For its first 350 years, the field of Inca studies relied almost exclusively on documents produced by Spanish and Andean authors in the first century following the Conquest. Nearly a century ago the German archaeologist Max Uhle advocated the collection of archaeological data to explore known inaccuracies in the documentary record, and to clarify the relationship between the Inca Empire and earlier Andean civilizations (Uhle 1912), but such a project has yet to be fully realized, despite great advances in Inca archaeology and historiography. Detailed descriptions of life in and around the Inca capital of Cuzco just before the Spanish invasion have often made the collection of archaeological data seem counterintuitive, and such data too often have been subordinated to Colonial documents that are fragmentary, biased, and frequently not germane to the study of non-elite or provincial contexts.
Handbook of South American Archaeology, edited by Helaine Silverman and William H. Isbell.
Springer, New York, 2008
Figure 40.1. Territory of Tawantinsuyu (the Inca empire), showing the Inca highway and its infrastructural architecture.
Fortunately, Inca archaeology has begun to grow into its full potential in the past century and is now in a position to stand independently from the documentary record. Moreover, decades of excavation and survey throughout the Andean region have improved our understanding of life outside of the imperial heartland, while recent projects within
The Inca heartland itself have gathered sufficient evidence for the story of the Incas to be recounted in the same way as the other Andean civilizations discussed in this volume— working forward in time using archaeological data, rather than projecting backward into the mists of Inca mythohistory using Colonial documents.
World History
