Book Reviews / Colonial Period 109

The Two Faces of Inca History: Dualism in the Narratives and Cosmology of Ancient Cuzco.
By isabel yaya. The Early Americas: History and Culture. Boston: Brill, 2012.
Illustrations. Maps. Figures. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. xii, 296 pp. Cloth, $144.00.

The central premise of Isabel Yaya’s book is explicit in its title: the reexamination of
dualism as the major structuring element of Inca social, political, and cosmological
organization. This is not altogether something newly discovered. It has been understood
to be a constituent Andean feature in one form or another almost since the conquest.
And it has been a subject of interest and dispute for scholars in the last hundred years,
especially in terms of how we understand Inca history as it comes to us through colonial
texts. Disputation arises in part from either a historical or structuralist reading of the
primary sources. Therefore one of the author’s aims is to bring these views into align-
ment so as ‘‘to partly restore the historical quality of pre-Hispanic narratives,’’ because
‘‘Inca historical consciousness, however much forced into foreign categories, permeated
the chronicles and can be recovered in part’’ (p. 17). This does not mean presenting new
data but rather giving a ‘‘comparative literary analysis’’ (p. 17) of Inca dynastic accounts
recorded in colonial writings so that the reader comes to understand that ‘‘the dual
organization model became a vehicle of imperial authority’’ (p. 262). One could argue
that the author’s approach is more hermeneutical, bringing different versions of Inca
dynastic narratives into an interpretive framework based upon an anthropologi-
cal rereading of narrative, ritual, and time calculation. The book is divided into well-
researched and clearly written sections based on these three separate but ultimately
related categories.
The historical nature of Inca dynastic history is the subject of the book’s first part.
The historical dimension embedded in differing accounts is, however, based on the social
structure that organizes Inca Cuzco, the moiety division ofhanan and hurin (‘‘upper’’ and
‘‘lower,’’ respectively). The asymmetrical distribution of prestige, power, and wealth
between these two is at the base of a hierarchical arrangement determining the historical
telling of the Inca dynasty. This is a detailed and complex analysis that warrants close
reading. What is clear is that the interpretation and reinterpretation of the Inca social
system in all its intricacy still remains the fulcrum by which Inca history is to be
understood. The differing accounts of dynastic rule through inheritance and overthrow
are both historical fact and predicated on social structure.
The book’s second part concentrates on how Inca dualism inflects origin myths,
deities, specific rituals, and calendar. The first two, according to Yaya, are intimately
related. She reconciles the two distinct origin accounts, the emergence at Lake Titicaca
and at Tampu T’uqu, by assuming that together they express the antagonisms created
through moiety opposition. This leads to an analysis of the relationship between the two
most important Inca deities, Wiraqucha (creator deity) and Inti (sun god). For Yaya,
Wiraqucha is titular deity of the upper moiety, opposed by the sun deity (P’unchaw) of
Cuzco’s lower moiety.
110 HAHR / February

One of the most revealing assessments about the corpus of data for each of the three
categories of narrative, ritual, and time calculation is how little and contradictory the
information is. Issues of heredity, for example, were tremendously muddled for two
reasons. One, as Yaya notes, is the unfamiliarity of many Spanish chroniclers with the
Andean kinship system, especially as it pertained to Cuzco and its social organization.
The anthropological models to which Yaya submits the diverse chronicles are thus a
difficult fit at times; Yaya must decide which texts to cite and which to exclude, which
means that contradictory or conflicting data are not adequately dealt with. The second
problem is the diversity of opinions about descent patterns in the sixteenth century.
This issue also arises in the author’s interpretation of the Inca ritual warachiku,
which, as she notes, is difficult to understand due to the numerous and contradictory
accounts of it (p. 111). And if this is true for the better-documented rituals, analyzing the
Inca calendar, for which there is ‘‘scant and somewhat discrepant data’’ (pp. 197–200),
becomes even more difficult. Given these limitations, one could argue that the analysis’s
coherence is overdetermined. There is a kind of first cause, dualism, which unites and
explains, and comparisons with other cultures are made based upon anthropological
models found in diverse places such as Hawaii. This certainly is valid, yet given the claim
of reintroducing historical conditions, be they Inca or colonial Inca, the absence of a
broader historical understanding of the Andean data would be important, lest we assume
that the paucity of data and its confusing nature is simply a matter of Spanish incapacity
to understand. However, many chroniclers were also familiar with Mexico, and there our
data is much better understood and recorded. Why this is the case is not explored, but it
would suggest a different and more profound examination of colonial texts concerning
the Inca.
Thus the hermeneutical approach to Andean texts employed in this book reveals just
as many of the interpretive problems that modern scholars encounter as it does means to
interpretation. In this sense, this book is aimed at readers who are either specialists in
Andean, especially Inca, social organization or anthropologists interested in the dynam-
ics of moiety equality and, more importantly, inequality. Yaya has made a real contri-
bution to the literature, one that will further debate and analysis.

thomas b. f. cummins, Harvard University

doi 10.1215/00182168-2390096

Negotiated Settlements: Andean Communities and Landscapes under Inka and Spanish
Colonialism. By steven a. wernke. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013.
Photographs. Illustrations. Maps. Figures. Tables. Appendix. Bibliography. Index. xx,
372 pp. Cloth, $79.95.

In this impressive book, Steven A. Wernke combines archaeological and ethnohistorical

methods to study the Colca Valley in southern Peru. The material spans a 500-year
period from the twelfth to the early seventeenth century, during which the residents of
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