In high-Andean Peru, Rapaz village maintains a temple to mountain beings who command water and weather. By examining the ritual practices and belief systems of an Andean community, this book provides students with rich understandings of unfamiliar religious experiences and delivers theories of religion from the realm of abstraction. From core field encounters, each chapter guides readers outward in a different theoretical direction, successively exploring the main paths in the anthropology of religion. As well as addressing classical approaches in the anthropology of religion to rural modernity, Salomon engages with newer currents such as cognitive-evolution models, power-oriented critiques, the ontological reworking of relativism, and the "new materialism" in the context of a deep-rooted Andean ethos. He reflects on central questions such as: Why does sacred ritualism seem almost universal? Is it seated in social power, human psychology, symbolic meanings, or cultural logics? Are varied theories compatible? Is "religion" still a tenable category in the post-colonial world? At the Mountains' Altar is a valuable resource for students taking courses on the anthropology of religion, Andean cultures, Latin American ethnography, religious studies, and indigenous peoples of the Americas.

This is the first major survey of research on the indigenous peoples of South America from the earliest peopling of the continent to the present since Julian Steward's Handbook of South American Indians was published half a century ago. Although this volume concentrates on continental South America, peoples in the Caribbean and lower Central America who were linguistically or culturally connected are also discus sed. The volume's emphasis is on self-perceptions of the indigenous peoples of South America at various times and under differing situations.

This is the first major survey of research on the indigenous peoples of South America from the earliest peopling of the continent to the present since Julian Steward's Handbook of South American Indians was published half a century ago. Although this volume concentrates on continental South America, peoples in the Caribbean and lower Central America who were linguistically or culturally connected are also discussed. The volume's emphasis is on self-perceptions of the indigenous peoples of South America at various times and under differing situations.

By the time of Columbus, the people of Ecuador's tropical highlands had created small but remarkably complex and interlinked political societies. These small societies for many years proved able to fight off the overwhelming might of the Inca state. But around 1500 they fell to Inca invaders who, in turn, soon lost their dominion to Spanish warlords. Frank Salomon draws on large stores of sources to reconstruct the political and economic institutions of pre-Inca societies. Their structure before and during the Inca interlude reveals diversity in the Andean world. Salomon provides remarkable insight into the functioning of these 'chiefdoms', emphasizing their importance for the understanding of rank, inequality, privilege and central power in stateless societies. He also contributes to our understanding of expansion, colonization, and the adaptive relationships between indigenous and imposed regimes in a context of precapitalist statecraft.

In high-Andean Peru, Rapaz village maintains a temple to mountain beings who command water and weather. By examining the ritual practices and belief systems of an Andean community, this book provides students with rich understandings of unfamiliar religious experiences and delivers theories of religion from the realm of abstraction. From core field encounters, each chapter guides readers outward in a different theoretical direction, successively exploring the main paths in the anthropology of religion. As well as addressing classical approaches in the anthropology of religion to rural modernity, Salomon engages with newer currents such as cognitive-evolution models, power-oriented critiques, the ontological reworking of relativism, and the "new materialism" in the context of a deep-rooted Andean ethos. He reflects on central questions such as: Why does sacred ritualism seem almost universal? Is it seated in social power, human psychology, symbolic meanings, or cultural logics? Are varied theories compatible? Is "religion" still a tenable category in the post-colonial world? At the Mountains' Altar is a valuable resource for students taking courses on the anthropology of religion, Andean cultures, Latin American ethnography, religious studies, and indigenous peoples of the Americas.

In the Andes, a long history of research on burial records and burial contexts exists for the purpose of reconstructing cultural affiliation, chronology, socioeconomic status, grave content, and human body treatment. Less attention is paid to the larger question of how mortuary practices functioned in different cultures. "Tombs for the Living: Andean Mortuary Practices" (originally released in 1995) examines this broader issue by looking at the mortuary practices that created a connection between the living and the dead; the role of wealth and ancestors in cosmological schemes; the location, construction, and sociopolitical implications of tombs and cemeteries; and the art and iconography of death. By examining rich sets of archaeological, ethnographic, and ethnohistoric data, the thirteen essays continue to enrich our understanding of the context and meaning of the mortuary traditions in the Andes.

First written in 1570, this work now published for the first time in modern Spanish with an English translation sheds light on the Inqa (Inca) world. The writing of Instruccion followed more than a decade of negotiations and skirmishes between Inqa rebels and Spanish officials who were receiving their orders from Spain to find a diplomatic, or alternatively violent, solution to integrate these independently governed territories under Spanish colonial rule.

One of the great repositories of a people's world view and religious beliefs, the Huarochiri Manuscript may bear comparison with such civilization-defining works as Gilgamesh, the Popul Vuh, and the Sagas. This translation by Frank Salomon and George L. Urioste marks the first time the Huarochiri Manuscript has been translated into English, making it available to English-speaking students of Andean culture and world mythology and religions.

The Huarochiri Manuscript holds a summation of native Andean religious tradition and an image of the superhuman and human world as imagined around A.D. 1600. The tellers were provincial Indians dwelling on the west Andean slopes near Lima, Peru, aware of the Incas but rooted in peasant, rather than imperial, culture. The manuscript is thought to have been compiled at the behest of Father Francisco de Avila, the notorious "extirpator of idolatries." Yet it expresses Andean religious ideas largely from within Andean categories of thought, making it an unparalleled source for the prehispanic and early colonial myths, ritual practices, and historic self-image of the native Andeans.

Prepared especially for the general reader, this edition of the Huarochiri Manuscript contains an introduction, index, and notes designed to help the novice understand the culture and history of the Huarochiri-area society. For the benefit of specialist readers, the Quechua text is also supplied.