The Shape of Inca History: Narrative and Architecture in an Andean Empire (review)

The Shape of Inca History: Narrative and Architecture in an Andean Empire. By Susan A. Niles. (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999. xviii + 336 pp., prefaces, introduction, maps, illustrations, notes, glossary, bibliography, index. $49.95 cloth.)

For decades Andean scholars have disagreed sharply over whether the narratives written about the Inca past after the Spaniards arrived in Cuzco have any historical content. Can these stories be read as history, or are they myths? Susan Niles proposes a way out of the myth versus history conundrum by learning to read the architecture in light of the narratives and by placing the narratives into the analytical framework of folklore. She chooses Huayna Capac as a focus for this enterprise, since the style associated with him brackets the years of the Spanish arrival. The buildings are there in real time and space, and their historicity is undeniable.

“It should be possible,” writes Niles, “to characterize the architectural style that prevailed during a particular reign, especially when we are looking at the works commissioned for royal use, such as those found in a palace or on a royal estate” (263). As she notes, those who study Inca architecture often see it solely as an ahistorical and anonymous expression of the administrative needs of the state. The body of constructions associated with particular rulers and their corporations, or panacas, is more expressive, she argues, of the identity of a particular ruler and his time. Just as the Escorial unmistakably expressed Philip II’s vision of his dynasty’s grandeur and punctuated the evolution of an imperial architectural style, particular Inca constructions were emblematic of their time and builders. Of the constructions that can be associated with Huayna Capac, Quispiguanca in the Yucay valley was, according to Niles, the main stylistic event in a period of architectural innovation. To be in a position to make such an assertion, Niles has acquired a truly impressive working knowledge of sites associated with Inca rulers, building on earlier studies of estates at Calca and Callachaca. Her work has much in common with Jean-Pierre Protzen’s on Ollantaytambo.

The book is divided between a study of Inca historical narrative (chaps. 1–4) and an analysis of the architecture associated with Huayna Capac (chaps. 5–9). Niles first proposes to read the narratives as legend (told as true, believed as true, and set in time with real characters). As a class of genres, folklore can expand to incorporate anything, while history has been more narrowly interpreted. Also, folklore has been much more open than history to looking at the performative aspects of representation. To set the stage for her claim that architecture can be a form of historical representation, she first opens up the category history by reading the written sources for any and all manifestations of the historical demiurge.

Actually, the written sources Niles uses are far more varied than the reference to Inca historical narratives would suggest. These are narratives about the prehispanic past composed by authors working in Spanish who collected their material from Inca sources; often these are called chronicles, but wrongly so, since their authors were not on hand to witness the events. Some of these narratives drew from Inca historical genres; others are more complex compositions. Those who wrote in the early decades after the Spanish arrival collected other kinds of information about the Incas—for example, about religious practices—and often, though not always, wrote in narrative form. Administrative reports could also take a narrative form, even when an administrator responded to a questionnaire, though most administrative documentation was not given narrative form. Andean specialists commonly treat this diverse body of written material as if it were a single corpus of sources about the Incas. The narratives are her primary sources in the first chapters of her book, but when Niles turns to the subject of Huayna Capac’s estates, they play second fiddle to administrative...