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The productive activities |
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The population and the labor force |
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Those who lived in Machu Picchu were not, it seems, local inhabitants, but rather to the contrary, people who came from different places. Furthermore, according to what the human remains encountered in the tombs found at the site reveal, there were a high percentage of women. Of course, this fact coincides with what the sixteenth century documents recount, in which the descendants from lands that had been the Inca kings' indicated that in the Urubamba valley - for instance, in the lands of Wayna Qhapaq - thousands of mamacunas, which is to say women, were established. They were dedicated to agricultural tasks and also, certainly, to manufacturing (textiles, ceramics or other handcrafts), in this way serving to maintain the Inca, or rather "his house" and his panaca. In the documents about Picchu it says clearly that the lands of this region were in service to the cult of the dead, to the |
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memory of Pachacutec Inca, who was their owner. These documents say also that the majority of the women and farm workers on the imperial haciendas were mitmaqcuna; that is to say, foreigners.
Everything mentioned in the chroniclers seems to be corroborated by the finds in the cemeteries of Machu Picchu, where - if we follow George F. Eaton, who studied them - 164 bodies were found, 109 of which were women's and only 26 were men's (the rest were of five children under five years old and 24 in which the sex was not determined). Without doubt there could have been errors in the specification of sex. Since the analysis had to be made mainly on the basis of qualities (form, robustness, size) of the skull especially because of the conditions of conservation of the osseous remains. But Eaton's data does not contradict, rather, on the contrary, ratifies what the documentary sources propose, although the percentage of men could be higher.
Everything indicates that the population did not include warriors. A notable aspect is that none of the skulls present trepanation, a typical feature of men, presumably warriors, as Bingham found in his excavations in Urubamba and Pampaqawana. In these, the proportion of trepanations was very high. According to what we know about Pachakutec, he must have had a trepanation because of a wound he suffered in the war with the Chancas, which was appreciated in his mummy, as those who saw it emphasize. The type of people buried in Machu Picchu shows that it is rather a question of common women and men, perhaps peasants associated with the work on the agricultural terraces, to taking care of the terracing and other services.
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pag. 1 - 2
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