Housing and Living Conditions in the Inca World

An Inca-period home combined shelter with the work of maintaining a household. Its residents prepared food, kept supplies, cared for children and made or repaired objects. The arrangement of rooms and outdoor spaces depended on regional building traditions, available materials and the resources of the people who lived there.

On this page5 sections

Walls, roofs and entrances

In the Cusco region, rectangular houses could have stone walls joined with earth mortar or sun-dried mud brick (adobe) above a stone base. Timber supported thatched roofs. Other highland communities used round houses, so neither the rectangular plan nor the masonry of elite Cusco buildings describes every home in the empire.

Doorways provided the principal access to many rooms. Colonial descriptions mention small windows and door coverings of cloth or hide. A room with few openings offered shelter, but cooking smoke could accumulate inside. These accounts concern particular building practices; they do not establish identical ventilation in every coastal and highland dwelling.

Courtyard groups

Several houses could stand around an enclosed courtyard in an arrangement commonly called a kancha. A surrounding wall and limited entrances distinguished the group from the route outside. The courtyard provided space between separate rooms and helped connect household activities with neighboring buildings.

Such groups have often been interpreted as accommodation for extended households. The plan alone, however, cannot establish the kinship of every occupant. Similar arrangements could also serve elite or institutional uses. Household interpretation depends on the location and associated objects as well as the walls.

Preparing and keeping food

Cooking required vessels that could withstand heat, fuel and a place to tend the fire. Colonial accounts describe clay cooking installations, earthenware pots and wooden utensils. Grinding stones reduced maize or other ingredients, while jars held liquids and provisions.

Stored food connected the interior with work outside. Drying and preserving crops or meat extended their usefulness, but supplies also needed containers and protection from dampness or animals. Domestic storage served household meals; the much larger collections in imperial storehouses had different administrative purposes.

Resting and sitting

Textiles and mats furnished spaces that would otherwise have been bare floors. Blankets provided warmth, particularly in highland conditions. The household’s supply of cloth depended on its production and resources, and not every surviving fine textile represents an ordinary sleeping cover.

Elite seating could include a wooden seat called a tiyana. Its significance came partly from the person entitled to use it and the setting in which others approached that person. A noble seat or an elaborate metal vessel therefore belongs to a different household setting from the tools and containers of a farming family.

Work beyond the room

Much household work required light and space. Courtyards and areas near the doorway could accommodate spinning, the handling of food or the repair of equipment. Fields, pasture and water sources extended the practical household beyond its walls.

The home was consequently one part of a working landscape. Its residents returned with crops, fuel and fibers, transformed those materials and prepared for the next tasks. Archaeological rooms and colonial descriptions illuminate parts of that routine without supplying a single fixed floor plan for daily life across the empire.

For the wider setting, see Daily Life in the Inca World.