A bioarchaeological study of chosen women’s labor, identity, and health in the Inka ceremonial center of Saqsaywaman

Chosen Women and Inka Statecraft illuminates the intersections between foodways, diet, gender, and power in the expansive Inka ceremonial complex of Saqsaywaman, Peru. Bioarchaeologist Bethany L. Turner weaves together geochemical and osteological research techniques to create osteobiographies for people who were likely special servants to the Inka royalty in the heart of the vast empire. These skeletal individuals, interred in a special cemetery atop Saqsaywaman, date to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and were previously excavated by Peruvian archaeologists.

By weaving her own data together with existing archaeological, osteological, and ethnohistoric studies of Saqsaywaman, Turner opens a rare window into everyday life among the aqllakuna, “chosen women” who grew, prepared, and served food and drink to the Inka elite. She argues that the embodied experiences of these individuals underscore the ways in which they were “made performative artifacts of Inka statecraft.” This statecraft was based on reciprocity, “to feed and be fed,” and the lived experiences of the people who lived under it left telltale signs in their bones and teeth. An important finding is that the aqllakuna, who prepared lavish feasts and heroic quantities of the finest maize beer, chicha, were likely not consuming it. However, they showed poor dental health as a result of chewing the maize to process it during brewing. This significant oral decay likely made them susceptible to chronic diseases and may have shortened their lives. Turner also asserts that the aqllakuna at Saqsaywaman included individuals whose skeletons were estimated to have been male but who likely performed feminine roles, reflecting the fluidity of gendered duality in indigenous Andean cosmology. In Chosen Women and Inka Statecraft, archaeologists, anthropologists, Andeanists, and food scholars will find new ways to consider life in the Inka past.

Bethany L. Turner is professor of anthropology at Georgia State University. She is the coauthor of Diet, Nutrition, and Foodways on the North Coast of Peru: Bioarchaeological Perspectives on Adaptive Transitions.