The History of the Incas may be the best description of Inca life and mythology to survive Spanish colonization of Peru. Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, a well-educated sea captain and cosmographer of the viceroyalty, wrote the document in Cuzco, the capital of the Inca Empire, just forty years after the arrival of the first Spaniards. The royal sponsorship of the work guaranteed Sarmiento direct access to the highest Spanish officials in Cuzco. It allowed him to summon influential Incas, especially those who had witnessed the fall of the Empire. Sarmiento also traveled widely and interviewed numerous local lords (curacas), as well as surviving members of the royal Inca families. Once completed, in an unprecedented effort to establish the authenticity of the work, Sarmiento's manuscript was read, chapter by chapter, to forty-two indigenous authorities for commentary and correction.

The scholars behind this new edition (the first to be published in English since 1907) went to similarly great lengths in pursuit of accuracy. Translators Brian Bauer and Vania Smith used an early transcript and, in some instances, the original document to create the text. Bauer and Jean-Jacques Decoster's introduction lays bare the biases Sarmiento incorporated into his writing. It also theorizes what sources, in addition to his extensive interviews, Sarmiento relied upon to produce his history. Finally, more than sixty new illustrations enliven this historically invaluable document of life in the ancient Andes.

The Islands of the Sun and the Moon in Bolivia's Lake Titicaca were two of the most sacred locations in the Inca empire. A pan-Andean belief held that they marked the origin place of the Sun and the Moon, and pilgrims from across the Inca realm made ritual journeys to the sacred shrines there. In this book, Brian Bauer and Charles Stanish explore the extent to which this use of the islands as a pilgrimage center during Inca times was founded on and developed from earlier religious traditions of the Lake Titicaca region.

Drawing on a systematic archaeological survey and test excavations in the islands, as well as data from historical texts and ethnography, the authors document a succession of complex polities in the islands from 2000 BC to the time of European contact in the 1530s AD. They uncover significant evidence of pre-Inca ritual use of the islands, which raises the compelling possibility that the religious significance of the islands is of great antiquity. The authors also use these data to address broader anthropological questions on the role of pilgrimage centers in the development of pre-modern states.

Although the Cuzco Valley of Peru is renowned for being the heartland of the Incas, little is known concerning its pre-Inca inhabitants. Until recently it was widely believed that the first inhabitants of the Cuzco Valley were farmers who lived in scattered villages along the valley floor (ca. 1000 BC) and that there were no Archaic Period remains in the region. This perspective was challenged during a systematic survey of the valley, when numerous pre-ceramic sites were found. Additional information came from excavations at the site of Kasapata, the largest pre-ceramic site identified during the survey. It is now clear that the Cuzco Valley was inhabited, like many other regions of the Andes, soon after the retreat of the Pleistocene glaciers and that it supported thriving cultures of hunters and foragers for hundreds of generations before the advent of permanent settlements. This edited volume provides the first overview of the Archaic Period (9000 BC - 2200 BC) in the Cuzco Valley. The chapters include a detailed discussion of the distribution of Archaic sites in the valley as well as the result of excavations at the site of Kasapata. Separate chapters are dedicated to examining the lithics, human burials, faunal remains, and obsidian recovered at this remarkably well-preserved site.

The Wari State was the first expansionistic power to develop in the Andean highlands. Emerging in the area of modern Ayacucho (Peru) around AD 650, the Wari expanded to control much of the central Andes by the time of their collapse at AD 1000. This book describes the discovery and excavation (2010-2012) of a major new Wari site (Espiritu Pampa), located in the subtropical region of Vilcabamba (Department of Cuzco). While it was long believed that the Wari established trade networks between their highland capital and the Amazonian lowlands, the identification of a large Wari site in the Vilcabamba region came as a surprise to most Wari specialists. This book covers the first three years of excavations at the Wari site of Espiritu Pampa. It describes the identification of a central plaza surrounded by a series of D-shaped structures, that are believed to be the loci of special activates for the Wari. It also describes the contents of more than 30 burials, many of which contained finely crafted silver, gold, bronze and ceramic objects.

In AD 1438 a battle took place outside the city of Cuzco that changed the course of South American history. The Chanka, a powerful ethnic group from the Andahuaylas region, had begun an aggressive program of expansion. Conquering a host of smaller polities, their army had advanced well inside the territory of their traditional rival, the Inca. In a series of unusual maneuvers, the Inca defeated the invading Chanka forces and became the most powerful people in the Andes. Many scholars believe that the defeat of the Chanka represents a defining moment in the history of South America as the Inca then continued to expand and establish the largest empire of the Americas. Despite its critical position in South American history, until recently the Chanka heartland remained unexplored and the cultural processes that led to their rapid development and subsequent defeat by the Inca had not been investigated. From 2001 to 2004, Brian Bauer conducted an archaeological survey of the Andahuaylas region. This project represents an unparalleled opportunity to examine theoretical issues concerning the history and cultural development of late-prehistoric societies in this area of the Andes. The resulting book includes an archaeological analysis on the development of the Chanka and examines their ultimate defeat by the Inca.

"This book is a major, up-to-date synthesis of a large mass of empirical archaeological information, much of it collected during the past ten-to-fifteen years by Bauer and his associates. It also presents a full synthesis of historic and ethnohistoric sources bearing upon Cuzco and its inhabitants, including many previously unpublished photographs from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that add greatly to the book's overall importance and appeal." -- Jeffrey R. Parsons, Professor of Anthropology and Curator of Latin American Archaeology, University of Michigan

The Cuzco Valley of Peru was both the sacred and the political center of the largest state in the prehistoric Americas-- the Inca Empire. From the city of Cuzco, the Incas ruled at least eight million people in a realm that stretched from modern-day Colombia to Chile. Yet, despite its great importance in the cultural development of the Americas, the Cuzco Valley has only recently received the same kind of systematic archaeological survey long since conducted at other New World centers of civilization.

Drawing on the results of the Cuzco Valley Archaeological Project that Brian Bauer directed from 1994 to 2000, this landmark book undertakes the first general overview of the prehistory of the Cuzco region from the arrival of the first hunter-gatherers (ca. 7000 B.C.) to the fall of the Inca Empire in A.D. 1532. Combining archaeological survey and excavation data with historical records, the book addresses both the specific patterns of settlement in the Cuzco Valley and the larger processes of cultural development. With its wealth of new information, this book will become the baseline for research on theInca and the Cuzco Valley for years to come.

Only a few decades after the Spanish conquest of Peru, the third Bishop of Cuzco, Sebastián de Lartaún, called for a report on the religious practices of the Incas. The report was prepared by Cristóbal de Molina, a priest of the Hospital for the Natives of Our Lady of Succor in Cuzco and Preacher General of the city. Molina was an outstanding Quechua speaker, and his advanced language skills allowed him to interview the older indigenous men of Cuzco who were among the last surviving eyewitnesses of the rituals conducted at the height of Inca rule. Thus, Molina's account preserves a crucial first-hand record of Inca religious beliefs and practices. This volume is the first English translation of Molina's Relación de las fábulas y ritos de los incas since 1873 and includes the first authoritative scholarly commentary and notes. The work opens with several Inca creation myths and descriptions of the major gods and shrines (huacas). Molina then discusses the most important rituals that occurred in Cuzco during each month of the year, as well as rituals that were not tied to the ceremonial calendar, such as birth rituals, female initiation rites, and marriages. Molina also describes the Capacocha ritual, in which all the shrines of the empire were offered sacrifices, as well as the Taqui Ongoy, a millennial movement that spread across the Andes during the late 1560s in response to growing Spanish domination and accelerated violence against the so-called idolatrous religions of the Andean peoples.

The ceque system of Cusco, the ancient capital of the Inca empire, was perhaps the most complex indigenous ritual system in the pre-Columbian Americas. From a center known as the Coricancha (Golden Enclosure) or the Temple of the Sun, a system of 328 huacas (shrines) arranged along 42 ceques (lines) radiated out toward the mountains surrounding the city. This elaborate network, maintained by ayllus (kin groups) that made offerings to the shrines in their area, organized the city both temporally and spiritually.

From 1990 to 1995, Brian Bauer directed a major project to document the ceque system of Cusco. In this book, he synthesizes extensive archaeological survey work with archival research into the Inca social groups of the Cusco region, their land holdings, and the positions of the shrines to offer a comprehensive, empirical description of the ceque system. Moving well beyond previous interpretations, Bauer constructs a convincing model of the system's physical form and its relation to the social, political, and territorial organization of Cusco.

The Inca empire was the largest state in the Americas at the time of the Spanish invasion in 1532. From its political center in the valley of Cuzco, it controlled much of the area included in the modern nations of Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and Bolivia. But how the Inca state became a major pan-Andean power is less certain. In this innovative work, Brian S. Bauer challenges traditional views of Inca state development and offers a new interpretation supported by archaeological, historical, and ethnographic evidence. Spanish chroniclers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries attributed the rapid rise of Inca power to a decisive military victory over the Chanca, their traditional rivals, by Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui, a young warrior-king, and to the Incas' ability to unify the various ethnic groups of the region. By contrast, Bauer questions the usefulness of literal interpretations of the Spanish chronicles and provides instead a regional perspective on the question of state development. He suggests that incipient state growth in the Cuzco region was marked by the gradual consolidation and centralization of political authority in Cuzco, rather than resulting from a single military victory. Synthesizing regional surveys with excavation, historic, and ethnographic data, and investigating broad categories of social and economic organization, he shifts the focus away from legendary accounts and analyzes more general processes of political, economic, and social change. Ultimately, Bauer's work stresses the need for broader forms of historical consciousness in studying the development of the Inca state, moving beyond the study of kings and battles to examine classes of individuals and entiregeographic regions.