Encyclopedia of the Incas

Niles, Susan A. The Shape of Inca History. Narrative and Architecture in an Andean Empire. Iowa City:
University of Iowa Press, 1999.
Prescott, William H. History of the Conquest of Peru. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1847.
Rowe, John H. “Absolute Chronology in the Andean Area.” American Antiquity 10, no. 3: 265–84, 1945.
Sarmiento de Gamboa, Pedro. The History of the Incas. Translated by Brian S. Bauer and Vania Smith.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007 [1572].
Urton, Gary. “Discurso sobre la descendencia y gobierno de los Incas (sixteenth–early seventeenth
century).” In Guide to Documentary Sources for Andean Studies 1530–1900, edited by Joanne Pillsbury,
vol. 2, 191–92. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008.
Vázquez de Espinosa, Antonio. Compendium and Description of the West Indies. Translated by Charles
Upson Clark. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1942 [1528].
Zuidema, R. Tom. Inca Civilization in Cuzco. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.

■R. ALAN    COVEY

CHRONOLOGY, PRE-INCA
Before the Incas, a multitude of cultures rose and fell in the ancient central
Andes, each one contributing in its own unique way to the cultural legacy
inherited by the Incas. Only a few of these are well known and have been studied
in any detail. Most archaeologists organize this great mass of data using the
chronological scheme developed by John H. Rowe. The approximate date
ranges for each of his periods and horizons are as follows:

Late    Horizon:    AD  1476–1532

Late    Intermediate    Period: AD  900–1476

Middle  Horizon:    AD  540–900

Early   Intermediate    Period: 400 BC–AD   540

Early   Horizon:    1300–400    BC

Initial Period: 2100–1300   BC

The Initial Period in Rowe’s chronology has been divided by some scholars
into the lithic and preceramic periods (before pottery), and the Ceramic period
following the introduction of pottery (after 1800 BC). Remarkably, ancient
Peruvians had already developed civilizations capable of building very large-
scale architectural monuments such as the temples of Caral in the Supe valley on
Peru’s north-central coast by 2600 BC, well before pottery was introduced.
The earliest very widespread cultural unity is manifested in the cult called
Chavín by archaeologists. By 1400 BC a religious movement began to spread
across northern Peru, incorporating elements from older Peruvian coastal
religions and combining them with religious iconography from the tropical
forests of the Amazon. Although named for the site of Chavín de Huántar in the