Who was in charge of the widespread provinces of the great Inka Empire of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: Inka from the imperial heartland or local leaders who took on the trappings of their conquerors, either by coercion or acceptance? By focusing on provinces far from the capital of Cuzco, the essays in this multidisciplinary volume provide up-to-date information on the strategies of domination asserted by the Inka across the provinces far from their capital and the equally broad range of responses adopted by their conquered peoples. Contributors to this cutting-edge volume incorporate the interaction of archaeological and ethnohistorical research with archaeobotany, biometrics, architecture, and mining engineering, among other fields. The geographical scope of the chapters—which cover the Inka provinces in Bolivia, in southeast Argentina, in southern Chile, along the central and north coast of Peru, and in Ecuador—build upon the many different ways in which conqueror and conquered interacted. Competing factors such as the kinds of resources available in the provinces, the degree of cooperation or resistance manifested by local leaders, the existing levels of political organization convenient to the imperial administration, and how recently a region had been conquered provide a wealth of information on regions previously understudied. Using detailed contextual analyses of Inka and elite residences and settlements in the distant provinces, the essayists evaluate the impact of the empire on the leadership strategies of conquered populations, whether they were Inka by privilege, local leaders acculturated to Inka norms, or foreign mid-level administrators from trusted ethnicities. By exploring the critical interface between local elites and their Inka overlords, Distant Provinces in the Inka Empire builds upon Malpass’s 1993 Provincial Inca: Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Assessment of the Impact of the Inca State to support the conclusions that Inka strategies of control were tailored to the particular situations faced in different regions. By contributing to our understanding of what it means to be marginal in the Inka Empire, this book details how the Inka attended to their political and economic goals in their interactions with their conquered peoples and how their subjects responded, producing a richly textured view of the reality that was the Inka Empire.

A Prehistory of South America is an overview of the ancient and historic native cultures of the entire continent of South America based on the most recent archaeological investigations. This accessible, clearly written text is designed to engage undergraduate and begining graduate studens in anthropology. For more than 12,000 years, South American cultures ranged from mobile hunters and gatherers to rulers and residents of colossal cities. In the process, native South American societies made advancements in agriculture and economic systems and created great works of art—in pottery, textiles, precious metals, and stone—that still awe the modern eye. Organized in broad chronological periods, A Prehistory of South America explores these diverse human achievements, emphasizing the many adaptations of peoples from a continent-wide perspective. Moore examines the archaeologies of societies across South America, from the arid deserts of the Pacific coast and the frigid Andean highlands to the humid lowlands of the Amazon Basin and the fjords of Patagonia and beyond. Illustrated in full color and suitable for an educated general reader interested in the Precolumbian peoples of South America, A Prehistory of South America is a long overdue addition to the literature on South American archaeology.

The Inca Empire existed for fewer than 100 years, yet ruled more subjects than either the Aztecs or the Maya and occupied a territory stretching nearly 3000 miles. The Incas left no system of writing; what we know of them has been gleaned from the archaeological record and accounts written following the Spanish invasion. In this A-to-Z encyclopedia, Gary Urton and Adriana von Hagen, together with over thirty contributors, provide a broad introduction to the fascinating civilization of the Incas, including their settlements, culture, society, celebrations, and achievements. Following a broad introduction, 128 individual entries explore wide-ranging themes (religion, architecture, farming) and specific topics (ceremonial drinking cup, astronomy), interweaving ethnohistoric and archaeological research with nuanced interpretation. Each entry provides suggestions for further reading. Sidebars profiling chroniclers and researchers of Inca life—ranging from José de Acosta and Cristóbal de Albornoz to Maria Rostworowski and R. Tom Zuidema—add depth and context for the cultural entries. Cross-references, alphabetical and topical lists of entries, and a thorough index help readers navigate the volume. A chronology, selected bibliography, regional map, and almost ninety illustrations round out the volume. In sum, the Encyclopedia of the Incas provides a unique, comprehensive resource for scholars, as well as the general public, to explore the civilization of the Incas—the largest empire of the pre-Columbian New World.

This is the first world history of empire, reaching from the third millennium BCE to the present. By combining synthetic surveys, thematic comparative essays, and numerous chapters on specific empires, its two volumes provide unparalleled coverage of imperialism throughout history and across continents, from Asia to Europe and from Africa to the Americas. Only a few decades ago empire was believed to be a thing of the past; now it is clear that it has been and remains one of the most enduring forms of political organization and power. We cannot understand the dynamics and resilience of empire without moving decisively beyond the study of individual cases or particular periods, such as the relatively short age of European colonialism. The history of empire, as these volumes amply demonstrate, needs to be drawn on the much broader canvas of global history. Volume Two: The History of Empires tracks the protean history of political domination from the very beginnings of state formation in the Bronze Age up to the present. Case studies deal with the full range of the historical experience of empire, from the realms of the Achaemenids and Asoka to the empires of Mali and Songhay, and from ancient Rome and China to the Mughals, American settler colonialism, and the Soviet Union. Forty-five chapters detailing the history of individual empires are tied together by a set of global synthesizing surveys that structure the world history of empire into eight chronological phases.

2023 Book Award, Society for American Archaeology A dramatic reappraisal of the Inka Empire through the lens of Qullasuyu. The Inka conquered an immense area extending across five modern nations, yet most English-language publications on the Inka focus on governance in the area of modern Peru. This volume expands the range of scholarship available in English by collecting new and notable research on Qullasuyu, the largest of the four quarters of the empire, which extended south from Cuzco into contemporary Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile. From the study of Qullasuyu arise fresh theoretical perspectives that both complement and challenge what we think we know about the Inka. While existing scholarship emphasizes the political and economic rationales underlying state action, Rethinking the Inka turns to the conquered themselves and reassesses imperial motivations. The book’s chapters, incorporating more than two hundred photographs, explore relations between powerful local lords and their Inka rulers; the roles of nonhumans in the social and political life of the empire; local landscapes remade under Inka rule; and the appropriation and reinterpretation by locals of Inka objects, infrastructure, practices, and symbols. Written by some of South America’s leading archaeologists, Rethinking the Inka is poised to be a landmark book in the field.

Throughout history, a large portion of the world’s population has lived under imperial rule. Although scholars do not always agree on when and where the roots of imperialism lie, most would agree that imperial configurations have affected human history so profoundly that the legacy of ancient empires continues to structure the modern world in many ways. Empires are best described as heterogeneous and dynamic patchworks of imperial configurations in which imperial power was the outcome of the complex interaction between evolving colonial structures and various types of agents in highly contingent relationships. The goal of this volume is to harness the work of the “next generation” of empire scholars in order to foster new theoretical and methodological perspectives that are of relevance within and beyond archaeology and to foreground empires as a cross-cultural category. This book demonstrates how archaeological research can contribute to our conceptualization of empires across disciplinary boundaries.

The Neo-Assyrian empire — the first large empire of the ancient world — has attracted a great deal of public attention ever since the spectacular discoveries of its impressive remains in the 19th century. The southwestern part of this empire, located in the lands of the Bible, is archaeologically speaking the best known region in the world, and its history is described in a plethora of texts, including the Hebrew Bible. Using a bottom-up approach, Avraham Faust utilises this unparalleled information to reconstruct the outcomes of the Assyrian conquest of the region and how it impacted the diverse political units and ecological zones that comprised it. In doing so, he draws close attention to the transformations the imperial take-over brought in its wake. His analysis reveals the marginality of the annexed territories in the southwest as the empire focused its activities in small border areas facing its prospering clients. A comparison of this surprising picture to the information available from other parts of the empire suggests that the distance of these provinces from the imperial core is responsible for their fate. This sheds new light on factors influencing imperial expansion, the considerations leading to annexation, and the imperial methods of control, challenging old conventions about the development of the Assyrian empire and its rule. Faust also examines the Assyrian empire within the broader context of ancient Near Eastern imperialism to answer larger questions on the nature of Assyrian domination, the reasons for its harsh treatment of the distant provinces, and the factors influencing the limits of its reach. His findings highlight the historical development of imperial control in antiquity and the ways in which later empires were able to overcome similar limitations, paving the way to much larger and longer-lasting polities.