The Shape of Inca History: Narrative and Architecture in an Andean Empire - Tapa dura

Reseña del editor

Considers how the Inca concept of history informed their narratives, rituals and architecture. Using 16th-century chronicles of Inca culture, legal documents and field investigation of architectural remains, the book explores the interplay of oral/written histories with the architectural record.

Reseña del editor

In The Shape of Inca History, Susan Niles considers the ways in which the Inca concept of history informed their narratives, rituals, and architecture. Using sixteenth-century chronicles of Inca culture, legal documents from the first generation of conquest, and field investigation of architectural remains, she strategically explores the interplay of oral and written histories with the architectural record and provides a new and exciting understanding of the lives of the royal families on the eve of conquest.

Niles focuses on the life of Huayna Capac, the Inca king who ruled at the time of the first European incursions on the Andean coast. Because he died just a few years before the Spaniards overturned the Inca world, eyewitness accounts of his deeds as recorded by the invaders can be used to separate fact from propaganda. The rich documentary sources telling of his life include extraordinarily detailed legal records that inventory lands on his estate in the Yucay Valley. These sources provide a basis -- unique in the Andes -- for reconstructing the social and physical plan of the estate and for dating its construction exactly.