The Incas

by D'Altroy, Terence N.

• ISBN13: 9781405116763
• ISBN10: 1405116765
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-08-01
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

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 is the first book fully to synthesize history and archaeology in a sweeping exploration of the entire empire from Chile to Ecuador. 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.

Author Biography

Terence N. D'Altroy is Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University, Director of the Columbia Center for Archaeology, and the world's leading Inca specialist. He is the author of Provincial Power in the Inka Empire (1992), co-author, with Christine A. Hastorf, of Empire and Domestic Economy (2001), and co-editor of Empires (2001).

Table of Contents

List of Figures	viii
List of Plates	x
List of Tables	xii
Preface	xiii
1 Introduction	1	(23)
2 The Land and its People	24	(24)
3 The Incas before the Empire	48	(14)
4 The History of the Empire: Narrative Visions	62	(24)
5 The Politics of Blood in Cuzco	86	(23)
6 The Heartland of the Empire	109	(32)
7 Inca Ideology: Powers of the Sky and Earth, Past and Present	141	(36)
8 Family, Community, and Class	177	(28)
9 Militarism	205	(26)
10 Provincial Rule	231	(32)
11 Farmers, Herders, and Storehouses	263	(24)
12 Artisans and Artistry	287	(24)
13 Invasion and Aftermath	311	(14)
Glossary of Foreign Terms	325	(6)
Notes	331	(6)
Bibliography	337	(40)
Index	377