Inca Trade and Exchange Without Coined Money

The Inca economy is best understood not as a market economy but as a system of redistribution without money. Goods flowed from producers to state stores (qollqas) and from those stores to soldiers, priests, and ritual specialists in a pattern dictated by the state. Within that framework, the trueque (barter) of goods and services between households and between communities was a constant: at the time of the Spanish conquest the empire was moving tens of thousands of tons of food, cloth, and metal per year along its 40,000-kilometer road system, and the architecture of state storage at the major provincial centers — particularly the 700-plus qollqas at Huánuco Pampa — reflects this capacity. The detailed analysis of the redistributive economy, and the comparison with other pre-capitalist states, is given in this article; the mit’a labor obligation and the ayllu’s role in the imperial economy are treated in the related articles.

The redistributive logic of the Inca economy

The Inca state was, in the words of the anthropologist John Murra, “the only major pre-capitalist state that functioned without markets, money, or the principle of exchange-value.” The economy was organized around three principal institutions: the mit’a labor obligation, the tribute in kind obligation, and the state qollqa storehouse. The first institution, the mit’a, was a rotating labor obligation by which a household provided a quota of able-bodied adults to the state for a fixed number of days each year; the work performed under the mit’a included the construction and maintenance of roads, terraces, qollqas, and temples, as well as the service of the army, the mines, and the state textile workshops. The second institution, the tribute in kind, was a fixed quota of textiles, food, and other commodities that the household was required to deliver to the state stores each year. The third institution, the qollqa, was the state storehouse in which the produce of the household was stored and from which the produce was distributed to the army, the priests, and the population of the urban centers.

The redistributive system had the effect of integrating the economy of the empire into a single, vertically organized structure. The state extracted labor and produce from the rural ayllus, accumulated the produce in the qollqas of the provincial capitals, and distributed the produce to the army, the priests, and the urban populations. The Sapa Inca was, in this sense, the apex of a redistributive hierarchy that resembled the structure of a modern state bureaucracy more than the structure of a market economy. The colonial visitas of 1558–1570 record that the state qollqas of the major provincial centers held an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 tons of chuño and maize at any one time, and that the state’s annual budget for the army, the priests, and the imperial administration was on the order of 50,000 to 70,000 tons of produce and tens of thousands of cumbi tunics.

The vertical archipelago and the integration of ecological zones

A distinctive feature of the Inca economy was the vertical archipelago — the practice by which a single ayllu maintained non-contiguous plots at several different altitudes. An ayllu based in the highland valley of the Vilcanota, for example, might maintain plots at 3,500 meters (for potatoes), at 3,000 meters (for maize), and at 1,500 meters in the tropical lowlands (for coca leaf and ají). The produce of the different altitude zones was exchanged through state stores, kin networks, and market trueque, and the ayllu’s autonomy was substantially reinforced by its access to the resources of several ecological zones. The vertical archipelago was a pre-Inca pattern, well attested in the archaeological record of the Wari and Chavín periods.

The Inca state, however, greatly expanded and formalized the system. The state mit’a labor obligation, the state road system (Qhapaq Ñan), and the state storage system (qollqas) all reinforced the vertical archipelago and made possible the large-scale circulation of food and goods across the empire. The state also settled mitma colonists — state-sponsored internal migrants — in the frontier regions, and the mitma communities were a principal means by which the vertical archipelago was extended into newly conquered territory. The detailed treatment of the vertical archipelago and of the mitma system is given in the related articles.

The state storage system and the qollqa

The state qollqa was the principal institution through which the imperial redistribution system operated. The qollqa was a stone structure, typically circular or rectangular, with walls of fitted stone and an internal diameter of 3 to 6 meters; it was designed to maintain a constant, low temperature and humidity, and the most elaborate examples — such as the 700-plus qollqas of Huánuco Pampa — were capable of holding several hundred tons of produce each. The produce stored in the qollqas included chuño (freeze-dried potatoes), maize, quinoa, cumbi tunics, and small objects of gold and silver.

The qollqas were managed by a corps of state officials — the qollqa kamayoq — who were responsible for the receipt, storage, and distribution of the produce. The chronicler Murúa recorded that the qollqa kamayoq were an hereditary caste of specialists, and that the training of a qollqa kamayoq required some 10 to 15 years. The qollqa kamayoq of the major provincial centers held a substantial position in the imperial administration, and the chronicler recorded that the qollqa kamayoq of Huánuco Pampa was a member of the panaca of Topa Inca and a senior figure in the imperial court. The detailed treatment of the qollqa storage system is given in the related article; the mit’a labor system is treated in the related article.

Markets and trueque

Despite the absence of a market economy in the European sense, the Incas did permit local markets (trueque) in certain commodities, particularly food. The most important of these markets was held in the open square of Cusco every week, and the chronicler Murúa recorded that hundreds of vendors gathered there to exchange food, small animals, and household goods. The markets of provincial towns were similar in scale and function, and they were held on fixed days, with the curaca of the local ayllu responsible for maintaining order. The state regulated the markets closely, fixing the prices of certain staples (notably maize) and prohibiting the sale of certain commodities (notably coca leaf) outside the state stores.

The markets were, in effect, supplements to the redistributive system: they allowed the population to acquire small quantities of goods that the state did not distribute, and they provided a mechanism for the exchange of goods between households and communities. The chronicler Cobo recorded that the markets of the central highlands were held on a fixed schedule of three days per week, and that the principal commodities traded included potatoes, quinoa, maize, ají, salt, dried fish, and small quantities of cumbi cloth. The markets were not, however, the principal mechanism by which the imperial economy operated: the bulk of the empire’s produce moved through the state qollqa system, and the markets were a relatively minor supplement to the redistributive system.

The quipu and the accounting of goods

The accounting of goods within the redistributive system was maintained by the quipu (also khipu), a complex knotted-cord device of which several hundred examples survive in museums from Lima to Berlin. The quipu consisted of a primary cord from which a series of pendant cords hung, each cord carrying knots tied in specific positions to record decimal orders of magnitude, color, and, in the latest work of Gary Urton and Sabine Hyland, a substantial amount of narrative information in the form of mnemonics. The system was, in effect, a three-dimensional data storage device that recorded population counts, tribute assessments, military rosters, agricultural yields, and the calendar. The detailed treatment of the quipu is given in Quipu and record-keeping. The quipucamayoc were an hereditary caste of specialists, and many were preserved in colonial office in the 1560s and 1570s as village record-keepers.

The quipucamayoc of the imperial administration were responsible for the accounting of the state qollqas and for the computation of the household’s tribute obligation. The chronicler Murúa recorded that the quipucamayoc of the major provincial centers were senior figures in the imperial administration, and that the quipucamayoc of Huánuco Pampa was a member of the panaca of Topa Inca. The quipucamayoc were also responsible for the recording of the t’oqapu motifs of the imperial tunics, and the relationship between the quipu and the t’oqapu of the surviving corpus has been the subject of substantial modern scholarship.

The imperial road system and the circulation of goods

The imperial road system — the Qhapaq Ñan — was the principal physical infrastructure of the redistributive economy. The road system, which was estimated by John Hyslop in The Inka Road System (1984) to extend for some 40,000 kilometers across the Andean region, consisted of two principal axial roads running from Quito in the north to Mendoza in the south, together with a network of secondary roads and trails. The road was used for the rapid movement of armies, the transmission of messages by the state messenger system (chasqui), and the transport of goods between the producing regions of the empire and the state qollqas of the major provincial centers.

The transport of goods along the road was performed by caravans of llamas and alpacas. The chronicler Cieza de León recorded that a typical llama caravan of the imperial administration consisted of 1,000 to 4,000 animals, each carrying a load of approximately 25 to 35 kilograms, and that a typical caravan of 4,000 animals could transport some 100 to 140 metric tons of goods in a single journey. The state used the caravans to transport chuño, quinoa, and maize from the producing regions of the altiplano to the consuming regions of the central highlands and the Antisuyu lowlands, and to transport cumbi cloth, gold, and silver from the central workshops to the state stores at the provincial capitals. The detailed treatment of the Qhapaq Ñan and of the Inca provincial administration is given in the related articles.