An allyu is the name of the the kinship-based system created as a social and political organization by the Inca people, the empire of western South America during the 15th and 16th centuries AD.
At the time of the Spanish conquest, the society was broken into separate allyu. Each allyu were more or less clan groups, descended from the same (perhaps fictitious) ancestor. The allyu shared a set of resources, including land, building, water access, material goods, information, rituals and ceremonies. Each allyu had a specific ancestor, and the closer a person could claim relationship to the ancestor, the higher status that person was.
Allyu and Ancestor Worship
The fictive ancestor for each allyu was the ancestor's mummy, preserved for untold centuries in special sepulchers. The mummy was brought out for festival days, and taken care of, given presents and asked for favors.
Scholars have no doubt that the allyu system long predates the Spanish conquest, and perhaps could be traced in the older civilizations of South America, including Tiwanaku and the Wari state, and seen at sites such as Pikillacta. Some have surmised that one of the pieces of information stored in the communication system of knotted and dyed strings called the quipu was information about the social allyus.
Sources
This glossary entry is part of the About.com Guide to the Inca Empire, and part of the Dictionary of Archaeology.
William H. Isbell. 1997. Mummies and Mortuary Monuments: A postprocessual prehistory of Central Andean social organization. University of Texas Press, Austin.
