ME3222 INCA CIVILIZATION AND ITS DESTRUCTION
   
Lecturer Professor Chris Given-Wilson (Room 5, 71 South Street)
   
Credits 30
   
Availability 2009-2010, semester 2
   
Class Hour Friday 11 - 1, New Seminar Room
   
Description The Inca Empire (Tahuantinsuyu) dominated the Andean region for about a century before the Spanish Conquest. Its creation and consolidation were the achievement of three great rulers (Incas) who held sway in the Andes from the 1430s to the 1520s: Pachacuti, Topa, and Huayna Capac. The aim of this module is to study the society, religion, art and political and military organization of this empire, partly through the post-Conquest written sources, and partly through the architecture and artefacts left by the conquered indigenous population. It also asks how Pizarro, with less than 200 conquistadors, succeeded in 1532 in conquering an empire of some eight million people.
   
Basic Reading
  • T. D'Altroy, The Incas (Oxford, 2002)
  • M. Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, History of the Inca Realm (Cambridge, 1999)
  • Juan de Betanzos, Narrative of the Incas, ed. and trans. R.Hamilton and D. Buchanan (Austin 1996)
  • N. Davies, The Incas (London, 1995)
   

Course Structure

One two-hour meeting per week
   
Assessment 60% examination – one 3-hour paper
40% course work – three pieces of work,one of which may be an oral assessment
   

Learning Outcomes
  • Understanding of a famous civilization
  • Understanding of historical and anthropological approaches
 
   
Restrictions None