Callachaca
"The scholarship is superb; [Niles] clearly controls the literature and uses it well. The fieldwork appears excellent as well…I regard this as a real gem: small, brilliant, and valuable…A very well written blend of ethnohistory, archaeology, and ethnography."—Donald E. Thompson
Inca constructions, designed to conform to a state aesthetic, reveal the worldview of these masters of social and architectural engineering. In her meticulous analysis of Callachaca—the fifteenth-century estate of the royal Amaro Topa Inca and his retainers near the ancient capital of Cuzco—Susan Niles shows us that the physical order seen in this planned community reflects the Inca vision of an appropriate social order.
Callachaca: Style and Status in an Inca Community will be valuable reading for archaeologists, art historians, geographers, architects with an interest in pre-Columbian cultures, landscape architects, anthropologists, folklorists, and historians with a special interest in the Andes. Since she focuses on all the varied architectural remains at one site in the Inca heartland, Niles provides a unique model for examining royal Inca architecture and society.
1. An Introduction to Callachaca
2. Home and Community
3. Special-Purpose Architecture
4. Land and Water
5. Shrines and Holy Places
6. Style and Status in Inca Design