You are on page 1of 12

Cultural Evolution, Political Organization, and

Ritual Practice in the Central Andes


Helaine Silverman, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

The Settlement of the Americas: A New Prehistory. By Thomas D. Dillehay


(New York: Basic Books, 2000. xi + 371 pp., preface, maps, gures, bibliography, index. $27.50 cloth.)
The First South Americans: The Peopling of a Continent from the Earliest Evidence to High Culture. By Danile Lavalle. Translated by Paul G.
Bahn. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2000. xii + 260 pp., preface, maps, gures, bibliography, index. $25.00 paper.)
Between the Lines: The Mystery of the Giant Ground Drawings of Ancient
Nasca, Peru. By Anthony F. Aveni. (Austin: University of Texas Press,
2000. xiv + 257 pp., preface, acknowledgments, maps, gures, notes,
index. $27.95 cloth.)
Ritual and Sacrice in Ancient Peru. Edited by Elizabeth P. Benson and
Anita G. Cook. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001. xii + 211 pp.,
preface, acknowledgments, maps, gures, notes, cumulative bibliography,
index. $13.95 paper.)
Inca Myths. By Gary Urton. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999.
80 pp., maps, gures, suggestions for further reading, index. $12.95 paper.)
Ritual and Pilgrimage in the Ancient Andes: The Islands of the Sun and
the Moon. By Brian S. Bauer and Charles Stanish. (Austin: University of
Texas Press, 2001. xiii + 314 pp., preface, maps, gures, table, notes, bibliography, index. $20.95 paper.)
The Inca World: The Development of Pre-Columbian Peru, A.D. 1000
1534. Edited by Laura Laurencich Minelli. (Norman: University of OklaEthnohistory 50:4 (fall 2003)
Copyright by the American Society for Ethnohistory.

714

Review Essays

homa Press, 2000. 239 pp., introduction, maps, gures, notes, bibliographies. $55.00 cloth.)
The seven books reviewed here are, to a fair degree, representative of the
research foci and prolic pace of publication in the eld of Andean archaeology. Covering more than ten thousand years of cultural development, this
serendipitous group nevertheless accurately reects the continuing strong
emphasis in Andean archaeology on the study of complex societies; only
Dillehay and Lavalle deal with the early hunting and gathering populations of South America. Among the books there is a work (Aveni) devoted
to Nasca culture of the Early Intermediate Period (ca. 100 b.c.a.d. 700);
an edited volume (Benson and Cook) focusing mostly on Moche ritual
sacrice in the Early Intermediate Period with Nasca and Huari (Middle
Horizon, ca. a.d. 500900) case studies included for more comprehensive coverage; an edited volume (Minelli) on the late prehispanic period
(a.d. 10001534); and two books that specically treat the Inca (Bauer and
Stanish, Urton). In addition to the dominant attention to the rise of civilization and congurations of chiefdom and state-level societies found
in this arbitrarily assembled collection, four of the volumes (Aveni, Benson and Cook, Bauer and Stanish, Urton) pay special attention to ritual
expressions in the Central Andes. This is interesting because in the historical development of Andean archaeology there has long been an emphasis on
temples and tombs and the exquisite portable and monumental iconographies expressing the ideological and cosmological systems underwriting
these. However, the interest in religion and ritual in the case of these four
books and among other archaeologists currently working in the Andes emanates from a contemporary recognition of the role of ritual in integrating
precolumbian societies. As Cook (2001: 138139) indicates, Ritual organization is essential to and precedes the emergence of the state . . . [there]
is a ritual basis to state and imperial governments.
Early Settlers
The presentation and interpretation of the enormous body of data (both
sound and awed) concerning the peopling and early settlement of the
Americas is an enormous challenge, successfully accomplished by Tom
Dillehay, the foremost U.S. scholar of this much-debated period of time,
and Danile Lavalle, a distinguished French archaeologist. The fortuitous
simultaneous publication 1 of their two book-length treatments on this topic
permits a fascinating comparison of approach and perspective between a
leader in the American Andeanist eld and a European who is cognizant of
the dierences between her training and that of her American colleagues.

Review Essays

715

In the preface to her book, Lavalle emphasizes the history of French


scholarship in the Paleolithic periods and the early start of French Americanist research; Lavalles laudatory and almost chauvinistic praise of her
French colleagues is striking. Of special interest is her discussion of the
nature of French prehistory. Prehistory is a very particular term among the
French, referring to the period of time encompassed between the earliest evidence of human existence to the emergence of the rst civilizations.
In contrast, American archaeologists working in the Western Hemisphere
regard prehistory as the entire period of time before the arrival of the Spanish conquerors, the literate Maya notwithstanding.
Of tremendous value in Lavalles book is her rst chapter about the
European discovery and invention of America and the emergence of archaeology as a eld. Her comparison of the European discovery of America to
the Paleo-Indian discovery of the New World is original and fascinating.
I was also struck by the feisty dierence drawn by Lavalle between
contemporary French scholarship and the work of British archaeologists.
In her view, the French honor . . . the primacy of eld data . . . this is doubtless one of the fundamental dierences that separate French archaeologists from our Anglo-Saxon colleagues, in whose eyes the development of a
theoretic framework and of a prior conceptual plan sometimes seems more
important than the examination and confrontation of observed facts (viii).
But because Lavalle eschews theory, the peopling and settlement portion
of her book is less embodied, we could say, than Dillehays treatment (see
especially his chapter 10, The Social and Cognitive Settlers), and therefore less powerful in helping us understand the societies of these early
people and the cultural practices and processes by which these changed.
It is only on page 146 that Lavalle treats us to her dynamic vision of
the changing post-Pleistocene world, speaking eloquently of Neolithization [which] made people, who had hitherto lived as predators on nature,
into manipulators of this nature and the producers of their own food. . . .
[There was] metamorphosis of a space, every part of which was to carry the
imprint of human labor. And on page 207, in the epilogue, Lavalle tosses
out a truly fascinating statement that begs for greater theoretical treatment:
Around 3,500 years ago in the Andean area time speeded up. . . . Within
two and three centuries, the region saw the birth of the high civilizations.
Lavalle says that she conceived of her book not as a textbook or
highly detailed book but as a more general work. Yet in this goal she
has failed in what is actually an excellent volume. The manner of presentation of the material is simultaneously too dense yet too insuciently documented (including use of initials only for the rst names of scholars) to be
fully useful to the general public or the specialist. Although academic, the

716

Review Essays

style of writing is too chatty (with various insider remarks almost nasty
in their tone, e.g., her comment that Anna Roosevelts research was published in Science . . . but also in all top newspapers of the United States in a
very polemical fashion [104]) and too cute (e.g., a section called A Fishy
Tale for the discussion of shtail points). I found the division of the bibliography into chapter references at the end of the book especially frustrating, nor were there sucient references to substantiate the arguments being
made, and her criticism of some colleagues for not knowing the unpublished or inaccessible work of others is unfair.2 The lack of a comprehensive comparative table of radiocarbon measurements is a hindrance since
so many arguments about the peopling of the Americas hinge on dates, and
there is an occasional confusion of b.p. and the rare b.c. date cited (see,
e.g., page 182). Lavalles book would have been a ne textbook had she
modied it slightly to be such.
Dillehays masterful synthesis and critique of the geographically vast
database on early man is all the more notable because the book is so well
writtenengaging in style and accessible to the educated public for whom
it is intended. It is also ideal for an undergraduate course or a graduate-level
survey in which the settlement of the Americas is part of a larger syllabus,
but into which topic one can delve by following out the copious endnotes.
The compilation of radiocarbon measurements and glossary are especially
useful.
It is important to indicate the position of authority from which
Dillehay writes. He is the excavator of Monte Verde, the site in southern
Chile that has revolutionized archaeological understanding of the peopling
and early settlement of the Western Hemisphere by breaking the Clovis barrier. Monte Verde, dated to 12,500 years ago, incontrovertibly proves that
people migrated through their new world thousands of years before hunting late Pleistocene big game at Clovis, New Mexico, 11,200 years ago,
leaving superb projectile points embedded in their prey. The controversy
provoked by Monte Verde, which is presented quite openly in this volume, as it is in Lavalles, lasted for yearsuntil a blue ribbon panel of
experts visited the site and was nally convinced of the validity of Dillehays
assertions.
I especially appreciate Dillehays sensitivity to the larger political
importance of early man research. In the books nal, two-and-a-halfpage section called Histories without places and people without histories
Dillehay considers the signicance of the earliest for modern nationstates as well as the role the descendants of the rst Americans may play
in scholarly debates and in translating archaeological data within their
own communities.3 Not only is this an important message for the general

Review Essays

717

reading public, Dillehays statement sets the eld of peopling and early
settlement fully within the mainstream of contemporary archaeology that
is increasingly interrogating the context and impact of archaeology as a
discursive practice.
Ritual and Religion in Ancient Peru
Since before the turn of the twentieth century, archaeologists of ancient
Peru have been intrigued with the extraordinary material culture of the
region. Iconographically complex pottery, sumptuous textiles, intricately
carved stone, pyroengraved gourds, and wood sculptures depict a seemingly endless array of mythical beings as well as human actors. Some of this
art was found in burials and some in temples, including as integral elements of architecture. It continues to be discovered, whether by scientists
or looters. And almost from the day they arrived in the Andes, the Spanish
conquistadores wrote about the religion, ritual practices, and cosmology
of the Incas with other perspectives being recorded in ethnohistoric documents, including the extirpation of idolatries. All of these varied sources of
information indicate a precolumbian world in which the sacred was everpresent, its forces and representatives needing to be propitiated.
In Between the Lines, a book written for the educated public in an
engaging, highly personal style (overly so for scholars), Anthony Aveni
reiterates his previous publications to present the history of investigations
of one of the great mysteries of the ancient world and his own longtime
encounter with and resolution of that mystery. Aveni and his collaborators
discovered that almost all lines (geoglyphs) on the pampa (desert plain at
Nazca in south coastal Peru) emanated from a center, thereby forming a
radial system of organization on the ground. He argues that the interconnecting pattern of lines were ray centers that functioned as a prototype
for the Inca ceque system.
In an argument with which I fully agree, Aveni says that the lines
served some purpose relating to movement (170). The orderly pattern of
radial lines was ceremonial in nature, with particular stopping places on the
pampa being where oerings were made to the huacas (sacred essences).
Following Michel de Certeau, Aveni conceptualizes walking as a spatial
acting out of place and an appropriation of topography.
The very making of the lines was a social-ritual act. The geoglyphs
were a social space of practice and a venue of pilgrimage. Moreover, the
pampa created two moieties in the river drainage, one to the north and
one to the south of the pampa; in a sense, it coordinated social activity.
Indeed, the pampa was a very complex phenomenom implicating water,

718

Review Essays

walking, astronomy, kinship, divisions of labor and ceremonial responsibility, sweeping [ritual maintenance], radiality (209).
The fundamental value of Avenis book lies in its lucid presentation
of nonsimplistic ideas. He eectively demolishes some of the dominant
simplistic ideas held by the public, such as the extraterrestrial origin of
archaeological mysteries, while presenting viable alternatives. I wish the
book had been published by a commercial press, where its benecial impact
would have been greater.
Ritual Sacrice in Ancient Peru contains some of the most stimulating articles I have read in recent years. Although I would have preferred
a more anthropologically engaged and theoretically informed introductory
chapter (and I see this shortcoming in most chapters, which also explains
why so many end abruptly), Elizabeth Benson eectively contextualizes the
contributions that follow.
Moche is now center stage in the study of sacrice. The stunning series
of recent discoveries of real human sacricial victims and their real humanin-supernatural-pose sacricers have revealed the extraordinary ancient
integration of ritual and political life on the north coast of Peru. Alana
Cordy-Collinss identication of kinds of supernatural decapitators and an
actual human decapitator is very important. The complex arguments in her
other chapter, concerning the Moche priestess, Spondylus shell, and sacrice, will be considered provocative by some readers and overly speculative by others, but always the work of Cordy-Collins delights with its
keen insights and directions for new research. Steve Bourgets discussion
of sacricial events at Huaca de la Luna is exciting beyond words. His
excavations were so expert that he was able to distinguish discrete sacricial events interrupted by torrential rains. Like Cordy-Collins, Bourget is
also extraordinarily skilled in iconographic interpretation. John Verano, a
superb biological anthropologist, focuses mostly on the abundant Moche
sacricial human remains. His meticulous studies provide invaluable documentation about the deaths and lives of the victims.
As an expert in Paracas and Nasca cultures, I read Mary Frames chapter with an especially critical eye. I am both intrigued by and somewhat
skeptical of her argument that the complex textile imagery of the Paracas
Necropolis bundles represents stages of transformation of the human dead
to the status of mythic ancestors. The greatest obstacle to understanding
the full corpus of Paracas Necropolis materials is the lack of new excavations at the Paracas Necropolis burial ground and its associated habitation
sites and at contemporary sites in neighboring valleys. Similarly, the proximal cause of Nasca trophy head takingvividly represented in Nasca art

Review Essays

719

and well known in physical formis still debated, as explained by Donald


Proulx in his careful consideration of ritual and warfare. Archaeologists
disagree about the degree to which conditions of warfare are represented
in the actual Nasca settlement patternsand more eldwork is needed.
Cooks chapter is a tour-de-force integration of theory, eld data, and
iconographic interpretation that leads to a nuanced reconstruction of Huari
political development. Her chapter is important for Andeanists because
she identies a specic burial ritual and cosmology and their architectural
manifestation at Huari sites. All scholars of social complexity and the emergence of complex societies should read this piece.
Length has nothing to do with quality, as proven by Urtons dazzling
gem of a book, Inca Myths. In a mere eighty pages (including abundant
illustrations), Urton provides an accessible yet scholarly overview of the
precolumbian civilizations leading up to the Inca Empire, the political organization of that empire, the social organization of the Inca (and Andean)
peoples, the sources available to scholars for the study of Inca myths, and
Inca mythology, religion, and cosmology. Of particular merit is Urtons
discussion of the local, state, and cosmic themes uniting Inca myths and
his consideration of Inca-contemporary coastal and provincial mythologies. Synthesizing one of his earlier books, Urton also presents the very
important issue of the ethnic Incas political manipulations of myth, both in
their times and under Spanish rule. This book is ideal for the educated public, undergraduates, graduate students, and Andeanist and non-Andeanist
scholars.
Bauer and Stanish, two of the most accomplished archaeologists working in the Andes today, present a case study of Inca mythology actualized in the real built environment: the archaeological and ethnohistorically
informed evidence for ritual and pilgrimage on the Islands of the Sun and
Moon in Lake Titicaca. The book is tremendously important for its demonstration of how the Inca state co-opted an existing pilgrimage shrine
and created a pan-Andean pilgrimage, thereby legitimating Inca political
domination. Inca political legitimacy and the ideology of the Inca state were
inseparable and were made material in the pilgrimage: the pilgrims traveled through a sacred landscape, but the panorama, both physical and ideological, was lled with symbols of the state (249). Bauer and Stanishs
anthropological discussion of pilgrimage will appeal to the nonspecialist as
well. Because the book is lavishly illustrated, the reader can almost experience the pilgrimage. The University of Texas Press is to be congratulated
for its high-quality physical production of this book and the other UTP
books reviewed in this essay.

720

Review Essays

The Late Pre-Hispanic Period


I considered the Incas in the context of religion and ritual above (Urton,
Bauer and Stanish). In this section of the review essay, I discuss The Inca
World, an edited volume whose authors examine several of the societies
conquered by the Incas and the Inca state itself. Originally published in
Italy, this is an updated translation. With its glorious color plates, it could
be mistaken for a coee-table book for the educated layperson. But this
is an academic publication, several of whose chapters are appropriate for
classroom adoption in a course reader. The chapter bibliographies at the
end of the volume are a valuable reference tool through 1998 in the case of
the most up-dated contribution (Shimada).
Ramiro Matos Medieta, a distinguished Peruvian archaeologist, provides a concise and very useful summary of the chiefdom-level (seoro)
societies of the highlands and central coast. Izumi Shimada covers the north
coast societies before their conquest by the Incas on the basis of his many
years of magnicent eldwork in Lambayeque (previously reported in a
series of excellent publications) and the Chim eldwork of other ne
scholars. He is but briey able to treat the important Chincha seoro,
which was recently investigated by Craig Morris, the renowned Inca specialist, because the data from that project are as yet unpublished. Of special
importance is Duccio Bonavias treatment of the poorly known societies of
the eastern slopes of the Andes, a rugged, heavily vegetated landscape often
overlooked in Central Andean archaeology. Bonavia conducted pioneering
research in this region more than thirty years ago, and since that time more
and more evidence is amassing that indicates that Central Andean peoples
of the coast and highlands and the inhabitants of this region had important
contacts.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the immediately pre-Inca political landscape is how varied it was, from powerful conquest states such as
the Chim (very well investigated) to far smaller and simpler societies, as
in the former Huari heartland (virtually uninvestigated). Matoss chapter
is especially important reading for anyone wishing a quick overview of this
dense ethnic/political mosaic for the lesser-known groups of the highlands.
The area maps on page 38 that locate the many societies and the detailed
identication key and table on page 39 are as valuable as Matoss text.
How the Incas arose and came to conquer and administer this extraordinarily diverse region is one of the driving questions of Andean archaeology. In Inca myth, at least, the story begins with the Incas suprise victory
over an invading Chanca army, their mortal enemies at the dawn of the
empire. The historicity and nature of Chanca society is a topic of major

Review Essays

721

importance. Bonavias second chapter in this volume, about the Chanca,


provides an analysis that will need to be reconsidered when Brian Bauer
completes his new project in Andahuaylas, the alleged home of the Chanca.
At present, Bonavia legitimately writes on the basis of the only information available to him. Also important in this chapter is the discussion of
Inca origins in the Cuzco region itself. Here, too, we will need to consider
the results of other research projects, currently underway, that are providing dierent views of the chronological, cultural, and political relationships
among the various pre-Inca entities.
The Inca state itself is treated by Mara Rostworowski, the great Peruvian ethnohistorian whose writings on the Inca and other precolumbian
societies are well known to all Andeanists. Here Rostworowski provides
a cogent and necessarily brief summary of the main themes of her own
research: the mytho-historical Incas, the principle of asymmetrical reciprocity that lubricated state relations with the governed, power and succession in the Inca state, the extraordinarily complex and rich Inca religion,
the quipu as an accounting device, the moiety system that created a dual
power system, the economic organization of the empire from a highland
perspective, and the opposing coastal model of labor specialization that has
been a much-heralded argument of the author.
The inclusion of Jean-Pierre Protzens study of Inca architecture, again
in necessarily abbreviated form, ts quite well conceptually and artistically
with this particular volume. Protzen summarizes his important understandings about the built environment as a work of technology, cognition as
expressed in design principles and site planning, and aesthetics. Above all,
the Incas created an architecture and landscape of state power. The Incas
and their late prehispanic predecessors also produced a large corpus of
portable art, a sample of which is discussed by Cecilia Bkula in her
two brief chapters. A short chapter on the quipu by the volumes editor is
relevant to Gary Urtons (1998 inter alia) current work on the quipu as a
literary device.
Common Themes and Divergences
As dierent as these seven books are, various ones of them share certain
features that reect some of the intellectual suites operative in Andeanist and, especially, American Andeanist archaeology today. One of these
is area and cultural delimitation. Even in the two books dealing with the
peopling and settlement of the Americas on a continental scale, scholars
see in the archaeological record the emergence of cultural traditions. These
began to coalesce after approximately 2500 b.c. to eventually become

722

Review Essays

recognized as culture areas and, within them, particular cultures of ever


more discrete social formations. The cultural area scheme is still strongly
embedded in the archaeological research of American scholars.
Another intellectual suite is relative chronology as an organizing scheme.
The inuence of culture history in particular, the evolutionary inuence of
processual archaeology on Andean archaeology in general, and the eect
of U.S. academic culture (one must be a specialist in something) are such
that it is still most common for American archaeologists to organize their
research and publications in terms of a particular archaeological culture
and time period for which certain problems, largely empirical, must be
solved.
At the same time, there is a growing interest in theoretical issues across
archaeological cultures and ancient societies. Thus, it is salutary to see a
volume such as Ritual Sacrice in Ancient Peru, which, although its coverage could have been wider and its theoretical treatment more explicit and
pervasive, nevertheless has chosen a major issue (the role of ritual sacrice in political development and maintenance) rather than time period or
single archaeological culture as its focus.
Andean studies themselves constitute an intellectual suite, and as such
the charge has been made that Andeanists, especially American Andeanists (working archaeologically and ethnographically), essentialize and fail
to see the broader signicance of our work. In the ethnographic domain,
Orin Starns (1991 inter alia) criticism has been eectively countered by
Thomas Turino (1996) and Enrique Mayer (1992). In terms of archaeology,
William Isbell and Helaine Silverman (2002a, 2002b) have criticized Starn
and explicitly indicated the burgeoning theoretical engagement of the eld.
As this selection of books clearly indicates, there are vibrant dierent traditions and kinds of scholarship in Andean research. Here we have
seen the dierence between French and American approaches to the very
ancient past. We also can identify the strong structuralist lens of scholars such as Gary Urton and Anita Cook, in comparison to the more processual research of Brian Bauer and Charles Stanish. Avenis book and
Protzens chapter exemplify the important contributions to Andean archaeology made by nonarchaeologists.
Finally, I would like to indicate the important role of edited books in
Andean archaeology. They are, in reality, the journals of this eld. In the
absence of a major prestigious agship area journal, such as Ancient Mesoamerica (published by Cambridge University Press), and given the limited
capacity of Latin American Antiquity, it is peer-reviewed edited volumes
whether organized by problem or culture/time periodthat have become
the major venue for data presentation, debate, and the testing of theory in

Review Essays

723

Andean studies. The fact that I was able to review only seven of the total
number of Andean archaeology books published in the United States in a
mere three years 4 indicates how very active and prolic Andeanist researchers are.
Notes
1 Lavalles book was rst published in French in 1995. She states that the text
has been altered slightly with a view to a North American audience . . . and, as
far as possible, to update it (viiviii).
2 For example, on page126, Lavalle says that Rosa Fung had already put forward
this hypothesis three years earlier while admitting that the article remained
unpublished for a long time. In point of fact, the volume in which the article
was nally published had a miniscule printing and a distribution restricted to
purchase in Quito and Guayaquil.
3 It would have been worthwhile for Dillehay to use the case of Kennewick Man
in this concluding section of the book.
4 The books reviewed here were published in 1999, 2000, and 2001. Some of the
other volumes in Andean archaeology published in the United States in the same
years were Niles 1999, Julien 2000, DAltroy and Hastorf 2001, and Pillsbury
2001. These were not received by Ethnohistory and, consequently, not sent to me
for review. All but the last concern the Inca. Pillsbury 2001 is a major edited
volume on the new Moche scholarship.

References
Cook, Anita G.
2001
Huari D-Shaped Structures, Sacricial Oerings, and Divine Rulership.
In Ritual Sacrice in Ancient Peru. Elizabeth P. Benson and Anita G.
Cook, eds. Pp. 13763. Austin: University of Texas Press.
DAltroy, Terence N., and Christine A. Hastorf
2001
Empire and Domestic Economy. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Isbell, William H., and Helaine Silverman
2002a Theorizing Variations in Andean Sociopolitical Organization. In Andean Archaeology, vol. 1, Variations in Sociopolitical Organization.
William H. Isbell and Helaine Silverman, eds. Pp. 311. New York:
Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
2002b Writing the Andes with a Capital A. In Andean Archaeology,
vol. 1, Variations in Sociopolitical Organization. William H. Isbell and
Helaine Silverman, eds. Pp. 37180. New York: Kluwer Academic/
Plenum.
Julien, Catherine
2000
Reading Inca History. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.
Mayer, Enrique
1992
Peru in Deep Trouble: Mario Vargas Llosas Inquest in the Andes
Reexamined. In Rereading Cultural Anthropology. George E. Marcus,
ed. Pp. 181219. Durham, nc: Duke University Press.

724

Review Essays

Niles, Susan A.
1999
The Shape of Inca History: Narrative and Architecture in an Andean
Empire. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.
Pillsbury, Joanne
2001
Moche Art and Archaeology in Ancient Peru. New Haven, ct: Yale University Press.
Starn, Orin
1991
Missing the Revolution: Anthropologists and the War in Peru. Cultural
Anthropology 6: 6391.
Turino, Thomas
1996
From Essentialism to the Essential: Pragmatics and Meaning of Puneo
Sikuri Performace in Lima. In Cosmologa y msica en los Andes.
Max Baumann, ed. Pp. 46982. Vervuert, Spain: Bibliotheca IberoAmericana.
Urton, Gary
1998
From Knots to Narratives: Reconstructing the Art of Historical Record
Keeping in the Andes from Spanish Transcriptions of Inka Khipus.
Ethnohistory 45: 40938.

You might also like