Empires of the Dead : : Inca Mummies and the Peruvian Ancestors of American Anthropology

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Introduction: Death's Heads: Humanity's Peruvian Ancestors at the Smithsonian -- Part 1. Opening, 1525-1795. Curing Incas: Andean Lifeways and the Pre-Hispanic Imperial Dead -- Embalming Incas: Huayna Capac's Yllapa and the Spanish Collection of Empire -- Mummifying Incas: Colonial Grave-Opening and the Racialization of Ancient Peru -- Part 2. Exporting, 1780-1893. Trading Incas: San Martín's Mummy and the Peruvian Independence of the Andean Dead -- Mismeasuring Incas: Samuel George Morton and the American School of Peruvian Skull Science -- Mining Incas: The Peruvian Necropolis at the World's Fairs -- Part 3. Healing, 1863-1965. Trepanning Incas: Ancient Peruvian Surgery and American Anthropology's Monroe Doctrine -- Decapitating Incas: Julio César Tello and Peruvian Anthropology's Healing -- The Three Burials of Julio César Tello; or, Skull Walls Revisited -- Epilogue: Afterlives: Museums of the American Inca.
"When the Smithsonian Institution's first Hall of Physical Anthropology opened in 1965, the first thing visitors saw were 160 Andean skulls fixed to the wall like a mushroom cloud. Empires of the Dead explains that Skull Wall's origins, and this introduction establishes its scope: a history from 1532 to the present of how the collection of Inca mummies, Andean crania, and a pre-Hispanic surgery named trepanation made "ancient Peruvians" the single largest population in the Smithsonian and many other museums in Peru, the Americas, and the world. This introduction argues that the Hall of Physical Anthropology displayed these collections while hiding their foundation on Indigenous, Andean, and Peruvian cultures of healing and science. These "Peruvian ancestors" of American anthropology reveal the importance of Indigenous and Latin American science and empire to global history, and their relevance to debates over museums and Indigenous human remains today"-- Provided by publisher.

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