[PDF] Inca Rituals And Sacred Mountains eBook

Author : Johan Reinhard
Publisher : Cotsen Institute of Archaeology
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 28,23 MB
Release : 2010
Category : History
ISBN :

GET BOOK

The Incas carried out some of the most dramatic ceremonies known to us from ancient times. Groups of people walked hundreds of miles across arid and mountainous terrain to perform them on mountains over 6,096 m (20,000 feet) high. The most important offerings made during these pilgrimages involved human sacrifices (capacochas). Although Spanish chroniclers wrote about these offerings and the state sponsored processions of which they were a part, their accounts were based on second-hand sources, and the only direct evidence we have of the capacocha sacrifices comes to us from archaeological excavations. Some of the most thoroughly documented of these were undertaken on high mountain summits, where the material evidence has been exceptionally well preserved. In this study we describe the results of research undertaken on Mount Llullaillaco (6,739 m/22,109 feet), which has the world's highest archaeological site. The types of ruins and artifact assemblages recovered are described and analyzed. By comparing the archaeological evidence with the chroniclers' accounts and with findings from other mountaintop sites, common patterns are demonstrated; while at the same time previously little known elements contribute to our understanding of key aspects of Inca religion. This study illustrates the importance of archaeological sites being placed within the broader context of physical and sacred features of the natural landscape.

Author : Johan Reinhard
Publisher : Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press
Page : 201 pages
File Size : 22,55 MB
Release : 2007-12-31
Category : History
ISBN : 1938770927

GET BOOK

Machu Picchu, recently voted one of the New Wonders of the World, is one of the world's most famous archaeological sites, yet it remains a mystery. Even the most basic questions are still unanswered: What was its meaning and why was it built in such a difficult location? Renowned explorer Johan Reinhard attempts to answer such elusive questions from the perspectives of sacred landscape and archaeoastronomy. Using information gathered from historical, archaeological, and ethnographical sources, Reinhard demonstrates how the site is situated in the center of sacred mountains and associated with a sacred river, which is in turn symbolically linked with the sun's passage. Taken together, these features meant that Machu Picchu formed a cosmological, hydrological, and sacred geological center for a vast region.

Author : Edwin Bernbaum
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 429 pages
File Size : 26,61 MB
Release : 2022-03-10
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1108892493

GET BOOK

From the Andes to the Himalayas, mountains have an extraordinary power to evoke a sense of the sacred. In the overwhelming wonder and awe that these dramatic features of the landscape awaken, people experience something of deeper significance that imbues their lives with meaning and vitality. Drawing on his extensive research and personal experience as a scholar and climber, Edwin Bernbaum's Sacred Mountains of the World takes the reader on a fascinating journey exploring the role of mountains in the mythologies, religions, history, literature, and art of cultures around the world. Bernbaum delves into the spiritual dimensions of mountaineering and the implications of sacred mountains for environmental and cultural preservation. This beautifully written, evocative book shows how the contemplation of sacred mountains can transform everyday life, even in cities far from the peaks themselves. Thoroughly revised and updated, this new edition considers additional sacred mountains, as well as the impacts of climate change on the sacredness of mountains.

Author : Frank M. Meddens
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 28,90 MB
Release : 2014
Category : Andes Region
ISBN : 9781909492059

GET BOOK

A collection of conference papers which present the principles and functions of ushnus, Inca sacred spaces, through history, archaeology and anthropology.

Author : Johan Reinhard
Publisher : National Geographic Books
Page : 418 pages
File Size : 50,52 MB
Release : 2006
Category : History
ISBN : 9780792259121

GET BOOK

This book takes armchair adventurers and archaeological enthusiasts not only to the excavation, but back through Peruvian history as it revisits the 1995 discovery of the mummy of a 14-year-old who died or was sacrificed some 530 years ago.

Author : Terence N. D'Altroy
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 578 pages
File Size : 17,61 MB
Release : 2014-05-27
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1444331159

GET BOOK

The Incas is a captivating exploration of one of the greatest civilizations ever seen. Seamlessly drawing on history, archaeology, and ethnography, this thoroughly updated new edition integrates advances made in hundreds of new studies conducted over the last decade. • Written by one of the world’s leading experts on Inca civilization • Covers Inca history, politics, economy, ideology, society, and military organization • Explores advances in research that include pre-imperial Inca society; the royal capital of Cuzco; the sacred landscape; royal estates; Machu Picchu; provincial relations; the khipu information-recording technology; languages, time frames, gender relations, effects on human biology, and daily life • Explicitly examines how the Inca world view and philosophy affected the character of the empire • Illustrated with over 90 maps, figures, and photographs

Author : Thomas Besom
Publisher : UNM Press
Page : 330 pages
File Size : 48,2 MB
Release : 2013-04-15
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0826353088

GET BOOK

The Inka empire was the largest pre-Columbian polity in the New World. Its vast expanse, its ethnic diversity, and the fact that the empire may have been consolidated in less than a century have prompted much scholarly interest in its creation. In this study, Besom explores the ritual practices of human sacrifice and the worship of mountains, attested in both archaeological investigations and ethnohistorical sources, as tools in the establishment and preservation of political power. Besom examines the relationship between symbols, ideology, ritual, and power to demonstrate how the Cuzqueños could have used rituals to manipulate common Andean symbols to uphold their authority over subjugated peoples. He considers ethnohistoric accounts of the categories of human sacrifice to gain insights into related rituals and motives, and reviews the ethnohistoric evidence of mountain worship to predict locations as well as motives. He also analyzes specific archaeological sites and assemblages, theorizing that they were the locations of sacrifices designed to assimilate subject peoples, bind conquered lands to the state, and/or justify the extraction of local resources.

Author : Adam Herring
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 263 pages
File Size : 21,39 MB
Release : 2015-05-22
Category : Art
ISBN : 1107094364

GET BOOK

This book offers a new, art-historical interpretation of pre-contact Inca culture and power and includes over sixty color images.

Author : Jonathan Pitches
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 319 pages
File Size : 34,77 MB
Release : 2020-04-02
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 1137556013

GET BOOK

Launching the landmark Performing Landscapes series, Performing Mountains brings together for the first time Mountain Studies and Performance Studies in order to examine an international selection of dramatic responses to mountain landscapes. Moving between different registers of writing, the book offers a critical assessment of how the cultural turn in landscape studies interacts with the practices of environmental theatre and performance. Conceived in three main parts, it begins by unpicking the layers of disciplinary complexity in both fields, before surveying the rich history and practice of rituals, playtexts and site specific works inspired by mountains. The last section moves to a unique analysis of mountains themselves using key concepts from performance: training, scenography, acting and spectatorship. Threaded throughout is a very personal tale of mountain research, offering a handrail or alternative guide through the book.

Author : Fausto Sarmiento
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 278 pages
File Size : 12,71 MB
Release : 2017-06-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1785333976

GET BOOK

This book presents current research in the political ecology of indigenous revival and its role in nature conservation in critical areas in the Americas. An important contribution to evolving studies on conservation of sacred natural sites (SNS), the book elucidates the complexity of development scenarios within cultural landscapes related to the appropriation of religion, environmental change in indigenous territories, and new conservation management approaches. Indigeneity and the Sacred explores how these struggles for land, rights, and political power are embedded within physical landscapes, and how indigenous identity is reconstituted as globalizing forces simultaneously threaten and promote the notion of indigeneity.