{"product_id":"empires-of-the-dead-inca-mummies-and-the-peruvian-ancestors-of-american-anthropology-9780197542552","title":"Empires of the Dead: Inca Mummies and the Peruvian Ancestors of American Anthropology","description":"When the Smithsonian's Hall of Physical Anthropology opened in 1965 it featured 160 Andean skulls affixed to a wall to visualize how the world's human population had exploded since the birth of Christ. Through a history of Inca mummies, a pre-Hispanic surgery called trepanation, and Andean crania like these, \u003cem\u003eEmpires of the Dead\u003c\/em\u003e explains how \"ancient Peruvians\" became the single largest population in the Smithsonian and many other museums in Peru, the Americas, and beyond. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn 1532, when Spain invaded the Inca empire, Europeans learned that Inca and Andean peoples made their ancestors sacred by preserving them with the world's oldest practices of artificial mummification. To extinguish their power, the Spaniards collected these ancestors as specimens of conquest, science, nature, and race. Yet colonial Andean communities also found ways to keep the dead alive, making \"Inca mummies\" a symbol of resistance that Spanish American patriots used to introduce Peruvian Independence and science to the world. Inspired, nineteenth-century US anthropologists disinterred and collected Andean mummies and skulls to question the antiquity and civilization of the American \"race\" in publications, world's fairs, and US museums. Peruvian scholars then used those mummies and skulls to transform anthropology itself, curating these \"scientific ancestors\" as evidence of pre-Hispanic superiority in healing. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBringing together the history of science, race, and museums' possession of Indigenous remains, from the sixteenth century to the twentieth, \u003cem\u003eEmpires of the Dead\u003c\/em\u003e illuminates how South American ancestors became coveted mummies, skulls, and specimens of knowledge and nationhood. In doing so it reveals how Peruvian and Andean peoples have learned from their dead, seeking the recovery of looted heritage in the centuries before North American museums began their own work of decolonization.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eChristopher Heaney\u003c\/strong\u003e is an Assistant Professor of History at the Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of \u003cem\u003eCradle of Gold: The Story of Hiram Bingham, a Real-Life\u003c\/em\u003e \u003cem\u003eIndiana Jones and the Search for Machu Picchu\u003c\/em\u003e. He has written for the \u003cem\u003eNew Yorker, \u003c\/em\u003e the \u003cem\u003eAtlantic\u003c\/em\u003e, the \u003cem\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/em\u003e, and other publications, and was the co-founder of \u003cem\u003eThe Appendix, \u003c\/em\u003e a journal of narrative and experimental histor\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Oxford University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50644274118930,"sku":"9780197542552","price":37.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_54ef4978-bac6-4188-a426-97207631245d.jpg?v=1733105660","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/empires-of-the-dead-inca-mummies-and-the-peruvian-ancestors-of-american-anthropology-9780197542552","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}