vicuña The vicuña (''Lama vicugna'') or vicuna (both , very rarely spelled ''vicugna'', its former genus name) is one of the two wild South American camelids, which live in the high alpine areas of the Andes, the other being the guanaco, which live ...
and
guanaco The guanaco (; ''Lama guanicoe'') is a camelid native to South America, closely related to the llama. Guanacos are one of two wild South American camelids, the other being the vicuña, which lives at higher elevations. Etymology The guanaco ...
. The former were used as not only as pack animals, but also for their meat and wool. Vicuñas and guanacos, though undomesticated, were used for their fine and much-prized wool. Little agriculture is performed in the ''puna'', though in the Bolivian
altiplano The Altiplano (Spanish for "high plain"), Collao (Quechua and Aymara: Qullaw, meaning "place of the Qulla") or Andean Plateau, in west-central South America, is the most extensive high plateau on Earth outside Tibet. The plateau is located at ...
intensive agriculture was possible through the use of ''
waru waru Waru Waru is an Aymara term for the agricultural technique developed by pre-Hispanic people in the Andes region of South America from Ecuador to Bolivia; this regional agricultural technique is also referred to as ''camellones'' in Spanish. Func ...
''
raised bed Raised-bed gardening is a form of gardening in which the soil is raised above ground level and usually enclosed in some way. Raised bed structures can be made of wood, rock, concrete or other materials, and can be of any size or shape. The soil is ...
agriculture, which used specialized irrigation techniques to prevent frost from destroying crops. *The ''montaña'' zone is humid and forested. Populations here were not as large as in other ecozones, as the plants grown in ''montaña'' areas were generally speaking not food crops, but rather
tobacco Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...
and
coca Coca is any of the four cultivated plants in the family Erythroxylaceae, native to western South America. Coca is known worldwide for its psychoactive alkaloid, cocaine. The plant is grown as a cash crop in the Argentine Northwest, Bolivia, ...
. Just as the ''puna'' is used to collect resources from wild animals as well as domestic ones, brightly colored feathers were collected from wild birds in the ''montaña'', such as
macaw Macaws are a group of New World parrots that are long-tailed and often colorful. They are popular in aviculture or as companion parrots, although there are conservation concerns about several species in the wild. Biology Of the many differ ...
s.


Under the Inca

The Inca state drew its taxes through both tax in kind and
corvée labor Corvée () is a form of unpaid, forced labour, that is intermittent in nature lasting for limited periods of time: typically for only a certain number of days' work each year. Statute labour is a corvée imposed by a state for the purposes of ...
drawn from lineages and administered through a
bureaucracy The term bureaucracy () refers to a body of non-elected governing officials as well as to an administrative policy-making group. Historically, a bureaucracy was a government administration managed by departments staffed with non-elected offi ...
composed largely of local nobility. The corvée labor force was used for military operations as well as public works projects, such as roads, aqueducts, and storage buildings known as '' tampu'' and ''
qollqa A qullqa ( "deposit, storehouse"; (spelling variants: ''colca, collca, qolca, qollca'') was a storage building found along roads and near the cities and political centers of the Inca Empire. To a "prodigious xtentunprecedented in the annals of ...
''. There were parallel institutions of lineage-based colonies known as ''
mitma Mitma was a policy of forced resettlement employed by the Incas. It involved the forceful migration of groups of extended families or ethnic groups from their home territory to lands recently conquered by the Incas. The objective was to transfer bo ...
qkuna'', which produced goods for the state and provided strategic security in newly acquired areas, and ''yanakuna'', which were retainers with labor obligations to higher members of the state. Lands belonging to the
Sapa Inca The Sapa Inca (from Quechua ''Sapa Inka'' "the only Inca") was the monarch of the Inca Empire (''Tawantinsuyu''), as well as ruler of the earlier Kingdom of Cusco and the later Neo-Inca State. While the origins of the position are mythical and ...
, the state church, and to ''panaqas'' (lineages descending from individual Sapa Incas according to the principle of
split inheritance The Inca practice of Split Inheritance was the process in which a ruler's chosen successor obtained all political power and rights, while the dead ruler maintained control over all the lands he had conquered during his life. The term was coined by ...
) were often vertical arrayed to access a variety of resources. Indeed, it has been widely suggested that the terraces at
Moray Moray () gd, Moireibh or ') is one of the 32 local government council areas of Scotland. It lies in the north-east of the country, with a coastline on the Moray Firth, and borders the council areas of Aberdeenshire and Highland (council area), ...
were testing grounds for determining which crops would grow under what conditions in order to more efficiently exploit ecozones. The terraces were apparently constructed so that different temperatures and humidities could be achieved through the creation of
microclimate A microclimate (or micro-climate) is a local set of atmospheric conditions that differ from those in the surrounding areas, often with a slight difference but sometimes with a substantial one. The term may refer to areas as small as a few squ ...
s, and therefore produce different kinds of crops.Atwood, R. (2007) Letter from Peru: The Mystery Circles of the Andes. Archaeology, 60(5)


See also

*
Incan agriculture Incan agriculture was the culmination of thousands of years of farming and herding in the high-elevation Andes mountains of South America, the coastal deserts, and the rainforests of the Amazon basin. These three radically different environmen ...
*
Karl Polanyi Karl Paul Polanyi (; hu, Polányi Károly ; 25 October 1886 – 23 April 1964),''Encyclopædia Britannica'' (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. 2003) vol 9. p. 554 was an Austro-Hungarian economic anthropologist and politician, best known ...
*
Substantivism Substantivism is a position, first proposed by Karl Polanyi in his work '' The Great Transformation'' (1944), which argues that the term 'economics' has two meanings. The formal meaning, used by today's neoclassical economists, refers to economics ...


References

{{reflist, 30em Economic systems Agriculture in South America Economic anthropology Inca Economic history of South America