Current Research and Prospects in Andean Ethnohistory

Abstract

In Recent Years Andean Ethnohistory Has Benefitted From Four new developments: First, is the greater accessibility of the classical chronicles, particularly since the Biblioteca de Autores Españoles in Madrid decided in 1956 to reprint Bernabé Cobo's Historia del Nuevo Mundo which had gone out of print decades before. The BAE has since reprinted at reasonable prices many other titles, among them the indispensable Relaciones geográficas de Indias. Anyone who had tried to study pre-European Andean institutions in the libraries at Cuzco, Cuenca or Sucre even ten years ago knows how difficult it was then to check any claim or hypothesis at the source. Students were forced to use third-hand and incomplete references; many others in the Andes were discouraged from pursuing such studies because of the unavailability of the eyewitness or other early accounts.