A groundbreaking work on how the topic of scale provides an entirely new understanding of Inca material culture Although questions of form and style are fundamental to art history, the issue of scale has been surprisingly neglected. Yet, scale and scaled relationships are essential to the visual cultures of many societies from around the world, especially in the Andes. In Scale and the Incas, Andrew Hamilton presents a groundbreaking theoretical framework for analyzing scale, and then applies this approach to Inca art, architecture, and belief systems. The Incas were one of humanity's great civilizations, but their lack of a written language has prevented widespread appreciation of their sophisticated intellectual tradition. Expansive in scope, this book examines many famous works of Inca art including Machu Picchu and the Dumbarton Oaks tunic, more enigmatic artifacts like the Sayhuite Stone and Capacocha offerings, and a range of relatively unknown objects in diverse media including fiber, wood, feathers, stone, and metalwork. Ultimately, Hamilton demonstrates how the Incas used scale as an effective mode of expression in their vast multilingual and multiethnic empire. Lavishly illustrated with stunning color plates created by the author, the book's pages depict artifacts alongside scale markers and silhouettes of hands and bodies, allowing readers to gauge scale in multiple ways. The pioneering visual and theoretical arguments of Scale andthe Incas not only rewrite understandings of Inca art, but also provide a benchmark for future studies of scale in art from other cultures.

Introduces the striking artwork and fascinating rituals of this highland culture through approximately one hundred works of art and cultural treasures.

This book provides a detailed account of the Inca Empire, describing its history, society, economy, religion, and politics, but most importantly the way it was managed. How did the Inca wield political power? What economic strategies did the Inca pursue in order to create the largest native empire in the Western Hemisphere? The book offers university students, scholars, and the general public a sophisticated new interpretation of Inca power politics and especially the role of religion in shaping an imperial world of great ethnic, social, and cultural diversity.

This fascinating, readable volume is filled with enticing, detailed information about more than 30 different Incan crops that promise to follow the potato's lead and become important contributors to the world's food supply. Some of these overlooked foods offer special advantages for developing nations, such as high nutritional quality and excellent yields. Many are adaptable to areas of the United States. Lost Crops of the Incas includes vivid color photographs of many of the crops and describes the authors' experiences in growing, tasting, and preparing them in different ways. This book is for the gourmet and gourmand alike, as well as gardeners, botanists, farmers, and agricultural specialists in developing countries.

When Atahualpa, a young Inca prince, hears that strangers with white skin, led by Francisco Pizarro, have arrived in their land, he finally realizes that no one else is going to do anything to stop them.

The Incas carried out some of the most dramatic ceremonies known to us from ancient times. Groups of people walked hundreds of miles across arid and mountainous terrain to perform them on mountains over 6,096 m (20,000 feet) high. The most important offerings made during these pilgrimages involved human sacrifices (capacochas). Although Spanish chroniclers wrote about these offerings and the state sponsored processions of which they were a part, their accounts were based on second-hand sources, and the only direct evidence we have of the capacocha sacrifices comes to us from archaeological excavations. Some of the most thoroughly documented of these were undertaken on high mountain summits, where the material evidence has been exceptionally well preserved. In this study we describe the results of research undertaken on Mount Llullaillaco (6,739 m/22,109 feet), which has the world's highest archaeological site. The types of ruins and artifact assemblages recovered are described and analyzed. By comparing the archaeological evidence with the chroniclers' accounts and with findings from other mountaintop sites, common patterns are demonstrated; while at the same time previously little known elements contribute to our understanding of key aspects of Inca religion. This study illustrates the importance of archaeological sites being placed within the broader context of physical and sacred features of the natural landscape.

The sites of Vitcos and Espiritu Pampa are two of the most important Inca cities within the remote Vilcabamba region of Peru. The province has gained notoriety among historians, archaeologists, and other students of the Inca, since it was from here that the last independent Incas waged a nearly forty-year-long war (AD 1536-1572) against Spanish control of the Andes. Building on three years of excavation and two years of archival work, the authors discuss the events that took place in this area, speaking to the complex relationships that existed between the Europeans and Andeans during the decades that Vilcabamba was the final stronghold of the Inca empire. This has long been a topic of interest for the public; the results of the first large-scale scientific research conducted in the region will be illuminating for scholars as well as for general readers who are enthusiasts of this period of history and archaeology.

Inca Apocalypse develops a new perspective on the European invasions of the Inca realm, and the way that the Spanish transformation of the Andes relates to broader changes occurring in the transition from medieval to early modern Europe. The book is structured to foreground some of theparallels in the imperial origins of the Incas and Spain, as well as some of the global processes affecting both societies during the first century of their interaction. The Spanish conquest of the Inca empire was more than a decisive victory at Cajamarca in 1532-it was an uneven process that failedto bring to pass the millenarian vision that set it in motion, yet it succeeded profoundly in some respects. The Incas and their Andean subjects were not passive victims of colonization, and indigenous complicity and resistance actively shaped Spanish colonial rule.As it describes the transformation of the Inca world, Inca Apocalypse attempts to build a more global context than previous accounts of the Spanish Conquest, and it seeks not to lose sight of the parallel changes occurring in Europe as Spain pursued state projects that complemented the colonialendeavors in the Americas. New archaeological and archival research makes it possible to frame a familiar story from a larger historical and geographical scale than has typically been considered. The new text will have solid scholarly foundations but a narrative intended to be accessible tonon-academic readers.

The true story of the discovery, settlement, and development of Hispanic America, the dreams and strategies of the enigmatic mariner of obscure origin who believed that he could reach Cipango and the lands of the Great Khan described by Marco Polo two hundred years earlier, by sailing west rather than east; his voyages of discovery, and the native people he and his successors encountered, their spectacular buildings, religious rituals, and savage cannibalism. Large-scale immigration from Spain, Christianity and the role of the friars, and the rapid emergence of a new racial mixture of indigenous and European blood, are covered, as are social and economic development, the political structures necessary for the profitable administration and control of an empire three thousand miles away, until the winds of rebellion and independence born of the French Revolution blew-in a new world order which many non-Hispanics today erroneously call Latin America.

"I know of no other book in English that provides such a good region-by-region description of the Inca empire."—Bill Sillar, Institute of Archaeology, University College London In less than a century the Incas rose from obscure origins to build one of the largest empires of the ancient world. At its zenith Tawantinsuyu—“The Fourfold Domain”—extended northward from the Inca capital Cusco along the spine of the Andes to embrace most of modern Peru and Ecuador, and southward into Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. The sheer scale of the empire, coupled with the challenges of the varied and rugged landscape, makes the Inca achievement truly remarkable. This new survey provides the most up-to-date and authoritative account available of the Incas: their politics, economics, religion, architecture, art, and technology. The authors look in detail at the capital Cusco and at the four parts of the empire, exploring not just famous sites such as Machu Picchu but all the major regional settlements. The book concludes with the end of the empire: the arrival of the Spaniards, the assassination of the Inca ruler Atawallpa, and the final years of the rebellious, neo-Inca state in the tropical forests of Vilcabamba. The illustrations range from finely fitted stonework to superbly engineered mountain terraces, from stunning textiles to brilliant metalwork in gold, silver, and bronze.