In Empires of the Dead, Christopher Heaney asserts that the development of American anthropology was largely due to the study of hundreds of thousands of “mummies” extracted from Peru’s dry deserts and high mountain caves. The book is organized in three sections (Opening, 1525–1795; Exporting, 1780–1893; Healing, 1863–1965) with three chapters in each. Only the first chapter in Opening discusses Andean funerary customs, mostly of the Inca, though references throughout the volume mention older practices when relevant to Heaney’s larger concerns. Told chronologically, his story quickly moves to Spanish conquerors’ reactions to Andean treatments of their dead and then follows the entanglements with larger cultural, social, and political issues by “mummy” hunters from the early modern era to the mid-twentieth century.
Starting with a review of the earliest mortuary practices by the Chinchorro of far northern Chile (c. 2500 BCE), Heaney quickly turns to the preservation of dead Inca rulers as “living,” wrapped, and feasted “mummies;” the Spanish conquest; and the conquerors’ early reactions to those practices. Much of the book discusses subsequent Euro-American debates on whether the Inca practiced Egyptian mummification or true embalming, a controversy not fully settled until the nineteenth century when natural drying was confirmed as the Peruvian process.
Heaney’s section and chapter themes sometimes cross their boundaries. Much is made of the “racialization” of skeletons commonly wrapped under layers of textiles from Peru’s dry desert coast, and centuries later, often unwrapped at lectures before scientific or paying audiences in Peru, Europe, and the United States. Crania were quickly sought in nineteenth-century scientists’ studies of “types,” as part of the era’s search for classifying and organizing races and cultures in evolutionary sequences. An entire chapter (Trepanning Incas in the Healing section) is devoted to the fascination of medical doctors and scholars with the prehistoric practice of cutting holes in peoples’ skulls to heal physical wounds and spiritual/psychological maladies.
Other themes include the use of Peruvian “mummies” as diplomatic gifts and pawns in academic competitiveness. The former is notable in José de San Martín’s sending of an “Inca Mummy” from Lima to London in 1822, a year after Peruvian independence from Spain. The latter is covered in many examples of the rapaciousness of various agents, from sea captains to military officials to antiquarians, who tore through cemeteries to amass as many bones and skulls as possible for export to museums and collections abroad (especially in Mining Incas). Textiles, jewelry, pottery, and other objects wrapped with the dead often were discarded, sold, or given to others until the development of modern archaeology at the turn of the nineteenth century.
The penultimate chapter, Decapitating Incas, and the final one discuss the remarkable Julio C. Tello (1880–1947), the universally recognized founder of modern Peruvian archaeology and a genius according to many. An Indigenous highlander, he worked his way through the Peruvian race and class system to found modern museums and firmly establish the depth and richness of Peruvian prehistory. Heaney’s review of Tello’s career notes both his political struggles and his scientific contributions.
While the chapters end with Tello’s death and burial in 1947 and his many legacies, an Epilogue summarizes the book and provides a sketch of contemporary contestations over museums’ study and display of the dead. However, Heaney leaves many skeletons in the closet or peers into it only briefly, including the strikingly different attitudes of North American tribes compared with Peruvian Indigenous communities toward human (and other) remains and their display and the destruction of sites and their contents by urban expansion and development. The almost universal under-funding of archaeological and historic patrimony and museums by nations and universities, especially in the New World, is absent and would have deserved mention, although in-depth coverage would have doubled the size of the book.
Heaney’s point that Peruvian “mummy,” bone, and skull collecting was an important component in the development of American anthropology is a valid one in terms of how anthropology was configured in the nineteenth century. The anthropology that developed after the influence of Franz Boas was a very different thing, with its subfields often divergent in their interests and concerns. In addition, studies of Peruvian antiquities were just one among many contributors to Anthropology’s origins. Explorations in Mexico and Central America, the “Moundbuilder Controversy” in the United States, and other foci also played their roles. Nevertheless, it is true that the role of Andean prehistory, both “mummies” and in general, have not received the attention that they deserve in that history. Heaney’s book is thus a welcome addition to that scholarship.
We live in a world in which colonial and imperial assumptions and actions are criticized as wrong, and there is plenty with which to find fault. Julio C. Tello, and now for several decades, archaeologists and museum curators, share such views and are aware of the ironies and contradictions of excavating and studying human remains and artifacts to better know the ancients. Tello considered that he was “disturbing the peace of the necropolis of (Peru’s prehistory), so its mummies could speak” (p. 219). Heaney perhaps wisely avoids entering that discussion, but his book provokes such considerations and leaves it to the reader to decide.
Heaney’s writing is clear and concise, and he has done a considerable amount of research, delving into letters and documents in periodicals and archives to enrich his account. No other volume has been written that so thoroughly discusses the role of the ancient Peruvian dead in scholarship and cultural politics from early modern times to the present. It is a work of solid scholarship, only occasionally referring to details of prehistory or history that may be unfamiliar to many readers. A reference to a Lima museum as a “neo-Tiwanakoid building” would only make sense to a reader familiar with the pre-Inca site and civilization of Tiwanaku (a.k.a. Tiahuanaco), though similar slips are few and far between (p. 209). The reading public’s abysmal knowledge of the prehistory of the New World is as much to blame as any omissions by Heaney.
