Few lost tribes have captured the world’s imagination the way the Incas have. Though the Children of the Sun ruled a swathe of South America for a relatively short time – the Inca heyday lasted about 90 years – their legacy lives on, both as the proud heritage of modern Andean nations and in the minds of modern pilgrims, who travel in their thousands to see Machu Picchu, fabled Lost City of the Incas.
When the Spanish arrived in Peru in 1532, they found the Incas ruling over about two million square kilometres, known as Tawantinsuyu (“The Four Parts Together”). How did the Incas form a vast unified state across mountainous territory? And what is the truth behind the mythical origins of these people? These are two key questions this lavishly illustrated monograph attempts to answer.
Anthropologist and co-director of the Collaborative for Cultural Heritage and Museum Practices
Dr Helaine Silverman, who holds a Ph.D from the University of Texas, is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her secondary appointments are in the Department of Landscape Architecture, Program in Art History, Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism, and Campus Honors Program. She also is a member of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies. She is the Co-Director of the Collaborative for Cultural Heritage and Museum Practices.
Her primary research interests include heritage theory and management, critical museum studies, tourism, cultural memory, identity, globalisation, nationalism, appropriations of the past, urbanism, architectural and landscape history, spatial theory, cultures of death, Southeast Asia, Central Andean archaeology, and complex societies.
