This beautiful book, first published in 1966 in Tübingen and now appearing with the original plates and an English text, illustrates how dramatically modern archaeology lends itself to presentation to a nonprofessional public. The book’s central focus is on the antiquities of Peru, here displayed in superb photographs and described in an informative running commentary. With the illustrations of ceramics, textiles, sculpture, and Inca buildings appear scenes of the natural environment and of modern Indian people, described as they might be in a travel account. “It is a pleasing and refreshing experience,” the author writes, “to fly along the Peruvian coast, above the snow-covered peaks scattered like marble patches amid the dark mass of the Cordilleras, and above a coast of pastel shades, as in a painting by Corot, garlanded with spray from the ceaseless surf of the Pacific Ocean.” The passage suggests the author’s tone and mood, successfully communicated by word and picture. The Peru described in this book is a land of majestic mountains and deserts, ancient fortresses, and clean, well-lighted objects.
Ubbelohde-Doering, director of the Museum of Ethnology of Munich, made four expeditions to Peru between 1931 and 1963. He worked particularly at Locarí on the south coast and at Pacatnamú on the north coast, subsequently describing the results in the journal Ethnos. On the Royal Highways of the Inca is based to a considerable degree upon materials deriving from these expeditions. Pacatnamú, on a desert plateau overlooking the sea, is an impressive complex of pyramids and terraces, seemingly the product of contributions by different communities to a single religious center. Locarí is represented in the grave of a chieftain, whose body, wrapped in a mantle, was found with jars and beakers and with adult and child companions. Other illustrations cover additional sites in both north and south, including the celebrated constructions at Sacsayhuaman and Machu Picchu. A number of photographs show the Inca roads, twenty feet or more wide, winding around slopes or stretching straight across the landscape.
The text is not without slight defects. It speaks of Bernabé Cobo “writing at the time of the Conquest,” and of Tiahuanaco-style offerings at Locarí “of the second half of the first century AD.” It is true that such slips are few. Moreover one might say that the purpose and justification of a work such as this is less the presentation of materials with meticulous accuracy than the evocation of a sense of curiosity and admiration. In this the book unquestionably succeeds.
