Eating Inka: Diet at Patallaqta, Peru.

The Inka Empire (1400-1532 A.D.) has been intensively studied by ethnohistorians and archaeologists, but there is comparatively little published bioarchaeological research on the empire and its subjects, particularly in the imperial heartland of Peru's Sacred Valley. Sacred Valley sites were often inhabited by permanent residents who were relocated to work in various capacities for the elite. This study presents stable isotope data for one such group of residents (N = 81) interred at Patallaqta, a planned Inka town constructed in the early decades of the empire and which engaged in extensified agricultural production to provision imperial storehouses and the capital of Cuzco. The aim of this study is to estimate subsistence and diet at Patallaqta and consider the implications of these estimates for understanding aspects of consumption and incorporation into Inka foodways. A central question is whether the production of maize for the empire at Patallaqta translated to its consumption among its residents. Carbonate and collagen isotope data from dentin, enamel, and bone indicate that at Patallaqta, diets centered on a mix of maize, some C3 grains and vegetables, terrestrial meat, and riverine fish. There was modest variation in diet across the sample, but this variation appears associated with nonlocal residential origin. These results suggest that residents at Patallaqta both produced and consumed culturally valued staples, namely maize and meat, but with notable inter-and intraindividual variation; they were therefore integrated, though with local variation, into the surplus economy of the ascendant Inka empire in both their work and their diets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]