The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas

This volume is a major survey of research on the indigenous peoples of South America.

Frank Salomon (Edited by), Stuart B. Schwartz (Edited by)

9780521630757, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 December 1999

1070 pages, 7 b/w illus. 6 maps
23.6 x 16.1 x 6.5 cm, 1.595 kg

'The Cambridge History is an intensely academic publication whose conception, structure and coverage make it a benchmark for future work. … rich store of information and insight … No one interested or involved in indigenous South America can afford to ignore such a prodigious feat of modern scholarship.' The Times Higher

This volume, part of the Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, is the first major survey of research on the indigenous peoples of South America from the earliest peopling of the continent to the present since Julian Steward's Handbook of South American Indians was published half a century ago. Although this volume concentrates on continental South America, peoples in the Caribbean and lower Central America who were linguistically or culturally connected are also discussed. This volume is an 'idea-oriented history', emphasizing the development of general themes instead of presenting every group and society. Indigenous peoples' own stories of the past are used as well as the standard accounts written by outsiders. Research is presented following regional and conceptual frameworks; some chapters overlap or present differing interpretations. The volume's emphasis is on self-perceptions of the indigenous peoples of South America at various times and under differing situations.

Introduction Frank Salomon and Stuart Schwartz
1. Testimonies: the making and reading of native South American historical sources
2. Ethnography in South America: the first two hundred years
3. The earliest South American lifeways
4. The maritime, highland, forest dynamic and the origins of complex culture
5. The evolution of Andean diversity: regional formations, 500 BCE–600 CE
6. Andean urbanism and statecraft, 550–1450 CE
7. Chiefdoms: the prevalence and persistance of 'Señorios Naturales', 1400 to European conquest
8. Archaeology of the Caribbean region
9. Pre-history of the Southern Cone
10. The fourfold domain: Inka power and its social foundations
11. The crises and transformations of invaded societies: the Caribbean, 1492–1580
12. The crises and transformations of invaded societies, 1500–1580: Andean area
13. The crises and transformations of invaded societies: Coastal Brazil in the sixteenth century
14. The crises and transformations of invaded societies in the La Plata Basin (1535–1650)
15. The colonial condition in the Quechua-Aymara heartland, 1570–1780
16. Warfare, reorganization, and readaptation at the margins of Spanish rule: the Southern margin (1573–1882)
17. The Western margins of Amazonia from the early sixteenth to the early nineteenth century.

Subject Areas: History of the Americas [HBJK]