Emphasizing the reciprocal influences of European and Andean peoples, the contributors to this volume examine the formation of a colonial society in sixteenth-century South America. Together these eight outstanding essays by specialists in anthropology, history, art history, and literary studies are a model interdisciplinary forum in Andean and colonial studies.

The authors explore the Old World background to the cultural encounter; the key political, social, and economic forces at work in shaping the Andean landscape; the transformation and hybridization of Inca symbolism; and the ways in which Andeans and Europeans came to interpret the emerging colonial society.