Review: “Heads of State: Icons, Power and Politics in the Ancient and Modern Andes”, by Denise Y. Arnold and Christine A. Hastorf. Left Coast Press, 2008.

Reviewed by Parker VanValkenburgh, Harvard University In 1991, social anthropologist Orin Starn accused Andeanist anthropologists of “missing the revolution” – essentially, of failing to consider that a movement like the Sendero Luminoso Maoist insurgency (The Shining Path) could emerge in a rural, primarily indigenous area of Peru. Starn was particularly critical of the work of…