Kevin Lane’s The Inca sits in the Reaktion Books Lost Civilizations series. The book’s eight chapters provide the reader with a comprehensive understanding of the Andean setting of the Inca state; its expansion to empire, ideology, technology, power structures and economic base as well as its eventual demise under the impact of sixteenth-century Spanish conquistadors are given careful attention.
The text reveals how the Inca emerged out of earlier pre-Hispanic cultures. It succeeds in presenting much of the otherness of Inca culture. This distinctiveness in the manner the Incas and their indigenous contemporaries thought of and expressed themselves culturally is meticulously described and explained. The Incas lived in a material world which to them was animated and alive. Their ancestors remained an ever-present part of their lives who, like other sacred entities in their environment, required continuous attention and regular feeding. They could be and were consulted, participated in decision-making and endured. The Inca domain was filled with sacred entities comprising huacas, apus and oracles with an ability to talk, which were represented by natural places in the landscape such as lakes, mountains, springs, caves, rocks and trees, as well as man-made elements including temples and mortuary monuments and natural phenomena such as rain, hail, lightning, wind, the sun, stars and the moon.
The author manages to provide the reader with a clear and comprehensive understanding of the manner in which the Incas established themselves and negotiated and conquered their empire. The logistical success of their imperial road network (or Capac Ñan) is described in some detail and Lane considers how this allowed the Incas to control and manage their enterprise, which stretched across parts of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina. Similarly, thought is given to the empire’s agricultural infrastructure, terracing, irrigation systems and camelid herding and the way this was all managed.
The Spanish conquest and its impact on the Indigenous population, in which imported diseases and the colonisers’ drive to Christianisation played a major role, are recounted. Usefully this volume also contextualises how Inca culture is framed in present day Peru and the fashion in which it remains current and important to the Andes’ contemporary inhabitants.
This book succeeds in reproducing an Inca perspective of how this nation lived, and died, and resisted conquest and acculturation. The volume makes extensive use of a wide range of sources, including archaeological, anthropological and ethnohistoric material, producing a multidisciplinary perspective of the subject matter. Lane has an evocative turn of phrase, and this book significantly develops our grasp of Inca cosmology and ontology. This volume will be particularly useful for students and those interested in a general understanding of Inca culture.
