About the presentation: Andean people of the Inca era, like many New World peoples, prized the heads of captive enemies. From the Quechua Manuscript of Huarochirí we know that Inca-era victors made immortal masks out of captives’ facial bones and wore them in worship. 17th-century “extirpators” destroyed such treasures by the thousands. Two centuries later, skull-hunters in service to racial theorists deposited vast numbers of Andean crania in the Smithsonian and other museums . Facial-bone masks — huayos — are now being recovered from oblivion in museum storage. What can such masks reveal about ancient combatants: their loyalties, their livelihoods and their deaths? Can looted human remains be restored to decent relations with their communities of origin?
About the presenter: Frank Salomon, ethnographer and historian of the Andes, is the author of At the Mountains’ Altar: Anthropology of Religion in an Andean Community (2017). His other books include Native Lords of Quito in the Age of the Incas (1986), The Huarochiri Manuscript, a Testament of Ancient and Colonial Andean Religion (1991), Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas – South America (1999), The Cord Keepers (2004), La revisita de Sisicaya en 1588. Huarochirí veinte años antes de ‘Dioses y hombres’ with Susan Grossboll, and Tinyas y juywas de Rapaz: Arte verbal en las alturas de Lima (2023) with Luis Andrade Ciudad. He has been President of the American Society for Ethnohistory and the recipient of its Lifetime Achievement Award. He is the John V. Murra Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Co-sponsored by the Andean Studies Student Organization, the Department of Anthropology, and the Associated Students of Madison (ASM).
