Among the most sumptuous buildings of antiquity were royal palaces. As in the Old World, kings and nobles of ancient Mexico and Peru had luxurious administrative quarters in cities, and exquisite pleasure palaces in the countryside. This volume explores the great houses of the ancient New World, from palaces of the Aztecs and Incas, looted by the Spanish conquistadors, to those lost high in the Andes and deep in the jungle. This volume, the first scholarly compendium of elite residences of the high cultures of the New World, presents definitive descriptions and interpretations by leading scholars in the field. Authoritative yet accessible, this extensively illustrated book will serve as an important resource for anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians of art, architecture, and related disciplines.

Until recently, little archaeological investigation has been dedicated to the Inka, the last great culture to flourish in Andean South America before the sixteenth-century arrival of the Spaniards. While the Inka have been traditionally viewed through the textual sources of early colonial histories, this volume draws on recent archaeological research to challenge theories on the chronology and development of the Inka Empire and how this culture spread across such a vast area. The volume demonstrates the great regional diversity of the Inka realm, with strategies of expansion that were shaped to meet a variety of local situations beyond the capital in Cusco. Using a range of theoretical and methodological approaches, scholars from the sciences, social sciences, and humanities provide a new understanding of Inka culture and history.