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One of the classics of Andean history. Best for specialists.
Ann Wightman's study of the bishopric of Cuzco argues, with a generation of other scholars of the Andes like Stern, Spalding and Sempat, that ethnic divisions within Spanish indigenous communities would slowly be replaced bysocial class-based relations to land and the Spanish economic system.Asolid piece of history; broad and mostly engaging. Ideal for students ofcolonial Latin American history, the Andes, or historians interested inindigenous identity. ... Read more

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Renowned for their monumental architecture and rich visual culture, the Moche inhabited the north coast of Peru during the Early Intermediate Period (AD 100-800). Archaeological discoveries over the past century and the dissemination of Moche artifacts to museums around the world have given rise to a widespread and continually increasing fascination with this complex culture, which expressed its beliefs about the human and supernatural worlds through finely crafted ceramic and metal objects of striking realism and visual sophistication. In this standard-setting work, an international, multidisciplinary team of scholars who are at the forefront of Moche research present a state-of-the-art overview of Moche culture. The contributors address various issues of Moche society, religion, and material culture based on multiple lines of evidence and methodologies, including iconographic studies, archaeological investigations, and forensic analyses. Some of the articles present the results of long-term studies of major issues in Moche iconography, while others focus on more specifically defined topics such as site studies, the influence of El Niño/Southern Oscillation on Moche society, the nature of Moche warfare and sacrifice, and the role of Moche visual culture in decoding social and political frameworks. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Broad and Deep
This book is a collection of topflight academic papers from a conference on Moche civilization held at the University of Texas, in 2003. It includes a wealth of thoughtful contributions by all the main international heavyweights in the field.Bibliographies direct you to other sources, including URLs.Profusely illustrated with hundreds of photos and drawings, this is an outstanding contribution to pre-Columbian history.Although most of the graphics are in black and white, they clearly illustrate the authors' points. Some intriguing objects, such the complicated ideographic "murals" in bas relief uncovered at the 'Moon Sanctuary' and the 'Old Cao Sanctuary,' receive short shrift.The few, delicious, color plates are carefully chosen. This collection showsarchaeologists mobilizing analytical assistance from other sciences such as osteology, metallurgy, genetics, botany, and zoology to broaden our understanding by tempering their intuitions, derived from the fineline drawings and the architecture, with physical facts of many different orders. One example, from a paper by Donna Mcclelland, concerns the "ulluchu" fruits whose images typically attend scenes of blood sacrifice and warfare. These fruits, whose name originated with Peruvian businessman Rafael Larco Hoyle,seem large in the drawings but are actually quite small, less than three centimeters long. Only a few ulluchu have ever been recovered from Moche sites and identifying them has stumped botanists.In fact,assertions the Swedishethnologist Gordon Wassen and his co-authors made in the 1980s that classify the ulluchu as a relative of the papaya and that claim it keeps blood from coagulating, as the papain in papaya might, are almost certainly wrong. Other themes treated include warfare, interethnic relations, participants in the Sacrifice Ceremony, modalities of human dismemberment, the giant fighters, the personages in the Coca Ceremony under the Milky Way, and the local effects of those global climate forces, El Nino and La Nina.
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This is a fascinating social anthropological study of the migration of Peruvian highlanders to the jungle east of the Andes and to urban coastal areas in and around Lima. Departing from traditional approaches, Sarah Skar emphasizes the individual problems within the new communities. Working within this context, she goes on to analyze significant themes for this group of migrants, namely the traditional conceptions of separations and connectedness. ... Read more

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The people of Taquile Island on the Peruvian side of beautiful Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the Americas, are renowned for the hand-woven textiles that they both wear and sell to outsiders. One thousand seven hundred Quechua-speaking peasant farmers, who depend on potatoes and the fish from the lake, host the forty thousand tourists who visit their island each year. Yet only twenty-five years ago, few tourists had even heard of Taquile. In Weaving a Future: Tourism, Cloth, and Culture on an Andean Island, Elayne Zorn documents the remarkable transformation of the isolated rocky island into a community-controlled enterprise that now provides a model for indigenous communities worldwide.

Over the course of three decades and nearly two years living on Taquile Island, Zorn, who is trained in both the arts and anthropology, learned to weave from Taquilean women. She also learned how gender structures both the traditional lifestyles and the changes that tourism and transnationalism have brought. In her comprehensive and accessible study, she reveals how Taquileans used their isolation, landownership, and communal organizations to negotiate the pitfalls of globalization and modernization and even to benefit from tourism. This multi-sited ethnography set in Peru, Washington, D.C., and New York City shows why and how cloth remains central to Andean society and how the marketing of textiles provided the experience and money for Taquilean initiatives in controlling tourism.

The first book about tourism in South America that centers on traditional arts as well as community control, Weaving a Future will be of great interest to anthropologists and scholars and practitioners of tourism, grassroots development, and the fiber arts. ... Read more

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In The Shape of Inca History, Susan Niles considers theways in which the Inca concept of history informed their narratives,rituals, and architecture. Using sixteenth-century chronicles of Incaculture, legal documents from the first generation of conquest, andfield investigations of architectural remains, she strategicallyexplores the interplay of oral and written histories with thearchitectural record and provides a new and exciting understanding ofthe lives of the royal families on the eve of conquest.

Niles focuses on the life of Huayna Capac, the Inca king whoruled at the time of the first European incursions on the Andeancoast. Because he died just a few years before the Spaniardsoverturned the Inca world, eyewitness accounts of his deeds asrecorded by the invaders can be used to separate fact frompropaganda. The rich documentary sources telling of his life includeextraordinarily detailed legal records that inventory lands on hisestate in the Yucay Valley. These sources provide a basis--unique inthe Andes--for reconstructing the social and physical plan of theestate and for dating its construction exactly.

Huayna Capac's country palace shows a design different fromthat devised by his ancestors. Niles argues that the radical stylisticand technical innovations documented in the buildings themselves canbe understood by referring to the turbulent political atmosphereprevalent at the time of his accession. Illustrated with numerousphotographs and reconstruction drawings, The Shape of Inca Historybreaks new ground by proposing that Inca royal style was dynamic andthat the design of an Inca building can best be interpreted by itshistorical context. In this way it is possible to recreate thedevelopment of Inca architectural style over time. ... Read more

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This broadly gauged, synthetic study examines how the Spanish invasion of the Inca Empire (called Tawintinsuyu) in 1532 brought dramatic and irreversible transformations in traditional Andean modes of production, technology, politics, religion, culture, and social hierarchies. At the same time, Professor Andrien explains how the indigenous peoples merged these changes with their own political, socioeconomic, and religious traditions. In this way European and indigenous life ways became intertwined, producing a new and constantly evolving hybrid colonial order in the Andes.

After beginning with a study of Tawintinsuyu on the eve of the Spanish invasion, Andrien then presents the salient topics in Andean colonial history: the emergence of the colonial state; the colonial socioeconomic order; indigenous culture and society; Spanish attempts to impose Roman Catholic orthodoxy; and Andean resistance, rebellion, and political consciousness. By drawing on his own research and the contributions from scholars in many disciplines, Kenneth J. Andrien offers a masterful interpretation of Andean colonial history, one of the most dynamic and creative fields in Latin American studies.

"This is a clearly written, comprehensive, and well-balanced account. . . particularly in discussions of the often vexed and central question of Spanish versus Native American issues."--Peter J. Bakewell, Edmund and Louise Kahn Professor of History, Southern Methodist University ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

a must!
This book let me say has it all! A really great and easy to read history-type book on the incan civilization and colonial society in the Andes. It's very well written and includes so many interesting and no so obvious details. It's easy to understand and a fast read. The only complaint I have is that it's a bit repetitive throughout the chapters, but for students, that's not a bad thing! ... Read more

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The Cuzco Valley of Peru was both the sacred and the political center of the largest state in the prehistoric Americas—the Inca Empire. From the city of Cuzco, the Incas ruled at least eight million people in a realm that stretched from modern-day Colombia to Chile. Yet, despite its great importance in the cultural development of the Americas, the Cuzco Valley has only recently received the same kind of systematic archaeological survey long since conducted at other New World centers of civilization.

Drawing on the results of the Cuzco Valley Archaeological Project that Brian Bauer directed from 1994 to 2000, this landmark book undertakes the first general overview of the prehistory of the Cuzco region from the arrival of the first hunter-gatherers (ca. 7000 B.C.) to the fall of the Inca Empire in A.D. 1532. Combining archaeological survey and excavation data with historical records, the book addresses both the specific patterns of settlement in the Cuzco Valley and the larger processes of cultural development. With its wealth of new information, this book will become the baseline for research on the Inca and the Cuzco Valley for years to come.

Customer Reviews (3)

The best prep for a Peru vacation
I truely wish I had read this book before I traveled to Cusco.I think I owuld have appreciated some of the things I saw more.This is THE history of Cusco, with particular emphasis on what the city used to look like, where buildings were, etc.

Lu Giddings
I read this book after my first trip to Cuzco. I deeply regret that I did not read it prior to my trip. While some will undoubtedly find it a bit technical at times, it is concise, easily readable, highly informative, and often fascinating. Chapter 12, "The Mummies of the Royal Inca," was one of the most interesting bits of reading I've enjoyed in some time. I very highly recommend this book.

Heading to the Navel....
This is a must read if you are going down to Cuzco. Good up to date history of the area. ... Read more

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Stardog, an inveterate explorer of indigenous cultures, is a rather ignoble, self-serving, and yet endearing dog.In this book she travels to Peru and settles, for a year, with a Quechua family in an Andean village.Through a humorous, engaging mixture of story and information, children will learn, along with Stardog, about the everyday lifestyle, traditions and history of the Quechua people, as well as about the geography and climate of Peru. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 1756 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.The Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450 provides students and researchers with a much-needed, comprehensive resource on the subject of colonialism and expansion. From a global perspective, the set traces many facets of colonial growth and imperialism, including Europe's overseas expansion into the Americas, Asia, Africa and the Pacific, beginning in the 15th century; the collapse of empires; race relations in decolonized regions; and current examples of continuing dependence by much of the developing world on Western nations (often former colonial powers themselves). In addition, a number of articles address the ideology and theories behind colonialism and imperialism, as well as the major and controversial issues at the core of the debate on colonialism and its consequences, such as Apartheid in South Africa, the Maji Mahi Revolt, and the Minas Gerais Conspiracy. ... Read more

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War of Shadows is the haunting story of a failed uprising in the Peruvian Amazon--told largely by people who were there. Late in 1965, Asháninka Indians, members of one of the Amazon's largest native tribes, joined forces with Marxist revolutionaries who had opened a guerrilla front in Asháninka territory. They fought, and were crushed by, the overwhelming military force of the Peruvian government. Why did the Indians believe this alliance would deliver them from poverty and the depredations of colonization on their rainforest home? With rare insight and eloquence, anthropologists Brown and Fernández write about an Amazonian people whose contacts with outsiders have repeatedly begun in hope and ended in tragedy.
The players in this dramatic confrontation included militants of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), the U. S. Embassy, the Peruvian military, a "renegade" American settler, and the Asháninka Indians themselves. Using press reports and archival sources as well as oral histories, the authors weave a vivid tapestry of narratives and counternarratives that challenges the official history of the guerrilla struggle. Central to the story is the Asháninkas' persistent hope that a messiah would lead them to freedom, a belief with roots in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century jungle rebellions and religious movements. ... Read more

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“It is difficult to convey the wealth of information and ideas in this remarkable book. It is—and may remain for a long time—the best work in any language on the process of change in Andean society under Inca and Spanish rule.”—Hispanic American Historical Review
“A study of such high quality, realized on so many levels, is indeed a rarity today.”—Latin America in Books ... Read more

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"A superb work of narrative history" - Antonia Fraser. On 25 September 1513, a force of weary Spanish explorers cut through the forests of Panama and were confronted with an ocean: the Mar del Sur, or the Pacific Ocean. Six years later, the Spaniards had established the town of Panama as a base from which to explore and exploit this unknown sea. It was the threshold of a vast expansion. From the first small band of Spanish adventurers to enter the mighty Inca empire, to the execution of the last Inca forty years later, "The Conquest of the Incas" is a story of bloodshed, infamy, rebellion and extermination, told as convincingly as if it happened yesterday. "It is a delight to praise a book of this quality which combines careful scholarship with sparkling narrative skill" - Philip Magnus, "Sunday Times". "A superbly vivid history" - "The Times". ... Read more

Customer Reviews (17)

Recommended Reading for the Contemplative Traveler
I am planning a trip to Cuzco and Macchu Picchu Peru this July and find this book very informative, well documented, but also very readable.It was recommended reading by the company sponsoring my trip.Since I will be hiking the Inca trail for part of my tour, this seemed a good way to capture the history that will be surrounding me.The book provides detailed maps, glossory of Peruvian words and footnotes on historical events...all very good.The book maps' print is very tiny...so you may want to purchase a much larger contemporary and/or historical map of Peru.Pronunciation hints of the unfathomable Inca names would help too.

Inca Civilization info
Before leaving for our Peru/Ecuador trip, I wanted to review/learn more about the Incas than I can remember from school days. It is a well written book and does not feel as though you are in a history class. Good reading, but long.

Great, grim, gripping work of history
The fall of the Inca empire is one of the most remarkable stories in history, with great characters, amazing deeds, and epic cruelty and splendor. It was also a fantastically important event, because the enormous wealth Spain found in the Andes allowed it to create the first truly global empire, and ultimately provided Europe with the funds that allowed it to dominate the world.

In the 19th century, William Prescott wrote a marvelously stentorian account of the conquest that stood unrivaled for a century. Only in 1970 did Hemming, who subsequently became one of this century's great explorers and activists, produce a history of the conquest that took into account many decades of new knowledge. Immensely readable, thoroughly documented, richly detailed, this book became the new standard -- emphasizing, as Prescott did not, that the conquest was not a matter of simply seizing the emperor, and that the Spaniards were battling determined Inca armies for more than 40 years.

In addition to being the long-time director of the Royal Geographic Society, Hemming wrote a 3-volume history of the Indians of Amazonia and co-founded Survival International, which campaigns for the rights of indigenous peoples. As one would expect, the Conquest of the Incas gives as much attention to indigenous people as Europeans and focuses on Spanish treatment of Indians. He is severely critical, but always fair. This book should be read -- and, I believe, will be enjoyed -- by almost anyone who travels to Latin America, who would like to find out more about the founding events of the modern world, or simply likes to read good history.

One suggestion: Hemming thoroughly revised and updated this book a few years ago, improving an already remarkable book. Unfortunately, his US publishers have not released the updated edition -- the version on this web page is the original, from the early 1970s. If you have the time, you should buy the updated edition from Amazon's British website:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Conquest-Incas-John-Hemming/dp/033042730X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1250003136&sr=1-1

Still one of the best analyses of the Conquest of Peru
A must read for anybody interested in one of the most amazing events in world history. I recommend reading the book before and (especially) after traveling to Peru.The key battles and turning points of the conquest are analyzed from both the viewpoint of the Spaniards and the Incas.

The best history of the Incas
The Incas and the conquest of Peru are two of the most interesting stories in latin American history.This book captures the whole of that story and in wonderful detail relates the invasion of Pizzaro and the fall of the Incas. From Manco Inca to Tuti Cosi the Inca rebellions raged against Spanish occupation and eventually resulted in the free Inca state of Villacamba.In the end this state was doomed to fall to Spanish greed but the attempts at the Incas to preserve sovereignty is impressive.The writing style is excellent and the book is a very quick read.If you want to get a start on learning about the Inca's there is not a better book out there. If you are starting a study of South America as a whole this is an essential addition to that library.Highly recommend. ... Read more

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The awe-inspiring history, legends, myths, and culture of the Inca empire and the Inca empire and the peoples of the sun. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Beautiful but no Machu Picchu
This is a beautiful book and well worth the money, but I was inspired to research more about the Incas after a visit to Machu Picchu in Peru.The large book barely dedicates 2 pages to the site which was a little disappointing.

It does go into amazing detail about the Incas as a race and I highly recommend it to anyone preparing to visit South America.

Great photos and narration about Peru's past
Major cultures covered are Chavin, Nazca, Moche, Chimu, Wari, Tiwanaku, Paracas, Pukara and of course, the Incas. Customs, rituals, artifacts, history, geography and buzzwords are all here. At times material is repeated. Also, sequencing of chapters is not clear. On the whole,though, a delightful read. And the book is encyclopedic too.

Inca Encyclopedia
Was looking for an easy to read overview of the Inca culture.This was perfect.I was preparing for a trip to Peru and loved the easy to read information and pictures.Also enjoyed reading it again when I returned home.Great coffee table book! ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (4)

Fantastic catalogue, average main text
This book is a must for anyone specifically interested in the detail of Incan culture, but perhaps is not for those wanting a more general guide to Machu Picchu itself.

I found the main text of interest from an academic point of view but not especially earth shattering. The photographs of the site were fairly average, though those reproduced from Binghams early investigations were of interest from an historical point of view to see how much restoration had taken place - in many cases suprisingly little.

It is certainly not a guide book to the site.

Those wanting a well illustrated guide book to Machu Picchu would be better directed buying 'The Machu Picchu Guidebook: A Self-Guided Tour by Ruth M. Wright, Alfredo Valencia Zegarra, and Alfredo Valencia Zegarra' or reading the appropriate chapter in John Hemmings 'Monuments of the Inca'.

Where this volume really does come into its own in my opinion is in its catalogue. This is largely of artifacts collected by the Bingham expeditions to Machu Picchu, supplemented by other pieces from other sites. The photography is excellent, as are the descriptions. Together they provide the reader with a rich appreciation of Incan world, especially that at Machu Picchu. It is very rare to find such a focused study of Incan material so this volume is a very valuable and unusual addition, to anyone seriously interested in the Inca for that reason alone it is a 'must-buy'.

Regards, Dave Essery www.ancientdave.com

Definitely Underwhelmed
Having recently visited Machu Picchu via the Inca Trail I wanted to obtain a first-rate "coffee-table" style book to commemorate my experience and to render handy various names for various sights I saw along the way.When in Peru I saw several marvelous, fat volumes which contained all the information, photgraphs and poetic insight about the awesome Inca people and their accomplishments that I would ever desire. I figured I could score one off of Amazon once I returned home.

Alas, I saw none of those titles listed as currently available. This book appeared to be the best available, but it falls way short of those that I had seen in Peruvian bookstores.Slender, with only a handful of small color photos, and several older, blurry photos taken by or of Bingham (all of which I've seen countless times before), this book was really close to being sent right back to Amazon.However, there is a section in the back which contains some nice photos of various Inca artifacts which (coupled with the hassle of sending stuff back) inspired me to keep the book.I learned the sharp, bronze item I bought in Cusco is called a "knife."(I'd been incorrectly calling it a "ceremonial knife-like thing with which I think they sacrificed alpacas.")

Anyway, don't be too impressed by the publisher, "Yale Press." The name perhaps sounds compelling, but scrounge around at your local used bookstore and I'm sure you can do way better for your library.

Inca Sacrifices and The Reasons Given.
Ten years ago, I read a book about the child sacrifices the Inca civilization carried out at Machu Picchu.It has stuck with me all these years and, when I saw the Nova program, "Ice Mummies" all of that disturbing feeling came back.How could they do that to the children?!

The first known Incas, a noble family who ruled Cuzco and a small surrounding high Andean agricultural state, date back to A.D. 1200. The growth of the empire beyond Cuzco began in 1438 when emperor Pachacuti, which means "he who transforms the earth," strode forth from Cuzco to conquer the world around himand bring the surrounding cultures into the Inca fold. Consolidation of a large empire was to become a continuing struggle for the ruling Inca as their influence reached across many advanced cultures of the Andes. The name "Inca" refers to the first royal family and the 40,000 descendants who ruled the empire. For centuries historians have used the term in reference to the nearly 100 nations conquered by the Inca. The Inca state's domain was unprecedented, its rule resulting in a universal language - a form of Quechua, a religion worshipping the sun, and a 14,000 mile-long road system criss-crossing high Andean mountain passes and linking the rulers with the ruled.

What remains of the Inca legacy is limited, as the conquistadors plundered what they could of Inca treasures and in so doing, dismantled the many structures painstakingly built by Inca craftsmen to house the precious metals. Remarkably, a last bastion of the Inca empire remained unknown to the Spanish conquerors and was not found until explorer Hiram Bingham discovered it in 1911. He had found Machu Picchu, a citadel atop a mountainous jungle along the Urubamba River in Peru. Grand steps and terraces with fountains, lodgings, and shrines flank the jungle-clad pinnacle peaks surrounding the site. It was a place of worship to the sun god, the greatest deity in the Inca pantheon.

Mummies-named after the bitumen tar, mum, used to coat the linen winding strips around them-have long held an almost magical fascination. The world was titillated by Egypt's elaborate cult of death and by the extreme care devoted to preserving bodies for eternity. It was not uncommon in the 1800s to pick up a box of "mummy pills" made of ground, compressed mummies; they were thought to impart some measure of the eternal. The mummy of a pharaoh's son stood on the bar of a venerable men's club in Boston until the late 1960s, when he was returned to his homeland.

We have come to understand "mummy" as meaning a remarkably preserved body, a corpse that has withstood decay and putrefaction. By design or accident, the corpse's dissolution has been arrested, the effects of time slowed, and this human form, with its trappings and ornaments and clothing, becomes the physical representation of another time. A time machine bearing both gifts of knowledge, and prickly questions as to how best to handle the remains.

Similar kinds of questions hold sway whenever a mummy is unearthed. Decay and controversy attended the removal and study of Inca children, even the one found dressed as a commoner.The girls were killed by a skull fracture, being hit in the head. The more recent the remains, the more controversial they are likely to be. Witness the contentious debate in the United States over the bones of Native Americans, both those uncovered in archeological sites and those already housed in museums. Many people would argue that the dead, whether recent or thousands of years old, should be left to rest in peace, undisturbed.

That would be so if it were a proper burial, but there are those who would destroy the mummified remains to get the Inca treasure trove left with the dead.

Impressive academic achievement, flawed in some conclusions
This book is a companion volume to the largest exhibition of Inca artifacts in the US.A complete overhaul of previous scientific investigations was done using the most modern equipment and techniques of contemporary archaeology.Although it builds on the work of Hiram Bingham, some of Bingham's conclusions were wrong, and are corrected here.The quality of the book itself, which includes many color photographs including a catalogue of all the pieces in the exhibit, is first-rate.Those new to Machu Picchu and the Inca, or those with an in-depth knowledge of the subject will find something of value in this book.I found the chapter on the contemporary significance of Machu Picchu to be particularly interesting.

However, the authors describe Machu Picchu as a 'summer palace', likening it to Camp David.Anyone who has been there and/or seriously investigated the spiritual practices of the Inca and the the wide-ranging impact of those practices (even to the present day), will understand that this was a place of the highest spirituality, not a place of recreation for the royalty. ... Read more

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The great empire of the Incas at its height encompassed an area of western South America comparable in size to the Roman Empire in Europe. This book describes and explains its extraordinary progress from a small Andean society in southern Peru to its rapid demise little more than a century later at the hands of the Spanish conquerors.

The Incas provides the first book to fully synthesize history and archeology in an exploration of the entire empire from Chile to Ecuador. Drawing from commentaries and research by hundreds of chroniclers, explorers, and scholars, the author explains how the Incas drew from millennia of cultural developments to mould a diverse land into a dynamic, powerful, and yet fragile polity. From this integrated perspective, The Incas profoundly rethinks the nature of imperial formation, ideology, and social, economic, and political relations in Inca society.

Illustrated with numerous maps and photographs, this scholarly yet accessible book should become the new standard account of the most impressive of the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Richly Detailed and Readable Insights Into the Lives of The Incas
The Incas is a very detailed and enlightening view into the world of the Incas. The book is well researched and and appropriate for anyone looking to go beyond the tales of Machu Picchu and the Spanish Conquest.

D'Altroy uses a wealth of resources to detail the lives and existence of the Incas - day-to-day living, military and family structures, economy, etc.

The writing is comfortable enough for even the non-academic.

Highly recommended.

Not bedtime reading...
Eager to learn more about the Incas, I found out the hard way that this book is not for the casual enthusiast. If you are working on graduate studies on the Incas, yes, this might be a useful book. If you are traveling to Peru and/or simply interested in learning about the Incas, I'd avoid this book.

The Incas
I have a great interest in the Inca tribes and wished to find out more about them. It was very good study material for my studies.

Excellent source for all the information you need on the Incas
I'm preparing to travel to Peru in a month so i bought this book to get myself aquainted with the Incas and the book didnt dissapoint me.The authors do a very good job in presenting the Incas in a very interesting manner using terms that were easy to follow and understand.The part of the book that deals with their cult of the dead was very interesting and informative.Also it is very well explained how the Incas governed themselves and how do they managed to form a very impressive empire despite the fact that it was formed by a lot of different tribes and peoples from the Andean Plateau.This book is a must for anyone who wants to understand and, very important,to enjoy reading about such an amazing culture.

The most complete source about the Incas
This book provides all the information needed to understand many aspects of the Inca empire. Comparing recent archaeological findings with Spanish cronicles and with many Inca narratives about their lifestyle, Terence D'altroy offers a scientific point of view about this magnificent realm. The Incas constitute a major guide that must be readed before traveling to Peru.
... Read more

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This second edition of Catherine J. Allen's distinctive ethnography of the Quechua-speaking people of the Andes brings their story into the present. She has added an extensive afterword based on her visits to Sonqo in 1995 and 2000, and has updated and revised parts of the original text. The book focuses on the very real problem of cultural continuity in a changing world, and Allen finds that the hold life has in 2002 is not the same as it was in 1985. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The best available book on Q'ero
This is a wonderful book written by an anthropologist who spent several years in an isolated Andean ayllu (community) located a good number of miles from the provincial center of Colquepata. The attraction of this book is that, unlike most authors responsible for the ever proliferating literature on Andean peoples and their practices, Allen actually lived with the Indians, participated in their ceremonies, potato planting, festivals and travels. The book provides priceless descriptions of the labor divisions between men, women and children and of the interactions between the runa (i.e.,Qechua for "people") themselves, between the runa and the city-dwelling mestizos and, perhaps most poignantly, between the people and the land.The land for the Andean peasant is a living breathing organism that needs to be loved, feared and placated with gifts.Each and every horizon marker has a personality, every hill possesses power and there are spirit beings inhabiting different "power spots" from the time immemorial.The interactions between the people, the ancestors, the spirits and the land are part of the reality that needs to be reinforced every single day through little rituals, such as greeting the sun as one steps out of the door early in the morning.

Coca represented here part of the glue that held everything together. The rituals that underlie coca chewing bind people in a neverending cycle of mutual obligation; in addition, coca is used as a main ingredient of despachos (ritual offerings) and a source of quiet energy during exhaustive labor on potato fields. Unfortunately, as a result of the demand for processed coca, cocaine, in the US, and the resulting pressure on the Andean countries by coca dealers and foreign goverements alike, the Peruvian peasants have found their access to raw coca leaves (non-addictive) severely limited, which affects a crucial aspect of their culture and cultural identity.

Allen depicts all these elements (and much much more)in a simple yet poignant narrative. Everything is exactly where it should be - she brings us close to the individual members of her extended ayllu so that the reader herself can participate. I found the frequent inserts of Quechua phrases especially useful, providing a direct link into the mode of the Andean thought.

I highy recommend this book. probably the best one available, if you want to visit Qero regions in peru.

A rather intricate look at rustic Andean life and rituals
Allen's work was rather fascinating.She provided an in depth look at the Runa, a small group of townspeople who adhere to customs of ancient Incan and colonial Spanish civilization.She does an especially good job atexploring the role that Coca chewing plays in their society and indeterming their identity.Their rituals and customs will fascinate you. Beware, this book is not for the unsophisticated reader.It's a good read,but requires some thought and exploration to truly appreciate it. ... Read more