Product Description: The Ancient Central Andes presents a general overview of the prehistoric peoples and cultures of the Central Andes, the region now encompassing most of Peru and significant parts of Ecuador, Bolivia, northern Chile, and northwestern Argentina...read more

Product Description: The glories of Inca and Pre-Columbian South America are vividly captured in this richly illustrated story of the rise and fall of the people of the region. The civilizations superbly imaginative craftsmanship in gold and silver, its beautiful textiles, embroidery, ceramics, and architecture are featured in spectacular color photography...read more

Product Description: This book is the first in more than a decade to provide new information on the Chavín phenomenon of ancient Peru. Thought by some to be the "Mother Culture" of ancient Peruvian cultures, Chavín is remarkable for its baroque, sophisticated art style in a variety of media, including finely carved stone monuments, beautifully formed pottery, and magnificent and complex metallurgy...read more

Product Description: Centuries before the Incas, a number of advanced cultures flourished in the Andes—the Paracas, Nasca, Lambayeque, Moche, and Chimu. This beautifully illustrated book examines the rise and fall of these different peoples and their magnificent legacies of design and craftsmanship...read more

Product Description: The articles in this book conceptualize the ancient New World through new and varied approaches, from iconography to the history of anthropology. The many essays in this volume explore the vast vista of the Pre-Columbian world, including representations of history, memory, and knowledge in Andean visual imagery and Pre-Columbian narrative, the ideology of rain making, and Maya beliefs about animal transformations...read more

Presents a richly illustrated portrait of the rise and fall of various mountain and coastal peoples of the Andes Region, highlighting the imaginative design and craftsmanship of their jewelry, textiles, ceramics, embroidery, and architecture.

Product Description: Life and Death at Paloma, when published in 1989, was the first in-depth treatment of burials from a preagricultural South American village. It remains a valuable resource used by students and scholars of Andean archaeology. Jeffrey Quilter analyzes the life of Paloma's people during the transition from a hunting-gathering-fishing way of life to a more sedentary horticultural society and offers a study of preceramic Peruvian life through his analysis of this site's graves and their contents...read more

Product Description: Jeffrey Quilter analyzes the life of Paloma's people during the transition from a hunting-gathering-fishing way of life to a more sedentary horticultural society and offers a study of preceramic Peruvian life through his analysis of this site's graves and their contents.

Product Description: In this first-person tale of archaeological adventure in the tropical forest, Jeffrey Quilter tells the story of his excavation of Rivas, a great ceremonial center at the foot of the Talamanca Mountain range, which flourished between A...read more

The Inka Empire stretched over much of the length and breadth of the South American Andes, encompassed elaborately planned cities linked by a complex network of roads and messengers, and created astonishing works of architecture and artistry and a compelling mythology—all without the aid of a graphic writing system. Instead, the Inkas' records consisted of devices made of knotted and dyed strings—called khipu—on which they recorded information pertaining to the organization and history of their empire. Despite more than a century of research on these remarkable devices, the khipu remain largely undeciphered.In this benchmark book, twelve international scholars tackle the most vexed question in khipu studies: how did the Inkas record and transmit narrative records by means of knotted strings? The authors approach the problem from a variety of angles. Several essays mine Spanish colonial sources for details about the kinds of narrative encoded in the khipu. Others look at the uses to which khipu were put before and after the Conquest, as well as their current use in some contemporary Andean communities. Still others analyze the formal characteristics of khipu and seek to explain how they encode various kinds of numerical and narrative data.

Product Description: Gender in Pre-Hispanic America offers rich opportunities for comprehending current trends and considering future directions in research. It is unique in that it puts social theory at the forefront of the discussion. The book has a special intellectual presence and contemporary relevance in its engagement with the social lives and constructs of its authors and readers alike...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)