Pre-columbian art, architecture, and history: Andean: Inca

The concepts related to the highest-status cloth of the Inkas, their qumpi (see The Best of the Best), are undergirded by other important Quechua concepts: ayni, tinku, ukhu, and q’iwa. Indeed, the areas of the ancient Perú gallery in the Threads of Time exhibition are organized around these concepts. A fifth concept, ushay or supreme balance, is discussed here as a central Quechua value found throughout Andean life and in textiles in particular; however, it is so pervasive and broad an ideal that no one group of pieces could represent it.

Floyd, Emily C. "Tears of the Sun: The Naturalistic and Anthropomorphic in Inca Metalwork." Medium Study. In Conversations: An Online Journal of the Center for the Study of Material and Visual Cultures of Religion (2016). doi:10.223322/con.mst.2016.2

This special symposium celebrates the opening of the National Museum of the !merican Indian’s landmark exhibition, The Great Inka Road: Engineering an Empire, with a fascinating look at the material, political, economic, and religious structures that integrated more than one hundred Native nations and millions of people in the powerful Andean Empire known as the Tawantinsuyu. Noted Inka scholars, anthropologists, and engineers will discuss how the Inka superbly organized the Andean world of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, using the Qhapaq Ñan. This symposium is a good summary of current research on one aspect of the Inka.