Bingham achieved fame as a result of his publications in Harper’s and
National Geographic, and he used this renown to begin a political career that
eventually led to his election as Connecticut’s governor and senator. While
his archaeological career lasted under a decade, Bingham published several
influential works on the Incas, including one of the first studies of Inca
ceramics and a monograph on the 1912 Machu Picchu excavations. His
pioneering work at Machu Picchu dramatically demonstrated the need to
complement historical research with archaeological fieldwork.Further Reading
Bingham, Alfred. Portrait of an Explorer: Hiram Bingham, Discoverer of Machu Picchu. Ames: Iowa
State University Press, 1989.
Bingham, Hiram. “The Discovery of Machu Picchu.” Harper’s Monthly Magazine 127:709–19, 1913.
———. “In the Wonderland of Peru.” National Geographic Magazine 24, no. 4: 387–573, 1913.
———. “Types of Machu Picchu Pottery.” American Anthropologist 17:257–71, 1915.
———. Inca Land: Explorations in the Highlands of Peru. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1922.
———. Machu Picchu, a Citadel of the Incas. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1930.
■RICHARD L. BURGERBRIDGES
Bridges formed a vital part of the Inca road system, playing a strategic role in
Inca expansion and control of territories once isolated by natural barriers.
Although the Incas never invented the arch, this did not prevent them from
constructing sophisticated bridges, including suspension bridges made of spun
and braided grass rope that rank among the ancient world’s greatest
technological feats. Some of these spanned gorges as wide as 45 meters (148
feet) that terrified even the most hardened travelers, because they sagged in the
middle and bounced and swayed during the crossing, “looking wonderfully frail
and gossamer like,” in the words of a nineteenth-century traveler.
In Inca times, chacacamayocs, or bridge masters, oversaw key bridges that
served as control points, where they charged tolls on the goods being carried.
Work groups in mit’a or corvée labor, usually formed by villagers living nearby,
maintained the bridges, especially the suspension bridges whose rope cables had
to be replaced at least once a year.
Less awe-inspiring methods of crossing rivers included bridges that used
natural boulders in the river as supports for shorter-span suspension bridges,
such as the one that crossed the Urubamba River near the town of Ollantaytambo