This chapter presents an overview of the basic institutions and practices of Inka administration. It indicates the central principles and features of the Inka administrative system, as a basis for looking at the cord-records themselves. In early Colonial sources, the Inka Empire is referred to as Tawantinsuyu, which gloss as the four parts intimately bound together. The chapter then discusses state/imperial organization in Cuzco, provincial organization and local administrative organization. As the capital, Cuzco was the center of supreme power and authority in the Inka Empire. The administration within Cuzco was staffed by direct and collateral descendants of the ten to twelve Inka kings who had ruled the empire during its short history. Finally, the chapter investigates the knotted-cord records using the Khipu Database, with the support of the National Science Foundation and the capable assistance of computing consultants Carrie J. Brezine and Pavlo Kononenko, at Harvard University.

Andean region was invaded by Francisco Pizarro's troops in 1532. A major step in the scientific understanding of Andean geography came in the late twenties when the German scholar, Carl Troll, did fieldwork in Bolivia. Andean agriculture has begun to attract the attention of agronomists. Dispersed settlement patterns were a feature of Andean territoriality which Europeans noticed early. The Early Horizon, also known as the Formative in the Andes, centred on Chavin, a temple at 3,135 metres altitude in the eastern highlands; best known for its religious art. Oral tradition in the Andes agrees with archaeology that the Late Intermediate period, the centuries just before the Inka expansion, had been awqa runa. The rapid expansion of Tawantinsuyu over 4,000 kilometres from what today is Ecuador in the north to Chile and Argentina in the south implied changes in the basic and ancient dimensions of Andean organization.