Staple reciprocity
The taxation system did not entail a unidirectional flow of labor from commoners, and of its fruits to the government. There were fundamental beliefs that both karakas and kings had reciprocal obligations of hospitality and generosity, particularly with food and drink. Staple finance was critical to the symbiosis between the ruled and the rulers and allowed the latter to schedule activities within a framework of public celebrations. In civil or religious guise, fiestas provide a major release from the somber drudgery of peasant life. Past rulers sponsored such festivities to coincide with plowing, planting, harvest, canal cleaning, and other labor cycles, so that work proceeded on a voluntary rather than a coercive basis.

Toasting and libations with chicha beer were integral and ancient aspects of Andean ceremonialism and festivities. Seating, serving, swilling, and speaking order were no doubt hierarchical, as today. Status was indicated by an individual's drinking vessel: the lowly used gourd bowls, the well-to-do drank from finer containers, while gold and silver were reserved for the highest echelons. During the first millennium B.C., different forms of ceramic libation vessels became firmly established in different regions. For example the lords of Chimor toasted from 'stirrup-spout' goblets that were traditional to the north coast, while the nobility of Cuzco drank from beaker-shaped keros, vessels indigenous to the Titicaca Basin, and used by rulers of Tiwanaku a millennium earlier. As markers of status and rank libation vessels regularly accompanied people to the grave.

Wealth reciprocity
Reciprocity to the masses largely entailed food and beverage, but the elite required more. Anticipating rewards appropriate to their rank, administrators confronted government with a hierarchy of reciprocal obligations. Military troops received cloth, but officers expected better cuts.

Carefully graded by quality, textiles were the most common reward for service. But for yet higher ranks the rewards included superb ceramics, lavish libation vessels, woodwork, lapidary arts, and splendid metalwork. Thus fine arts critical to wealth finance were the end returns of an elite investment strategy that used mit'a labor to gain agricultural lands. In turn the land was taxed and the staple revenues were used to subsidize skilled artisans who produced commodities to satisfy reciprocity among the elite. This system of transforming the fruits of unskilled labor into fine durable goods was an ancient one at least as old as the emergence of the karaka class.

Arts and crafts
Reciprocity based on valued goods placed fine arts and skilled crafts in direct service of the state. Artisans and tradesmen were subsidized, and their products were geared to serve corporate ends. As a result, aesthetic canons, design motifs, and iconography were dictated by the political and religious organizations supporting the artisans, commissioning their work, and controlling its distribution, creating 'corporate styles' that were characteristic of particular polities, religions, and organizations. In modern society, national coinage and currency convey such styles, depicting political founders, past rulers, heroic figures, totemic animals, and emblems appropriate to a nation. Postage stamps and church art convey similar corporate symbolism.

In the Andes there were two levels of economic organization: the selfsufficient community or ayllu, and the imposed senorio or state economy. Likewise, there were two levels to the production of arts and crafts, and to architecture. The base level comprised the ayllu and their folk traditions. These tended to be simple, conservative, and long-lasting. Above these were the corporate styles, the canons and composition of which conformed to particular political or religious dictates. Their duration depended upon the rise and fall of the corporate bodies they served, and they changed more frequently than did the basal stratum of folk traditions.

The great art styles of the Cordillera were all corporate styles, but the nature of the organizations that underwrote them varied in terms of political, religious, and social composition. Inca corporate arts and architecture illustrate a number of basic characteristics of such styles. First, the styles emerged well after the corporations that they identify came into existence. The Inca established their ethnic identity and their homeland generations before Pachacuti decided a corporate style was in order and rebuilt Cuzco as its architectural hallmark. Second, once a corporate body was established, a corporate style could be put together rapidly, either newly created or borrowed. Third, critical to the creation of a corporate style was the amassing of artisans and specialized technicians. Transforming peasant farmers into skilled craftsmen was not easily done. In later prehistoric times complicated technical expertise generally passed from parent to child and was therefore kin-based, with artisans forming guild-like kin corporations. The lords of Chimor not only subsidized cadres of kindred artisans, but sought to monopolize the production and circulation of precious metal. Upon conquering Lambayeque, metallurgists from the region were resettled at Chan Chan. In turn, when Tahuantinsuyu subjugated Chimor, tens of thousands of craftsmen at Chan Chan were moved to the environs of Cuzco to serve new rulers. To the degree that fine arts constituted the coin of the realm, Chan Chan was thus stripped of the mint it needed to finance revolt.

Fourth, corporate styles generally spread as far as their supporting reciprocity systems reached. But reciprocity was not uniform. For example, the Inca exploited Ecuador more intensively than central Chile, and elements of Tahuantinsuyu's corporate style are more numerous and sharply defined in its northern holdings than in its southern. Fifth, stylistic unity at the corporate level had little relation to ethnic homogeneity or cultural cohesion at the folk level. The lords of Cuzco imposed widespread artistic cohesion over much of their empire, but this did not reflect a fundamental rise in ethnic unity among the diverse populations ofthe realm. Sixth and finally, change in corporate style and replacement of one by another did not necessarily reflect population change or the replacement of one ethnic group or cultural group by another. Conservative folk styles were more sensitive indicators of population dynamics, but these traditions also changed without entailing ethnic change.

The most dramatic expressions of Inca corporate style are new cities, towns, and installations erected where none had previously existed. Tumi Bamba, Wayna Capac's incipient Ecuadorian capital, closely cloned the imperial masonry and architectural styles of Cuzco, as did other new settlements founded along the great highway system radiating out of Cuzco. Inca imperial buildings were power emblems intended to impress, if not intimidate, and were generally executed in close accordance with Cuzco's canons. The urban administrative centers of Huanuco Pampa, and Hatun Xarza are well- studied new Inca cities, whose fine masonry and buildings, elite pottery and status goods conform to Cuzco patterns. Yet, close scrutiny of these materials indicates that most were produced by local personnel working under state overseers rather than imported from the capital.

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