Z
ZUIDEMA, R. TOMZuidema (1927–) began his anthropological training with studies of Southeast
Asian societies at Leiden University, the Netherlands, in the 1950s. He was a
student of two prominent Dutch structural anthropologists of the 1940s and
1950s, J. P. B. de Josselin de Jong and P. E. de Josselin de Jong. Zuidema
switched his focus of research to the Andes following Indonesian
independence, in 1949. He subsequently moved from Leiden to Madrid, in
the early 1950s, to deepen his studies of Spanish sources on the Incas.
Zuidema earned his first PhD at the University of Madrid in 1953 with a
dissertation titled La organización social y politica Incaica según las Fuentes
Españoles (The Social and Political Organization of the Incas According to
the Spanish Sources). His second PhD was awarded at Leiden University in
1964, with a dissertation titled The Ceque System of Cuzco: The Social
Organization of the Capital of the Inca.
Upon completion of his Leiden dissertation, Zuidema took up his first
teaching post at the University of Huamanga, in Ayacucho, Peru, from 1964
to 1967. He then taught at the Department of Anthropology at the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1967, a position from which he retired in
- Zuidema’s research and publications over the years have been heavily
influenced by his close reading of the Spanish chronicles, as well as by his
ethnographic experiences in the Ayacucho region of Peru. He trained
numerous graduate students who earned PhDs at Illinois with their research in
Andean archaeology, ethnohistory, and ethnography.
Zuidema’s early studies focused on the social and political organization of
the Inca capital by way of the ceque (line, orientation) system within the city
and valley of Cuzco. Zuidema showed that the basic structures of the ceque
system included dual (moiety) and quadripartite (suyu) divisions, which were
subdivided into 41 ceque lines along which were organized some 328 sacred
sites, or huacas. These structures provided the framework for political, social,
and ritual relations and activities among 10 groups of descendants of the Inca
kings (panacas), and 10 groups of descendants of non-noble, but privileged,