Thevertical archipelago is a term coined by sociologist and anthropologistJohn Victor Murra under the influence of economistKarl Polanyi to describe the native Andeanagricultural economic model of accessing and distributing resources. While some cultures developedmarket economies, the predominant models were systems ofbarter andshared labor. These reached their greatest development under theInca Empire. Scholars have identified four distinct ecozones, at different elevations.
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Aside from certain cultures, particularly in the arid northwest coast of Peru and northernAndes, pre-colonialAndean civilizations did not have strong traditions ofmarket-basedtrade. Like Mesoamericanpochteca traders, there was a trading class known asmindaláes in these northern coastal and highland societies.[1] A system ofbarter known astrueque is also known to have existed in these coastal societies as a means of exchanging goods and food stuffs between farmers and fisherman.[2] A simple currency, known to archaeologists asaxe-monies, were also present in the area (as well as westernMesoamerica).[3] By contrast, most highland Andean societies, such as theQuechua andAymara, were organized intomoietal lineage groups, such asayllus in the Quechua case. These lineages internally shared local labor through a system calledmink'a. Themink'a labor system itself rested upon the concept ofayni, or reciprocity, and did not use any form of money as in the case of the coastal Andean traders. All members of the village, theAyllu, 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.[4] 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.[5][6]
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 achieveautarky. In the Andes, a long mountain range with a great variety ofecozones and resources, the need to access the proper lands for specific crops or animals meant lineages created miniaturecolonies or sent seasonal migration (such astranshumance) in differentecoregions. 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.[7]
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Headed from the arid, western coast to the humid, eastern slopes bordering theAmazon basin, there are four basicecozones which highland Andean communities exploit:
TheInca state drew its taxes through both tax in kind andcorvée labor drawn from lineages and administered through abureaucracy 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 astampu andqollqa. There were parallel institutions of lineage-based colonies known asmitmaqkuna, which produced goods for the state and provided strategic security in newly acquired areas, andyanakuna, which were retainers with labor obligations to higher members of the state.[10][11] Lands belonging to theSapa Inca, the state church, and topanaqas (lineages descending from individual Sapa Incas according to the principle ofsplit inheritance) were often vertically arrayed to access a variety of resources. Indeed, it has been widely suggested that the terraces atMoray 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 ofmicroclimates, and therefore produce different kinds of crops.[12][13]
