In perhaps as few as one hundred years, the Inka Empire became the largest state ever formed by a native people anywhere in the Americas, dominating the western coast of South America by the early sixteenth century. Because the Inkas had no system of writing, it was left to Spanish and semi-indigenous authors to record the details of the religious rituals that the Inkas believed were vital for consolidating their conquests. Synthesizing these arresting accounts that span three centuries, Thomas Besom presents a wealth of descriptive data on the Inka practices of human sacrifice and mountain worship, supplemented by archaeological evidence. Of Summits and Sacrifice offers insight into the symbolic connections between landscape and life that underlay Inka religious beliefs. In vivid prose, Besom links significant details, ranging from the reasons for cyclical sacrificial rites to the varieties of mountain deities, producing a uniquely powerful cultural history.

In perhaps as few as one hundred years, the Inka Empire became the largest state ever formed by a native people anywhere in the Americas, dominating the western coast of South America by the early sixteenth century. Because the Inkas had no system of writing, it was left to Spanish and semi-indigenous authors to record the details of the religious rituals that the Inkas believed were vital for consolidating their conquests. Synthesizing these arresting accounts that span three centuries, Thomas Besom presents a wealth of descriptive data on the Inka practices of human sacrifice and mountain worship, supplemented by archaeological evidence. Of Summits and Sacrifice offers insight into the symbolic connections between landscape and life that underlay Inka religious beliefs. In vivid prose, Besom links significant details, ranging from the reasons for cyclical sacrificial rites to the varieties of mountain deities, producing a uniquely powerful cultural history.

The Inka empire was the largest pre-Columbian polity in the New World. Its vast expanse, its ethnic diversity, and the fact that the empire may have been consolidated in less than a century have prompted much scholarly interest in its creation. In this study, Besom explores the ritual practices of human sacrifice and the worship of mountains, attested in both archaeological investigations and ethnohistorical sources, as tools in the establishment and preservation of political power. Besom examines the relationship between symbols, ideology, ritual, and power to demonstrate how the Cuzqueños could have used rituals to manipulate common Andean symbols to uphold their authority over subjugated peoples. He considers ethnohistoric accounts of the categories of human sacrifice to gain insights into related rituals and motives, and reviews the ethnohistoric evidence of mountain worship to predict locations as well as motives. He also analyzes specific archaeological sites and assemblages, theorizing that they were the locations of sacrifices designed to assimilate subject peoples, bind conquered lands to the state, and/or justify the extraction of local resources.

The present volume was made possible by the Norwegian Research Council’s generous funding of the Human Sacrifice and Value project (FRIPROHUMSAM 275947). It explores concepts of human sacrifice. This volume explores concepts of human sacrifice, focusing on its value – or multiplicity of values – in relative cultural and temporal terms, whether sacrifice is expressed in actual killings, in ideas revolving around ritualized, sanctioned or sanctified violence or loss, or in transformed and (often sublimated) undertakings. Bridging a wide variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, it analyses a spectrum of sacrificial logics and actions, daring us to rethink the scholarship of sacrifice by considering the oft hidden, subliminal and even paradoxical values and motivations that underlie sacrificial acts. The chapters give needed attention to pivotal questions in studies of sacrifice and ritualized violence – such as how we might employ new approaches to the existing evidence or revise long-debated theories about what exactly ‘human sacrifice’ is or might be, or why human sacrifice seems to emerge so often and so easily in human social experience across time and in vastly different cultures and historical contexts. Thus, the volume will strike a chord with scholars of sociology, anthropology, archaeology, history, religious studies, political science and economics –wherever interest is focused on critically rethinking questions of sacred and sanctified human violence, and the values that make it what it is.

The author of Comentarios reales and La Florida del Inca, now recognized as key foundational works of Latin American literature and historiography, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega was born in 1539 in Cuzco, the son of a Spanish conquistador and an Incan princess, and later moved to Spain. Recalling the family stories and myths he had heard from his Quechua-speaking relatives during his youth and gathering information from friends who had remained in Peru, he created works that have come to indelibly shape our understanding of Incan history and administration. He also articulated a new American identity, which he called mestizo. This volume provides guidance on the translations of Garcilaso's writings and on the scholarly reception of his ideas. Instructors will discover ideas for teaching Garcilaso's works in relation to indigenous thought, European historiography, natural history, indigenous religion and Christianity, and Incan material culture. In essays informed by postcolonial and decolonial perspectives, scholars draw connections between Garcilaso's writings and contemporary issues like migration, multiculturalism, and indigenous rights.

Humanity is moving ever towards its final destination without knowing why, when, where: teloi, multiple paths, leading towards God’s eschaton. These essays examine the movement towards this day of reckoning, and how such eschatological events are projected back into time. Towards the Day after Tomorrow, or the one after that, or months, decades—centuries—away, often we behave as though the end is upon us. These essays start with the beginning of the end: the incarnation. We examine the origins of Karl Barth’s realized eschatology in Expressionism. We consider death and judgment, as usurped by humanity, an eschaton without God’s forgiving judgment: multiple Holocausts. War ushers in the eschaton, but how do Christians handle conflict in the light of a redefined just war theory? We analyze the eschatological insights into humanity’s end in The Simpsons—post mortem. Consider the issue of atheistic human authorities usurping God’s judgment. Finally crisis and judgment are glimpsed in the mindset of people who suffer seizures—postlapsarian exile, the sufferance of salvation: how God blesses us despite the chaos of our human-generated teloi, in preparation for the end. As the end approaches, events become darker, chaotic, confusion reigns: “Judas immediately went out. And it was night.”

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.