As mentioned earlier, we anticipate that this encyclopedia will be translated into
Spanish in the future, at which time we will work with the authors to provide
additional (or alternative) Spanish-language references. We have also provided
website addresses for relevant online resources.
Finally, readers will find a comprehensive index at the end of the encyclopedia.
The index lists not only entries in the encyclopedia, but also names or terms
relating to other items of possible interest mentioned and discussed in one or
another of the entries, but that may not themselves be subjects of an entry. In the
index, we have also provided the range of different spellings that one may
encounter for a given term in the two major orthographic systems found in
source materials (see the section “A Note on Orthography,” below). In addition,
when the subject matter of the name or term for an item in the index is not
immediately understandable (e.g., mit’a), we provide an English term or phrase
in the appropriate place in the index that will guide the reader to that entry (e.g.,
“corvée labor”).
The authors of the entries that make up this encyclopedia are scholars and
other specialists from a wide range of specializations and disciplinary
perspectives, each of whom has conducted years of research on the topic(s) on
which they have contributed. Our authors—35 in all, including the coeditors—
comprise anthropologists, archaeologists, geographers, ethnohistorians, and
other specialists from a wide assortment of academic institutions, or independent
scholars, primarily from Latin America and North America. A list of the
contributors to this work and their affiliations appears at the end of the book.
Our objective in assembling the Encyclopedia of the Incas has been to provide
readers with as comprehensive, detailed, and authoritative an encyclopedia as
can be reasonably constructed on the fascinating civilization of the Incas and the
major contributions made to its study by leading scholars. By incorporating a
wide range of information authored by scholars working in a range of disciplines
today, we hope that we have been successful in synthesizing what is known
about Inca civilization and that we will have thereby set a standard for
referencing and commenting on scholarship on the Incas that can be built on and
expanded by future generations of scholars.
A NOTE ON ORTHOGRAPHY
Quechua, the lingua franca of the Inca Empire, was not a written language. The
first Spaniards to describe what they saw in a strange and foreign land
transcribed what they heard, or thought they heard, in often different ways; for