The Inka Empire : : A Multidisciplinary Approach / ed. by Izumi Shimada.

• MitwirkendeR: Amino, Tetsuya,; Bauer, Brian S.,; Bray, Tamara L.,; Cerrón-Palomino, Rodolfo,; Cervantes, Gabriela,; Covey, R. Alan,; Cummins, Thomas B. F.,; D'Altroy, Terence N.,; Earls, John C.,; Guzmán, Natalia,; Hayashida, Frances M.,; Kaulicke, Peter,; Nair, Stella,; Niles, Susan A.,; Phipps, Elena,; Protzen, Jean-Pierre,; Pärssinen, Martti,; Salomon, Frank,; Schjellerup, Inge,; Shimada, Izumi,; Shinoda, Ken-ichi,; Smit, Douglas K.,; Urton, Gary,
• HerausgeberIn: Shimada, Izumi,
• Place / Publishing House: Austin : University of Texas Press, [2021]; ©2015
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Series: The William and Bettye Nowlin Series in Art, History, and Culture of the Western Hemisphere
• Physical Description: 1 Online-Resource

Massive yet elegantly executed masonry architecture and andenes (agricultural terraces) set against majestic and seemingly boundless Andean landscapes, roads built in defiance of rugged terrains, and fine textiles with orderly geometric designs-all were created within the largest political system in the ancient New World, a system headed, paradoxically, by a single, small minority group without wheeled vehicles, markets, or a writing system, the Inka. For some 130 years (ca. A.D. 1400 to 1533), the Inka ruled over at least eighty-six ethnic groups in an empire that encompassed about 2 million square kilometers, from the northernmost region of the Ecuador-Colombia border to northwest Argentina. The Inka Empire brings together leading international scholars from many complementary disciplines, including human genetics, linguistics, textile and architectural studies, ethnohistory, and archaeology, to present a state-of-the-art, holistic, and in-depth vision of the Inkas. The contributors provide the latest data and understandings of the political, demographic, and linguistic evolution of the Inkas, from the formative era prior to their political ascendancy to their post-conquest transformation. The scholars also offer an updated vision of the unity, diversity, and essence of the material, organizational, and symbolic-ideological features of the Inka Empire. As a whole, The Inka Empire demonstrates the necessity and value of a multidisciplinary approach that incorporates the insights of fields beyond archaeology and ethnohistory. And with essays by scholars from seven countries, it reflects the cosmopolitanism that has characterized Inka studies ever since its beginnings in the nineteenth century.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- Chapter 1. Introduction -- Part I. Written Sources, Origins, and Formations -- Chapter 2. Inkas through Texts: The Primary Sources -- Chapter 3. The Languages of the Inkas -- Chapter 4. Tracing the Origin of Inka People through Ancient DNA Analysis -- Chapter 5. Separating the Wheat from the Chaff: Inka Myths, Inka Legends, and the Archaeological Evidence for State Development -- Part II. Imperial Infrastructures and Administrative Strategies -- Chapter 6. Inka Imperial Intentions and Archaeological Realities in the Peruvian Highlands -- Chapter 7. Funding the Inka Empire -- Part III. Inka Culture at the Center -- Chapter 8. Inka Cosmology in Moray: Astronomy, Agriculture, and Pilgrimage -- Chapter 9. The State of Strings: Khipu Administration in the Inka Empire -- Chapter 10. Inka Art -- Chapter 11. Inka Textile Traditions and Their Colonial Counterparts -- Chapter 12. The Inka Built Environment -- Chapter 13. Considering Inka Royal Estates: Architecture, Economy, History -- Chapter 14. Inka Conceptions of Life, Death, and Ancestor Worship -- Part IV. Imperial Administration in the Provinces -- Chapter 15. Collasuyu of the Inka State -- Chapter 16. Reading the Material Record of Inka Rule: Style, Polity, and Empire on the North Coast of Peru -- Chapter 17. Over the Mountains, Down into the Ceja de Selva: Inka Strategies and Impacts in the Chachapoyas Region -- Chapter 18. At the End of Empire: Imperial Advances on the Northern Frontier -- Part V. Impacts of the Spanish Conquest -- Chapter 19. Three Faces of the Inka: Changing Conceptions and Representations of the Inka during the Colonial Period -- Authors' Biographies -- Index