Chris Heaney has written a remarkable study of Andean mummies from the fourteenth century or so until today. Understood by the Incas and other civilizations as immortal ancestors, by the Spanish colonizers as a frustratingly thorny spoil of victory, and by scientists and museums as an indispensable piece of the human puzzle, these live remains have prompted enduring and fascinating controversies and clashes since the conquest. In fact, they seem to appear in virtually every major turning point in Peru's longue durée history as well as many transitional moments in anthropology and archaeology. Heaney leads the reader gracefully from the Tahuantinsuyo to contemporary museum disputes about repatriation, contributing to numerous interdisciplinary debates. Anyone involved in or intrigued by polemics about the custodianship of human remains will benefit from reading Empires of the Dead.
Heaney's impeccable research and vivid prose, known to many through his journalistic work in magazines such...
