Daily Life in the Inca Empire

Up to now, little has been known about the life of the ordinary Inca during the Inca empire―earlier works describe only the culture of the ruling class. Based on the most recent scholarship, this book reconstructs the daily life not only of the ruling class but of the rest of society, including the conquered peoples, and features contrasting chapters on a day in the life of an Inca family and a day in the life of a conquered family. Over 50 illustrations and photographs of Inca life, artifacts, and archaeological sites bring the social, political, economic, religious, and cultural aspects of Inca civilization to life. Everything from life cycle events to food and drink, dress and ornaments, recreation, religious rituals, the calendar, and the unique Inca form of taxation are fully described and illustrated in the most comprehensive coverage of the Inca way of life to date.

For ease of use by students, the work is organized into chapters covering all aspects of life: military and warfare, government, language, class structure, work and the economy, engineering and architecture, housing, transportation, family life, life cycle events, women's roles, art, music and dance, literature, science, and religion. It includes a historical timeline of Inca history, a glossary of Inca terms, and a bibliography for further reading. Throughout the work, Malpass, an expert on the Inca, shows how they created the largest empire in the western hemisphere prior to European conquest and describes the threat of their destruction by development and looting. This work will replace all earlier resources on Inca life and will provide school and public librarians with the most up-to-date and historically correct information on the Inca.

MICHAEL A. MALPASS is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York. He has been actively engaged in archaeological research in Peru since 1980./e His research interests include the early occupations of western South America, the evolution of agricultural systems in the Andes, the Huari state, and the impact of the Inca state on Andean people. He is the author of Provincial Inca: Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Assessment of the Impact of the Inca State (1993).