Ancient Inca (Case Studies in Early Societies)

This well researched, professionally written text is up to date (2013) with respect to findings and chock full of detail, including, in some cases, useful photographs and/or schematic drawings. Not at all limited to predictable references to well known historical details, this book attempts with some considerable success to elaborate explanations or theoretical accounts for the considerable strangeness of what we know about Inca society in ancient times. It will not allow readers to content themselves with inserting our modern and Western presuppositions about institutional categories (e.g. church, state, economy, etc.), but recasts these into a model that is simultaneously more integrated (and more complex for us, due to its strangeness, its distance in time, and its distortions created by the imposition of the Spanish conquistadors and Roman Catholic Church. Read it slowly to absorb the richness of its detail. First class!

I follow Alan Kolata's work in South America and have for years. His work on Tiwanaku and Bolivia is unparalleled. Now, he does a capstone review of the Inca which is essential reading for professionals and amateurs (like me). In the last twenty years, so much work has been done in Bolivia, Chile, coastal Peru, pre-Inca and the Inca. It was time for this overview of the material. As always, there are recommendations for how the work must go forward, as well.