This article investigates the utility of a chaîne opératoire approach centered on technologies of ceramic production for identifying Inca mitmaqkuna archaeologically. Although early documents suggest that the Inca program of resettlement (mitmaq) was massive in scale, archaeologists have had minimal success in identifying such relocated populations. Here we test a novel approach that focuses on technologies of production and associated tool assemblages used within different communities of practice. Previous studies indicate that the ethnic Cañari of southern Ecuador used a distinctive method of pottery manufacture involving a specific chaîne opératoire and a unique set of production-related tools. According to early sources, the Inca deported Cañari peoples to various sectors of Tawantinsuyu. In this article, we investigate the contemporary manufacturing style of ceramics from the Ancash region of north-central Peru—an area where Cañari mitmaqkuna were purportedly resettled—to determine whether distinctive communities of practice potentially representing relocated communities might be visible. The results of this study suggest that it is possible to identify connections among distant communities of practice via a focus on craft production technologies that, in certain historical contexts, may be construed as evidence for the presence of resettled populations.

The social complexities underlying imperial control are manifest in the material culture of everyday life encountered at archaeological sites. The Yavi-Chicha pottery style of the south-central Andes illustrates how local identities continued to be expressed in practices of pottery manufacture during the process of Inka expansion. The Yavi-Chicha style itself masks a number of distinct production processes that can be traced through petrographic analysis and that relate to the different communities by whom it was produced and consumed. The dispersion of pottery fabric types in this region may partly be attributable to the Inka practice of mitmaqkuna, the displacement and relocation of entire subject populations.