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John Victor Murra (August 24, 1916 - October 16, 2006): An Interpretative
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 JOHN VICTOR MURRA (AUGUST 24, 1916 - OCTOBER 16, 2006):
AN INTERPRETATIVE BIOGRAPHY

MONICA BARNES
Brazos Valley Museum of Natural History

BIBLIOGRAPHY BY DAVID BLOCK (University of Texas, Austin)

and MONICA BARNES

John Victor Murra at the 1958 Vassar College graduation. Graduate is Margaret Johnson-Gaddis;
photograph by John Lane Studio, Poughkeepsie, New York, courtesy of Vassar College.

INTRODUCTION many of the problems presented by his perilous

John Murra’s life spanned the short
twentieth century. He was born during the First
World War and died more than five years after
the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York
and Washington. He personally encountered
times. These included Communism,
McCarthyism, Fascism, war, anti-Semitism, and
immigration. He faced and overcame them with
the tools of armed struggle, psychoanalysis, and
anthropological research, emerging as one of the
most influential Andeanists to date. His major

ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009): 1-63.

ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
contributions to our understanding of how
prehispanic cultures, especially the Inca,
functioned economically, politically, socially,
and ecologically are set out in his doctoral
dissertation (Murra 1956a), and in a long, oft-
republished and re-worked series of short
articles, book chapters, and published com-
ments, usually in venues where peer review was
not a constraint.1 He also made available a good
deal of the documentation supporting his
interpretations (Guaman Poma 1980; Murra
[editor] 1991; Ortiz de Zúñiga 1967, 1972). His
archaeological work is significant (Murra 1942,
1955f, 1962, 1966a; Murra and Morris 1976;
Thompson and Murra 1966). Indeed, his first
scholarly publication (Collier and Murra 1943),
based in part on his M.A. thesis (Murra 1942),
remains essential to an understanding of Ecua-
dorian prehistory, and was last republished in
2007. The results of his Huánuco Project,
officially called “A Study of Provincial Inca
Life”, although incompletely reported, never-
theless are a major component of Inca studies.
However, his greatest contribution is probably
the insight that documents, the raw material of
historical reconstructions, could be viewed from
an anthropological perspective and integrated
into research incorporating archaeological evi-
dence. Given that anthropology itself in the
mid-twentieth century was rather a-historical,
with emphasis on a timeless “ethnographic
present”, this was a stunning breakthrough.2
1
C.f. Lechtman and Wolf, n.d.; Murra 1958a, 1958b,
1960a, 1961b, 1962, 1964a, 1964b, 1966b, 1972a, 1974a,
1974c, 1975a, 1976a, 1978b, 1978c, 1982a, 1982b, 1985a,
1985b, 1985c, 1985d, 1986a, 1987a, 1999, 2002a. For
work by and about John Murra not incorporated into the
text of this obituary see the bibliography that is part of this
special section on the life and work of John Victor Murra.
2
In stating this, I do not wish to diminish the importance
of other scholars who simultaneously and independently
arrived at similar conclusions. In this respect, as in many
others, the works of John H. Rowe and R. Tom Zuidema
are particularly noteworthy. Rowe’s close and sustained
study of colonial records was an approach strongly en-
-2
Murra discouraged scholars from studying
the Spanish Colonial Period per se. To Murra,
Spain’s Golden Age was a time of catastrophe
for the indigenous peoples of the Americas. He
felt that intellectual effort in New World ethno-
history should be concentrated on those early
documents by eyewitnesses that could elucidate
prehispanic times. Following the leads of his
Peruvian friends, the novelist, poet, and
anthropologist José María Arguedas3 and the
historian María Rostworowski,4 Murra recog-
nized the importance of visitas, colonial reports
of official inspection tours. Several were
published or republished under his general
direction (Murra [editor] 1964, 1991, Ortiz de
Zuñiga 1967, 1972). From the minute details
available in visitas (some make house-by-house
inventories, while others contain information on
regional shrine systems or economic production)
Murra could discern large patterns in Incaic and
early colonial organization.
dorsed by Murra. Although Murra did not share Zuidema’s
emphasis on religion, ritual, and symbolism, he respected
Zuidema’s scholarship and supported him with positive
grant recommendations.
3
José María Arguedas Altamirano (1911-1969) is one of
Peru’s most famous writers in both Spanish and Quechua.
His fiction often explores the clashes between ethnic
groups in early twentieth century Peru. Arguedas was
director of Peru’s Casa de Cultura during part of the time
John Murra directed field-work at Huánuco. Arguedas
died as a result of his second suicide attempt.
4
María Rostworowski Tovar de Diez Canseco (b. 1915)
spent her childhood in Peru, Poland, France, England, and
Belgium. In 1935 she returned to Peru, living on her
father’s hacienda in Huánuco. She took courses taught by
historian Raúl Porras Barrenechea at the Universidad
Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. She has concentrated on
the social, economic, and religious dimensions of the
prehispanic societies of the Peruvian coast. She is a
founder of the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos and the
author of several books of collected essays and numerous
articles.
3-
He was one of the first to appreciate that the
Mestizo Peruvian chronicler and artist Guaman
Poma de Ayala was not a deranged malcontent,
but rather a key reporter and insightful analyst
(Murra 1956a:7). Working with Rolena Adorno
(see Adorno’s contribution, this volume, pp. 77-
79) and native Quechua speaker Jorge (George)
Urioste,5 Murra produced what has become the
standard transcription of Guaman Poma’s Nueva
crónica y buen gobierno (Guaman Poma de Ayala
1980 [c.1616]). His contributions to Andean
ethnohistory are immense.6
Murra’s best known explanatory framework
is his theory of “vertical complementarity”
which posits that Andean societies provided for
themselves by managing disparate ecological
niches. The steepness of the Andean terrain
insures that ecological conditions often vary
greatly over relatively short distances. Because
no single ecozone can produce all that is
necessary for subsistence, Andean ethnic groups
and states, according to Murra, maintained
control of various zones, frequently not in the
form of contiguous territory, but rather as strings
of “islands” in an imagined “vertical archi-
5
Jorge L. Urioste was born in Bolivia and is a native
Quechua speaker. He is a Professor Emeritus of
Anthropology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He
has collaborated with a number of people associated with
Cornell University, most notably linguist Donald Solá
(1922-2008), anthropologist Frank Salomon (note 48),
literature specialist Rolena Adorno and John Victor
Murra. Among his important publications are The
Huarochirí Manuscript: A Testament of Ancient and Colonial
Andean Religions (with Frank Salomon; 1991) and the
various Murra/Adorno/Urioste editions of Guaman Poma’s
Nueva crónica . . .
6
Murra 1946, 1948, 1956a, 1958a, 1958b, 1960a, 1961a,
1961b, 1962, 1964a, 1964b, 1966b, 1967a, 1967b, 1967c,
1967d, 1968a, 1968b, 1970a, 1970b, 1970c, 1972a, 1972b,
1974a, 1974b, 1974c, 1975a, 1976a, 1976c, 1978a, 1978b,
1978c, 1978d, 1979a, 1979c, 1980a, 1981a, 1982b, 1981b,
1982b, 1982c, 1983b, 1984a, 1984b, 1985a, 1985b, 1985c,
1985a, 1986a, 1986b, 1987a, 1987b, 1987c, 1988a, 1988b,
1989a, 1991a, 1991b, 1992, 1998, 1999, 2002a, 2002b.
Barnes: John V. Murra
pelago”. Thus, high altitude grasslands could
produce meat and animal fibers. At slightly
lower altitudes just below the upper limit for
plant cultivation tubers such as potatoes, oca,
and ulluco were grown. Other crops, including
quinoa, maize, beans, chilli peppers, lupines,
cotton, coca, and fruit were planted at still lower
altitudes. Establishments in the tropical forests
on the eastern slopes of the Andes yielded
wood, feathers, and other forest products while
fish, seafood, and aquatic plants were obtained
from lakes and the ocean, and salt and guano
were collected where they occurred. Different
forms of land tenure and exchange are possible
under such conditions, but Murra postulated
that ethnic groups and polities controlled or
shared at least some non-contiguous territory in
each important zone. Murra also made
significant contributions to our understanding of
the role of craft production and state-sponsored
settlement practices under the Incas (Murra
1958b, 1978c, 1982b).
POLITICS, BUT NOT AS USUAL
John Victor Murra was born Isak Lipschitz
in Odessa, Ukraine, then part of imperial Russia.
Murra’s father was raised in a Jewish orphanage
after his own father had died. Murra’s mother
was a visually impaired teenager when she
married. Although both his parents were
Romanian Jews, Murra did not have a
particularly religious upbringing. Murra’s father
was anti-clerical due to his experiences in the
orphanage. Nevertheless, Murra celebrated his
Bar Mitzvah as a boy and in his later years he
expressed a belief in God and God’s
intervention in his life.
Murra spent the greater part of his
childhood in Bucharest, Romania. During
Murra’s early years Ukraine was a violent place
as the First World War morphed there into the
Ukranian War of Independence which blazed
from 1917 until 1921. Although his father was
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
one of eight children, Murra was not close to
family members. Exceptions were his only
sibling, his sister, physicist Beatrice [Ata] Lip-
schitz Iosifescu, who later translated and
compiled Murra’s dissertation and other works,
creating a volume in Romanian published in
1987 (see Murra 1956a), and his father’s
younger brother, who played a key role in
Murra’s life. Although Murra often expressed
negative feelings towards his mother, they
remained in contact until her death in August
1980.
As a teenager, Murra’s passions were soccer,
books, and politics (Castro et al. 2000:22-23).
His father insisted that he study modern
languages at the Lycée Georghe Lazer in
Bucharest and with private tutors. Before the
age of eighteen, in addition to Romanian and
Russian, Murra had mastered French, English,
and German. Later, while a soldier in the
Spanish Civil War, he acquired fluency in
Spanish. There is no evidence that Murra
studied ancient languages such as Latin or
Greek, but he apparently knew enough Hebrew
to read from the Torah at his Bar Mitzvah. He
later expressed regret that he was unable to
acquire proficiency in Quechua. Murra’s father
also required him to apprentice in Romanian
and Yugoslavian paper factories. This gave
Murra some familiarity with the Croatian
language, and arguably his first anthropological
experiences as he interacted with workers who
were members of various ethnic groups (Murra
in Rowe 1984:635).
Not a sufficiently talented athlete to play
sports professionally, Murra remained involved
with soccer by publishing reports on matches in
Dimineata, a Romanian newspaper. By age 16 his
involvement with Communism and the Social
Democratic movement, although legal, had cost
him jail time and expulsion from his lycée (Cas-
-4
tro et al. 2000:17). Nevertheless, he passed his
baccalaureate exams in 1933.7
Murra must also have suffered from the
virulent prejudice against Jews which was
common in Romania during the 1920s and ’30s.
The Ministry of the Interior organized and
financed university anti-Semitic groups like the
Legion of Michael the Archangel which became
the fascist Iron Guard. In December 1927, when
Murra was eleven years old, the Legion carried
out a pogrom that destroyed thirteen synagogues
and their Torahs. Jews were beaten and
humiliated and throughout the 1930s the
situation of the Romanian Jews became in-
creasingly desperate as Nazi influence grew.
To extricate him from a difficult situation,
Murra’s father sent him to Chicago in December
1934, to live with his youngest paternal uncle, a
professional double bass player (ibid). Although
Murra’s initial residence in Chicago was one of
the accidents of his life, the academic
connections he forged there influenced him
during his entire career. In Chicago Murra
perfected his English and enrolled as an
undergraduate at the University of Chicago,
with advanced standing, and he began to study
social sciences. In 1936 he obtained his A.B. in
Sociology and married Virginia Miller, a fellow
student-militant.
Murra’s teachers at Chicago included such
famous figures as A.R. Radcliffe-Brown,8 Fred
7
A European baccalaureate is a formal educational
qualification generally more advanced and specialized
than an American high school diploma, but less advanced
than an American bachelor’s degree. It is intended as
preparation for university studies.
8
Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown (1881-1955) was a
prominent English social anthropologist who contributed
greatly to an understanding of small, non-Western
societies. He studied at Cambridge University, conducted
extensive field-work in the Andaman Islands and Western
5-
Eggan,9 Harry Hoijer10 (ibid: 28), R. Redfield,11
Australia, and then taught at the University of Chicago
from 1931 to 1937. Two of his best-known books, The
Andaman Islanders (1922), and The Social Organization of
Australian Tribes (1931) are based on his field-work. In
books such as A Natural Science of Society (1957), and in
numerous articles, he set out his views of so-called primi-
tive societies as phenomena.
9
Frederick Russell Eggan (1906-1991) received a Ph.B
(1927) and Master’s Degree (1928) in psychology from the
University of Chicago. He then became an anthropology
student of A.R. Radcliffe-Brown (note 8) and Fay-Cooper
Cole (Note 12) at Chicago, receiving a Ph.D. in 1933.
Eggan first taught at the University of Chicago in 1935,
became the Harold H. Swift Distinguished Professor there
in 1962, and retired from Chicago in 1974. He was a
member of the National Academy of Sciences and a
President of the American Anthropological Association.
In his work he combined the principles of British socio-
cultural anthropology with the historical approach of
Franz Boas and applied them to the study of American
Indian tribes, especially the Hopi, and to the Tinguian, a
group in the Philippine highlands also studied by Fay-
Cooper Cole. He developed an approach called “con-
trolled comparison”. Among his works are The Kinship
System and Social Organization of the Western Pueblos
(1933), Lewis Henry Morgan and the Future of the American
Indian (1965), and The American Indian . . . (1966). For an
interview see Ernest L. Schusky’s “Fred Eggan: Anthropol-
ogist Full Circle” published in The American Ethnologist
(1969). Several obituaries of Eggan have been published,
including one by one by Alfonso Narvaez (The New York
Times, May 9, 1991), one by Nathalie F. S. Woodbury
(Anthropology News, September 1991), and another by
Aram A. Yengoyan (Asian Studies, 1991).
10
Harry Hoijer (1904-1976) was an anthropological
linguist who studied American Indian languages including
Athabaskan and the now-extinct Tonkawa isolate. He
taught at the University of Chicago as a temporary
instructor from 1931 until 1940. He was the co-author,
with Ralph Beals, of An Introduction to Anthropology
(1953) and the author of articles in journals including
American Anthropologist, Language, and International
Journal of American Linguistics, among others. For bio-
graphical information on Hoijer see “Harry Hoijer, 1904-
1976” by Ralph L. Beals, published in American Anthropol-
ogist (1977).
11
Robert Redfield (1897-1958) received his A.B. from
Barnes: John V. Murra
and Fay-Cooper Cole 12 (Redfield and Cole
1947). Cole became one of Murra’s strongest
advocates. For his part, Murra always expressed
respect for Cole (Murra in Rowe 1984:636), in
particular crediting Cole with introducing him
to ethnohistory through the Jesuit Relations,
annual accounts sent to the General, or head of
the Jesuits, about mission conditions in the
Mississippi drainage and in other parts of the
the University of Chicago in 1920 and a J.D. from its law
school in 1921. After work as an ambulance driver in
World War I, a brief stint in law practice, and a trip to
Mexico in 1923, he began his anthropological career as a
student of Fay-Cooper Cole’s at the University of Chicago.
In 1927 he was hired as an instructor in anthropology by
the University of Chicago and, in 1928, he received his
doctorate in anthropology and was appointed an assistant
professor, the start of a successful career as a teacher and
administrator. His published studies of Mexican communi-
ties include Tepotzlán, (1930), Chan Kom (with Alfonso
Villa-Rojas, 1934), and The Folk Culture of Yucatan
(1941). His major books also include The Primitive World
and its Transformations (1953), The Little Community
(1955), and Peasant Society and Culture (1956), among
others. For an obituary see “Robert Redfield, 1897-1958”
by Fay-Cooper Cole and Fred Eggan, published in Ameri-
can Anthropologist (1959).
12
Fay-Cooper Cole (1881-1961) was an expert on the
peoples and cultures of Malaysia and the Philippines, and
one of the developers of twentieth century American
archaeology. Cole graduated from Northwestern Univer-
sity in 1903. He obtained a doctorate from Columbia
University in 1914. This was based on work among the
Tinguian that he did under the auspices of the Field
Museum. He is the author of The Wild Tribes of the Davao
District, Mindanao (1913), based on field-work performed
with his wife in 1910-12, and of Traditions of the Tinguian
(1915) among whom he and his wife did field-work in
1907-1908, as well as The Peoples of Malaysia (1945). The
Coles’ last ethnographic expedition was to Indonesia in
1922-23. In 1924 Cole was appointed an assistant profes-
sor in the University of Chicago’s Department of Sociol-
ogy and Anthropology where he had a long and distin-
guished career. During the 1930s he conducted an
archaeological survey of Illinois in which Murra partici-
pated. He published Kincaid, a Prehistoric Illinois Metropolis
(1951), and Rediscovering Illinois . . . (with Thorne Duel,
1937). For an obituary see “Fay-Cooper Cole” by Fred
Eggan, published in American Anthropologist (1963).
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
world where the order worked. Murra also
appreciated the Illinois field school that Cole
operated for many years because it helped to
build Americanist vocations (Frank Salomon,
personal communication, 9 November 2008).
In Chicago Murra re-established contacts
with Communist youth groups and demon-
strated against war and racial segregation
(Anon. 1947b; Redfield and Cole 1947). In
November 1936 he was recruited to fight
Fascism in the Spanish Civil War. His passage
to France was paid with Communist funds and
his military identification document was issued
on 14 April 1937 (Lechtman, this volume, p.
66). In contrast to many Second World War
veterans of both sides who had experienced
heavy combat and were reluctant to mention
their participation, for the rest of his life Murra
proudly listed his service as an infantry corporal,
in the 58th Battalion, 15th Brigade of the Spanish
Republican Army on his curriculum vitae as part
of his employment history. Nevertheless,
privately he admitted that he considered his
time in Spain to have been unsuccessful. On 15
October 1963 Murra wrote in his diary, “Think
of conversation with Tabb and Iraqui (sic) at
Genoa when I refused to volunteer a second
time. I told them that as far as my personal goals
were concerned, Spain had been a failure. I
suppose what I meant by that was that I had not
become heroic, masculine, a man different from
what my mother wanted.” Nevertheless, Murra
was able to cope with military life, make useful
contributions, face battle, and win affection and
respect, as Murra’s friend, fellow combatant,
and journalist Harry Fisher (1911-2003) makes
clear in Comrades (1998).
Murra summarized his experiences by
stating, “Yo soy graduado de la guerra civil espa-
ñola, no de la Universidad de Chicago” (Castro
et al. 2000:29).13 It was during the Civil War
13
“I am a graduate of the Spanish Civil War, not of the
-6
that he took his adult name and had his first
adult experiences. Isak Lipschitz acquired the
permanent nom de guerre John Victor Murra.
John (or Johnny as he was known when he was
young) was chosen for its qualities as a
straightforward American name, Victor in
anticipation of a successful struggle, and Murra
because it is close to the Romanian word for
mulberry. That was Johnny’s nickname when he
was a boy, because of his large, dark eyes. At the
time it was common for immigrants and
travelers in the United States to adopt such
strong and plain masculine names. For example,
the famous French photographer, Henri Cartier-
Bresson, often called himself Hank Carter when
in the U.S.
Initially Murra arranged food and lodging in
southern France for international volunteers
seeking to infiltrate Spain. Soon he was trans-
lating for American, British, and Canadian
commissars and for Slavic officers and soldiers.
Then he was in active combat. He was seriously
wounded and paralyzed for a time. The resulting
limp stayed with him for the rest of his life. He
spent most of the first half of 1939 in notorious
French internment camps near Perpignan, but
eventually managed to return to Chicago,
assisted by his teachers there, arriving back in
the United States on June 3, 1939 (Anon.
1947a). It was during his time translating that
Murra became disillusioned with Communism,
having had direct experience of the secret
meetings, true policies, and extreme cruelty of
its leaders. In this he was far ahead of his times
because the Soviet Union itself did not fully
acknowledge its own history until the 1980s.
Although Murra did not set down specifics in
his published works, Harry Fisher was more
forthcoming in Comrades. In any event, by the
end of the Spanish Civil War, John Murra’s
political problems had worsened.
University of Chicago” (translation by the author).
7-
Back in Chicago, Murra resumed his studies
as a scholarship student,14 doing course work
from 1939 to 1941. In addition to translating
the Jesuit Relations, Murra worked as a waiter,
a house painter, and a washer of archaeological
ceramics to supplement his scholarships and
keep body and soul together. In the summer of
1940 he had his first archaeological experience,
at Cole’s Illinois field school. One of his
contemporaries was Richard S. [Scotty]
MacNeish, who later became famous for his
studies of the transition to agriculture in the
New World, leading archaeological projects in
Mexico’s Tamaulipas State and in the Tehuacán
Valley of Puebla state as well as in Peru’s Aya-
cucho Department. Murra often cited
MacNeish’s work as offering support for his own
ideas.
Meanwhile, Romania had adopted a fascist
constitution on February 12, 1938, making it
impossible for Murra, a recent anti-fascist
fighter, to return there. In addition, during the
course of the Second World War, tens of
thousands of Romanian Jews were massacred,
although most survived. Murra’s mother and
sister were among that majority. Romania did
not become a Communist country until 1947
and, in any case, Murra was no longer an
advocate of that form of government. His sister,
however, joined the Communist party.
Normally it would have been easy for Murra,
as the spouse of an American, to have claimed
United States citizenship. However, Murra’s
Communist connections stood in his way even
with the official sponsorship of Fay-Cooper
Cole. Cole, in addition to being a well-known
Chicago educator, was a member of a powerful
New York family (Cooper family file, Brooklyn
14
Letter from Fay-Cooper Cole to Duran Ballen,
Ecua2dorian Consul to the United States, August 8, 1941,
National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institu-
tion, John Victor Murra Papers, hereinafter Murra, NAA.
Barnes: John V. Murra
Historical Society). Sponsorship was a serious
commitment because it involved a guarantee of
financial support should the immigrant become
indigent. After being twice denied it, Murra was
eventually granted American citizenship in 1950
(Anon. 1947b, 1947c, 1948b, 1948c, 1948d,
1948e, 1949a, 1949b, 1950a, 1950b) although
the issuance of a passport was delayed until
1956 or 1958,15 preventing Murra from traveling
to countries where that document was required.
Murra’s case achieved national importance,
having been brought to the attention of
President Harry S. Truman’s Committee of Civil
Rights, established in 1946 to strengthen and
protect the civil rights of the American people.
It was recommendations of this committee that
led to the racial desegregation of the United
States armed forces. Murra’s case was studied by
the Committee because it was one of the first in
which prior attachment to Communism was
considered as a possible disqualification for
citizenship.
15
Sources on the date of issue of Murra’s first passport
vary. Heather Lechtman has a clear memory of Murra’s
jubilation when he received notification of his passport
while she was still a student at Vassar (Lechtman,
personal communication, 12 November 2008). Lechtman
graduated in 1956. In the interview Murra gave to John
Rowe Murra states that he received his first passport in
1956 (Murra in Rowe 1984:639). However, in Nispa
Ninchis (Castro et al. 2000:52-53) and in an interview
given to Waldo Ansaldi and Fernando Calderón G. first
published in 1989 and republished in 2000, Murra states
that he received his first United States passport in 1958.
A 1956 letter in the NAA from one of Murra’s attorneys
advises Murra that he could expect a passport shortly. I
have not been able to locate Murra’s first United States
passport. The fact that he apparently did not travel to
areas where a passport was required until 1958, coupled
with Murra’s oft-expressed eagerness to return to South
America, makes me think that Murra’s first United States
passport was issued in 1958.
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE ANTI-FASCIST
STRUGGLE - JOHN MURRA’S WAR WORK
Ecuador
Although Murra’s injuries precluded his
enlistment in the United States military forces,16
he put his anthropological education to good use
in war work. From August 28, 1941 through mid-
February 1942,17 he was in Ecuador, participating
in survey and excavations officially directed by
Fay-Cooper Cole with Donald Collier18 of the
Field Museum serving as the Assistant Director
in the field (Collier and Murra 1943:11). It is
unclear if Cole ever visited Ecuador in
connection with this project. Murra held the
formal title of Supervisor. The work was
16
Letter from John V. Murra to Frances Jay, July 9, 1941,
in the archives of the Institute of Andean Research,
Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural
History (hereinafter I.A.R., A.M.N.H.). It is possible that
Nelson Rockefeller personally facilitated Murra’s draft
exemption (letter from Donald Collier to John Victor
Murra, June 5, 1941, Murra, NAA).
17
Anon. 1947a; Letter from Donald Collier to George C.
Vaillant, February 5, 1942, I.A.R., A.M.N.H.
18
Donald Collier (1911-1995) received his Ph.D. from the
University of Chicago (1954). Anthropological interests
were shared by Collier family members. Donald’s father was
United States Commissioner of Indian Affairs. His brother,
John Collier, Jr. (1913-1992) was a noted photographer and
visual anthropologist. In the 1950s John Collier was a
member of the Cornell University Department of Anthro-
pology. The Colliers’ brother-in-law, René D’Harnoncourt
directed the Museum of Modern Art (1949-1967).
D’Harnoncourt was an expert on Mexican art and ancient
Peruvian textiles. Donald’s wife, Malcolm Carr Collier,
published on the Navajo. Don Collier’s early archaeological
and ethnological work was in the western United States.
From 1936 he studied land use in the Andes and in 1937
worked with Julio C. Tello in the Casma Valley. His Ph.D.
dissertation was produced as part of his participation in the
Virú Valley Project. As a curator at the Field Museum
Collier organized many important exhibitions. A short
obituary of Collier by Donald Thompson along with a
bibliography of Collier’s works appears in the 1996 volume
of American Antiquity.
-8
sponsored by the Institute of Andean Research
(I.A.R.) At the time Nelson Rockefeller19 had
arranged for the I.A.R. to receive its funding
from the United States Department of State’s
Council of National Defense, Division of
Commercial and Cultural Relations.20 The work
in Ecuador was part of a co-ordinated series of
major sub-projects that were also staged in
Mexico, El Salvador, Cuba, Colombia,
Venezuela, Peru, and Chile. These were
considered part of the national defense,21 the
idea being both to put intelligent, if often
inexperienced, observers into parts of Latin
America suspected to be of interest to the Nazis,
and to improve United States-Latin American
relations. The Ecuador portion was designated
“Project 9B–Ecuador–1941-42”. Because
Murra’s United States citizenship application
was pending22 and he did not have a passport as
19
Nelson Aldridge Rockefeller (1908-1979) was a
president of the Museum of Modern Art (1939-1958), the
forty-ninth governor of New York State (1959-1973), and
the forty-fifth vice president of the United States (1974-
1977). He was also a businessman and philanthropist.
Rockefeller promoted economic development and liberal-
ization, as well as North American culture, in Latin
America, while holding important national appointed
offices. He was Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs
(1940-1944), Chairman of the Inter-American Develop-
ment Commission (1940-1947), and Assistant Secretary
of State for Latin American Affairs (1944-45). Rockefeller
believed that by promoting United States culture he could
counter perceived Fascist and Communist influences in
the region. In the 1950s, under President Eisenhower, he
supervised secret C.I.A. operations.
20
Letter from George C. Vaillant to Donald Collier,
February 14, 1941, I.A.R., A.M.N.H.; Collier and Murra
1943:11).
21
Letter from Donald Collier to John Victor Murra, June
5, 1941, NAA; Letter from C.C. Miller, Registrar, Univer-
sity of Chicago to Selective Service Board Number 9, June
16, 1941, Murra, NAA.
22
Letter from Fay-Cooper Cole to Wendell C. Bennett,
April 30, 1941, I.A.R, A.M.N.H.
9-
normally required for admission to Ecuador,23 he
was issued a permit signed by Marshall E.
Dimock, Special Assistant to the Attorney
General in Charge, Immigration and
Nationalization Service, United States Depart-
ment of Justice, which provided permission for
Murra to leave the United States and return
within a year without loss of residence credit
under exemptions provided by Section 307 of the
Nationality Act of 1940.24 In effect, Murra was
not to be penalized for leaving the United States
to undertake work tied to the United States war
effort.
Collier hoped to determine the relationship
of early archaeological material to the Inca
Horizon in the southernmost part of Ecuador and
the cultural connections, if any, to what is now
northern Peru (Collier and Murra 1943: 15).
However, by the time he and Murra arrived in
Ecuador, Peruvian armed forces had invaded that
country, and Collier’s first area of interest had
fallen under military occupation. Collier and
Murra adjusted their research plan to conduct
reconnaissance in the southern part of
Chimborazo Province, and in the provinces of
Cañar, Azuay, and Loja in order to find stratified
sites. This fit in well with the whole series of
I.A.R. projects whose main goal was to create
linked cultural sequences for prehispanic North
and South America as a whole.25 Radiocarbon
dating had not yet been developed, so the
sequences were to be established through co-
ordinated longitudinal surveys, stratified
23
Information provided by the Consulate General of
Ecuador, New York, 1941, Murra, NAA.
24
Letter from John Victor Murra to United States Immi-
gration Commission, July 10, 1941, Murra, NAA; letter
from Marshall E. Dimock to Fay-Cooper Cole, July 16,
1941, Murra NAA; Letter from Fay-Cooper Cole to George
C. Vaillant, July 18, 1941, I.A.R., A.M.N.H.
25
Letter from George C. Vaillant to Paul Martin, March
14, 1941, I.A.R. A.M.N.H.
Barnes: John V. Murra
excavations, and seriation of artifacts. The
design of the projects assumed that the pre-
hispanic cultures of the Americas were not
isolates, but rather, interconnected, much as
Nelson Rockefeller saw the American republics.
It is stunning to contemplate the scope of
the work that very small, and relatively
inexperienced, teams set out to accomplish over
vast territories in brief spans of time, especially
by comparison with European-sponsored pro-
jects at important sites such as at Pompeii
(Italy), Uruk (Iraq), Knossos (Crete), and
Mucking (England) where large groups of
specialists, workmen, and students established
themselves for decades. At the start of their
Ecuador project, Murra had never been in any
Latin American country. Donald Collier
described his own knowledge of Ecuador to be
too “slight” to be able to give Murra any useful
suggestions for preparation26 and Collier needed
a translator to function.
September 1941, Murra’s first full month in
Ecuador, was spent in orientation, including
establishing contacts with local colleagues,
obtaining permissions, and acquiring equipment
and supplies. In October he and Collier spent
ten days (Collier and Murra 1943:16) or, per-
haps, as much as two weeks at the Hacienda
Zula in Chimborazo Province where they
conducted test excavations on the four hundred
square mile paramo ranch.27 That month they
also photographed private archaeological col-
lections in the town of Riobamba. They spent
26
“As to whom to make contacts with in Ecuador, what
transportation and other conditions will be there, etc. I
have no knowledge–but you can expect to do some
traveling on mule back”; letter from Donald Collier to
John Victor Murra, May 27, 1941, Murra, NAA. A
photograph of Murra on muleback on the Ecuadorian
paramo later became iconic.
27
Letter from Donald Collier to George C. Vaillant,
October 22, 1941, I.A.R., A.M.N.H.
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
November doing archaeological surveys of Cañar,
Azuay, and Loja Provinces, recording about
twenty sites. They visited Alausí and
photographed private collections in Cuenca.
During December they excavated at three sites
near Cañar including Cerro Narrío (ibid.: 16-17).
In January 1942 Murra went to Quito for analysis
and write-up. Over forty thousand artifacts,
mostly potsherds, were shipped to the Field
Museum.28 Some of these were apparently shared
with other museums. Although this schedule did
not allow for detailed archaeological research, it
did give Collier and Murra a good strategic
overview of an important portion of the
Ecuadorian highlands. Other Americans, for
example Edwin Nelson Ferdon, were conducting
archaeological operations in other parts of the
country (Lubensky, Andean Past 8).
In the field Collier and Murra were assisted
by Aníbal Buitrón Chávez,29 then a 27-year-old
Quito school teacher who received grants from
the U. S. Department of State and the Institute
of International Education to come to the United
States for further training in anthropology during
the 1942-43 academic year. Buitrón also worked
with Don Collier’s brother, John Collier, Jr. to
produce The Awakening Valley (1949), a
photographic essay about Otavalo. Buitrón went
on to a career in international development.
Although Murra was disappointed that Buitrón
did not persist with anthropology, Murra became
convinced from his field-work in Ecuador that
the education in anthropology of young Latin
28
Letter from Donald Collier to John Victor Murra,
February 18, 1942, Murra, NAA; Letter from John Victor
Murra to the Honorable Boaz Long, American Minister,
Quito, April 2, 1942, Murra, NAA; Collier and Murra
1943:17.
29
An Archaeological Reconnaissance of the Southern
Ecuadorian Highlands–Memorandum on the Institute of
Andean Research Expedition in Ecuador, August 1941-
January 1942. Quito, January 9, 1942, Donald Collier and
John V. Murra, Murra, NAA; Collier and Murra 1943:11.
- 10
Americans was important. He never lost sight of
that goal.
Murra received his master’s degree from the
University of Chicago in 1942 (Anon. 1942).
During the last year of his master’s program he
held the University Fellowship awarded to the
highest-ranking member of the graduate student
body.30
Fear and Courage under Fire
During the latter part of 1942 and a portion
of 1943 Murra continued his war work, this time
under John Dollard31 of Yale’s Human Relations
Institute who was himself employed by the
United States Department of War. Murra’s task
was to help interview and administer
questionnaires to men who had fought with the
Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil
War. The goal was to understand how men
overcame their fear and developed courage in
combat. A short, stand-alone report of the
results, Fear in Battle, was published by the
United States Army’s Infantry Journal in 1944.
Nevertheless, the purportedly leftist slant of the
questionnaires was later cited against Murra in
his citizenship hearings (Anon. 1947b). In any
case, the contacts which Murra maintained and
forged across the country during this research
made him pivotal to the corporate identity of
American Spanish Civil War veterans.
30
Letter from Fay-Cooper Cole to the Honorable S.E.
Duran Ballen, Consul General of Ecuador, August 8,
1941. Murra, NAA; press release, Vassar College Office of
Public Relations, December 1959, John Victor Murra
Faculty File, The Catherine Pelton Durrell ’25 Archives
and Special Collections Library, Vassar College (hereafter
the John Victor Murra File, Vassar College).
31
John Dollard (1900-1980), who received his Ph.D.
from the University of Chicago (1931), was a psychologist
and social scientist best known for his studies of race
relations, especially in the American South.
11 -
Siamese Folk Tales and Cultural Values
During the summer of 1943, Murra worked
for the United States Department of War
Information under the supervision of Ruth
Benedict.32 Murra admired Benedict, whom he
considered a true anthropologist, as opposed to
Benedict’s friend and putative lover, Margaret
Mead,33 whom Murra characterized as a “Sunday
supplement anthropologist”. 34 However,
Benedict’s death in 1948 precluded a long
association.
Murra interviewed Siamese (as they were
then called) immigrants in the United States,
collecting folk tales. The goal was to discern
belief systems because understanding of these was
deemed desirable in case the United States
acquired responsibility for Siamese territory.
32
Ruth Benedict (1887-1948), a student of Franz Boas,
received her Ph.D. in 1923 and joined the Columbia faculty
with which she was associated until her death. One of her
most famous students there was Margaret Mead (note 33).
Benedict was part of the Culture-Personality school of
anthropology, a movement heavily influenced by psycho-
analysis. She is the author of Patterns of Culture (1934), a
very important book of that school. In it, adapting a model
taken from Friedrich Nietzsche, she argues that various
cultures emphasize particular personality traits. She
presented her most important wartime research as The
Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946), an exploration of
traditional Japanese culture.
33
Margaret Mead (1901-1978) was one of the most
famous anthropologists of all time. She produced a stream
of books and articles for both academic and popular audi-
ences beginning with interpretative accounts of her
Polynesian field-work and continuing with observations on
American popular culture. She is credited with broadening
sexual mores and elucidating the interplay of culture and
personality. She held a variety of teaching posts, and from
1946 to 1969 was Curator of Ethnology at the American
Museum of Natural History. Several book length
biographies of Mead, and of Mead and Benedict together,
are available.
34
Letter from Laura Rand Orthwein to John Victor Murra,
Murra, NAA (n.d., c. 1960).
Barnes: John V. Murra
Murra recognized that cunning and the ability
to deceive others were valued in Siamese
culture, at least as it manifested itself in stories.
Therefore, captives, he advised, could not be
shamed and broken down by calling them
“traitors”. That would seem a form of praise.
Teaching at the University of Chicago
In the fall of 1943 Murra became an
instructor in Anthropology at the University of
Chicago to fill in for Fred Eggan, who was
serving as Chief of Research for the Philippine
Government in exile and was instructing United
States Service personnel about the cultures of
East Asia. Murra continued to teach in Chicago
until 1946. From 1946 to 1947, he was a Fellow
of the Social Sciences Research Council. In his
Chicago teaching Murra maintained the legacy
of A.R. Radcliffe-Brown by promoting what
Murra perceived as a new anthropological
paradigm developed in the 1920s and 30s by
British and Commonwealth socio-cultural
anthropologists led by Raymond Firth,35 Broni-
35
Sir Raymond Firth (1901-2002) was a New Zealand-
born ethnologist who made distinctions between the ideal
rules of behavior within societies (social structure) and
actual behavior (social organization) and became an
expert in the societies of the Pacific. He pioneered
economic anthropology. His first degree was in economics
from Auckland University College (1921) where he also
earned an M.A. (1922) and a Diploma in Social Science
(1923). His 1927 Ph.D. dissertation from the London
School of Economics is entitled Primitive Economics of the
New Zealand Maori. Among his other famous works are
We the Tikopia (1936) based on field-work he did in the
Solomon Islands in the late 1920s. Firth continued work
with the Tikopia and published at least ten books based
on his observations of their culture. Firth became a
lecturer at the L.S.E. in 1933, was appointed Reader there
in 1935, and succeeded Bronislaw Malinowski as Professor
of Social Anthropology in 1944, remaining there in that
position until 1968. After retirement from the L.S.E. he
took up a number of distinguished visiting professorships,
including one at Cornell University in 1970 and another
at the University of Chicago in 1970-71. An obituary by
Judith Huntsman appears in the American Anthropologist
(2003). His wife, Rosemary Firth, was also a distinguished
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
slaw Malinowski36 and Radcliffe-Brown. This
paradigm emphasized field-work in living
cultures, especially those of Africa and Polynesia.
It also advocated the study of state level
societies, not just small, isolated groups (Murra in
Calderón 2000:254; see also Ansaldi and
Calderón 1989).
THE CARIBBEAN
Once the regular, tenured faculty completed
their wartime assignments, Murra was out of a
job and his life entered a new phase. He was not
able to settle down for almost a decade. With his
citizenship and passport issues unresolved, he was
limited in his travels until 1958 when his first
passport was issued. He worked as an instructor
at the University of Wisconsin in the summer of
1946. From 1947 to 1950 he taught at the
University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, first as an
Assistant Professor and Field Director of
Community Studies, and then as an Associate
Professor and Field Director. Murra supervised
studies of several communities with support from
the Rockefeller Foundation and the University of
social anthropologist.
36
Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski (1884-1942), born
Polish, became one of the most important anthropologists
of the early twentieth century during his British-based
career. He held a doctorate in mathematics and physical
sciences from Jagiellonian University. He went on to study
anthropology at Leipzig University and at the London
School of Economics. He emphasized extensive field-work,
conducted, in his case, in what is now Papua New Guinea,
and among the Trobriand Islanders of the South Pacific. A
pioneer of the participant-observer method which requires
the anthropologist to take an active role in the society he
is studying, Malinowski contributed to our understanding
of non-Western economic systems such as the famous kula
shell exchange ring. Among his works are The Sexual Life of
Savages (1929), Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922),
Coral Gardens and their Magic (1935), Magic, Science, and
Religion . . . (1948), A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term
(1961), and The Dynamics of Culture Change: An Inquiry
into Race Relations in Africa (1967). There are many book
length analyses of Malinowski’s life and work.
- 12
Puerto Rico. From 1948 to 1949, working under
the auspices of Julian Steward’s37 “Peoples of
Puerto Rico Project” (1947-1950), Murra did
ethnographic field-work in six communities on
the island (Salomon 2007:793). In the summers
Murra supervised field-work students from Yale
and other United States mainland universities,
working in Jamaica, and in Martinique in 1956
and 1957 under the auspices of “The Research
and Training Program for the Study of Man in
the Tropics”.38 During the 1950s, drawing upon
this experience, Murra frequently published
(Murra 1951a, 1955b, 1955d, 1955e, 1957a,
1957b, 1959a) and spoke (Gillespie 1950;
Wakefield 1959) on Caribbean issues.
DOCTORAL DISSERTATION
Murra was, by this time, dedicated to
anthropology. He knew that to continue in that
field in a full professional capacity he would
have to obtain a doctorate. Ecuador intrigued
Murra, as did the struggles of peasant
communities and issues of land tenure. Murra
was aware that the Indians of Otavalo had freed
themselves from serfdom by somehow acquiring
the means to purchase the lands they worked.
37
Julian H. Steward (1902-1972) held a B.Sc. in Zoology
from Cornell University (1925). He obtained his doctorate
from the University of California, Berkeley (1929). In
addition to editing the influential Handbook of South
American Indians (1946-1959), Steward conducted field-
work in the American West and exerted considerable
power as an administrator in both government and
academe. He helped to develop the concept of cultural
ecology. He held a variety of prestigious teaching
positions. In his latter career he became interested in
issues of modernization. His biography, Scenes from the
High Desert: Julian Steward’s Life and Theory was published
in 2003 by Virginia Kerns.
38
The Research Institute for the Study of Man (R.I.S.M.)
was founded by Vera D. Rubin in 1955. Rubin and her
colleagues brought the methodologies of the social
sciences to the study of rapidly changing societies. The
records of the R.I.S.M. are now in New York University’s
Bobst Library.
13 -
There were other instances of indigenous
communities liberating themselves in similar
ways. Murra wished to return to Ecuador, base
himself in Otavalo, and use the Otavaleño
experience as his principal example, making
shorter stays in other Andean communities to
study comparable cases. However, Murra was
concerned about growing older without a
doctorate in hand and his passport problems
dragged on.
Murra had become interested in the Inca in
1939-40 when he took a course from Harry
Hoijer on Andean civilizations (Murra 1956a:ii).
As a graduate student he had presented term
papers on Inca social structure and economics.
He, therefore, decided to do a library dissertation
on Tawantinsuyu,39 the Inca polity, working in
the New York Public Library and incorporating
only published evidence. Although Murra seems
to have resented this restriction, his 1956
University of Chicago doctoral dissertation, The
Economic Organization of the Inca State was
immediately recognized as one of the most
important works of synthesis ever written on
Tawantinsuyu. Murra read and interpreted the
chronicles of the early colonial Andes with a
fresh perspective. Essentially he reconstructed
the Inca economy, elucidating many features
including modes of production, land tenure,
labor arrangements, and the extraordinary value
of cloth. In particular, he was able to determine
that the Incas had a “redistributive” economy,
reallocating the production of some segments of
society for the benefit of others. In evaluating a
depiction of the Inca by another scholar, Murra
sometimes asked the question, “Does it go
39
The earliest known recorded use of a term similar to
Tawantinsuyu, Taguansuyu, was made in 1577 in a
memorial presented to the Viceroy don Francisco de
Toledo. In this context it designated the social and physical
divisions of Cusco, which were projected outwards to
encompass territory within 55 kilometers of that city. This
document was published by Waldimar Espinoza Soriano in
the Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’Études Andines (1977).
Barnes: John V. Murra
beyond William H. Prescott’s 1847 History of the
Conquest of Peru?” It is clear that in his own
work, Murra did progress beyond that classic.
Readers of The Economic Organization of the
Inca State have noted that Murra’s analytic
framework seems to owe something to that of
Karl Polanyi’s40 studies of non-market
economies (c.f. Van Buren in American
Anthropologist 98[2] 1996; Wachtel 1973) who
was at Columbia University when Murra was
writing his dissertation. Polanyi, Conrad M.
Arensberg, and Henry W. Pearson had not yet
published Trade and Market in the Early Empires
(1957) but they, and their students, were laying
the groundwork for that book in a seminar that
Polanyi and Arensberg41 taught in the early-to-
mid 1950s. In the acknowledgments section of
his dissertation Murra states that he attended
“half a dozen” meetings of this seminar in 1953-
40
Karl Polanyi (1886-1964) was an economic journalist
and theorist, a democratic socialist, and the founder of
Substantialism, a school of thought which emphasizes the
imbeddedness of economics in the rest of culture. He
obtained a doctor of laws degree from the University of
Budapest (1908) and was called to the Budapest bar in
1912. Polanyi also studied at the University of Kolosvar in
Romania. After World War I he was forced to flee from
Hungary for political reasons. He worked as a newspaper
man in Vienna from 1924 to 1937. The development of
Austrian Fascism forced him to flee once more, first to
London, then to North America. He taught at
Bennington College (1940-1943) and Columbia
University (1947-1953), remaining at Columbia as a
researcher after his formal retirement. His 1944 book, The
Great Transformation, an exploration of the emergence of
modern capitalist economies brought him worldwide fame.
In 1957 he published Trade and Market in Early Empires.
41
Conrad Maynadier Arensberg (1910-1997) studied
complex societies from an anthropological perspective and
was well-known for his research in Ireland and in New
England. He was educated at Harvard College, obtaining
both an A.B. (1931) and a Ph.D from that institution
(1934). Arensberg taught at M.I.T., Brooklyn College,
Barnard College, and Columbia University. An obituary
of Arensberg by Lambros Comitas was published in the
American Anthropologist (2000).
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
54 and notes that he found Polanyi’s studies of
redistributive systems stimulating (Murra 1956a:
iv). However, in Nispa Ninchis, a long interview
of Murra conducted in 1993 and published in
2000, Murra explicitly denies the influence of
Polanyi, except for supplying the term
“redistribution”, and provides an alternate
chronology, saying that he heard talks by Polanyi
when he, Murra, was working at the U.N., that is
in 1951, (Castro et al. 2000:93; Murra 1951b,
1951c, 1951d, 195e, 1951f, 1951g) and that he
attended two of Polanyi’s seminars after he had
finished his dissertation, that is, after 1955 or
1956 (ibid.; see also Murra 1981b). Polanyi,
Arensberg, and Pearson, for their part, in the
Preface to Trade and Market in the Early Empires
acknowledge Murra as among those who have
contributed “ideas and ideals; moral, intellectual,
and technical assistance”(p. xi). Murra was
probably also influenced by Helen Codere’s42
now-classic book on the Kwakwaka’wakw
(Kwakuitl) potlatch, Fighting with Property (1950)
in which she noted that the potlatch had
“distributing and redistributing functions not
however properly called trade” (p. 20).
Nevertheless, the detailed synthesis in Murra’s
dissertation of many early sources on the Inca is
certainly his own, and his inferences about Inca
economic practices follow logically from that
synthesis. For many years Murra continued to
develop the ideas presented in his dissertation
and they form the cores of his early articles on
42
Helen Codere (b.1917) earned a B.A. from the
University of Minnesota (1939), and a Ph.D. from
Columbia University (1950). She taught at Columbia and
at the University of Minnesota, joining the Vassar faculty
in 1946. In 1954, on leave from Vassar, she was a visiting
Professor at the University of British Columbia. In 1958 she
was promoted to the rank of Professor. After leaving Vassar
she became a dean at Brandeis and is now Professor
Emeritus there. Her geographical areas of interest include
the Northwest Coast of North America, Iceland, and
Africa, especially Rwanda. She is the author of Fighting with
Property: A Study of Kwakiutl Potlatching and Warfare 1792-
1930 (1950) and Biography of an African Society: Rwanda
1900-1960 . . . (1973).
- 14
Andean cultures. Murra remained a materialist
and a leftist, although he was no longer a
Marxist. The value of studies of non-market
economies was confirmed in 2009 with the
award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Elinor
Ostrom for her work on the cooperative
management of shared resources such as
fisheries(see Science 16 October 2009, p. 374).
FRIENDS AND FAMILY
In 1940 Murra and Virginia Miller
divorced.43 In February 1946 he married
Elizabeth Ann “Tommy” Sawyer. That marriage
ended formally in a Mexican divorce in 1958. In
1959 Murra met and formed a romantic
association with one of his freshman Vassar
students, the strikingly beautiful debutante
Laura Rand Orthwein.44 Laura, wishing to free
herself of a patronymic, adopted part of Murra’s
nom de guerre, legally becoming Laura Murra
from 1963. By the late 1960s she had assumed
the name Laura X. As Laura X she became a
well-known feminist writer, editor, and human
rights and anti-Vietnam War activist. In 1968
she founded the Women’s History Research
Center in her Berkeley, California home. The
Center developed an outstanding collection of
feminist ephemera. She is now once again
known as Laura Rand Orthwein and is a major
philanthropist in her native St. Louis. In his
diaries Murra referred to Laura as “Lilac”.
Sometimes he called her his third wife. In his
latter years Murra’s trusted friend was Judith
Willis, whom he met when she was a secretary
at Cornell.
43
Letter from Elizabeth Ann “Tommy” Sawyer Murra to
Henry Heineman, July 30, 1948, Murra NAA.
44
Laura Rand Orthwein, personal communication, 4
January, 2009; see also letters from Orthwein to Murra
and from Murra to Orthwein, and photographs of Orth-
wein, Murra NAA.
15 -
Although Murra never formed a nuclear
family of procreation, he filled this gap with many
close and life-long friendships with people
including former students who became col-
leagues, such as Rolena Adorno, Jorge Hidalgo,45
Heather Lechtman (see Lechtman’s essay, this
volume, pp. 66-68), Ann Peters,46 Roger Ras-
nake47 and his wife Inge Harman (see Harman’s
essay, this volume, pp. 80-82), Frank Salomon
(see Salomon’s essay, this volume, pp. 87-102),48
45
Jorge Hidalgo Lehuedé (b. 1942) is a Chilean historian
with an anthropological and international perspective. He
holds a doctorate from the University of London and is
Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanites of the
Universidad de Chile (Santiago). His works emphasize the
role of indigenous communities, especially of the desertic
north, in his reconstructions of Chilean colonial history. A
close colleague of John Murra, Hidalgo is the author of
Historia andina en Chile (2004), a collection of essays, and
an editor of Nispa ninchis/decimos diciendo: Conversaciones
con John Murra (with Victoria Castro and Carlos Aldunate,
2000).
46
Ann Hudson Peters (b. 1955) holds a bachelor’s degree
in fine arts from Yale University (1979). While studying in
Lima on a traveling fellowship she attended a lecture by
John Murra and, inspired by that experience, went to
Cornell University to obtain her M.A. (1983) and Ph.D.
(1997). Her dissertation is entitled Paracas, Topará, and
Early Nasca: Ethnicity and Society on the South Central
Andean Coast. She has conducted field research in Peru’s
Pisco Valley and in Northern Chile and archival work with
the materials left by Julio C. Tello. She is the author of
important articles on ancient Andean textiles.
47
Roger Neil Rasnake (b. 1951) received his doctorate in
anthropology from Cornell University (1982). He has done
field-work and ethnohistorical research pertinent to the
Yura, a Quechua-speaking ethnic group of Bolivia. He is
the author of Domination and Cultural Resistance: Authority
and Power Among an Andean People (1988) which empha-
sizes the expression of authority through the fiesta system.
He is an expert in cross-cultural and international educa-
tion.
48
Frank Salomon (b. 1946) is the John V. Murra Professor
of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Among his notable publications are Native Lords of Quito in
the Age of the Incas (1986), The Huarochirí Manuscript: A
Testament of Ancient and Colonial Andean Religion (with
Barnes: John V. Murra
Peruvian anthropologist, poet, and novelist José
María Arguedas, as well as anthropologists and
historians including Carlos Sempat
Assadourian,49 Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán,50 Ruth
Benedict, Wendell Bennett,51 Thérèse Bouysse-
George Urioste, 1991), Los Yumbos, Niguas, y Tsatchila o
“Colorados” durante la colonia española: Etnohistoria del
Noroccidente de Pichincha (1997), and The Cord Keepers:
Khipu and Cultural Life in a Peruvian Village (2004). With
Stewart Schwartz he is the editor of the Cambridge History
of the Native Peoples of the Americas: South America (Prehis-
tory and Conquest) (1999).
49
Carlos Sempat Assadourian was an Argentinian
economic historian who taught in Mexico for many years.
Among his works are El Tráfico de esclavos en Córdova
argentina, 1588-1610 . . . (1965), De la conquista a la
independencia (with Guillermo Beato and José C. Chiara-
monte, 1972), El sistema de la economía colonial: Mercado
interno, regiones y espacio económico (1982), and Transi-
ciones hasta el sistema colonial andino (1994).
50
Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán (1908-1996) held various
positions in Mexico during the mid-20th century, includ-
ing the Mexican sub-secretariate of education, the
directorship of the Instituto Indigenista Interamericano,
and the editorship of América Indígena. Under American
Anthropological Association auspices and with support
from the Wenner Gren and Ford Foundations, he and
John Murra organized two international conferences on
the relationships between research and anthropological
training in the Americas. The 1967 conference was held
in Austria at Burg Wartenstein, the Wenner-Gren
Foundation European Conference Center from 1958 to
1980, and the 1968 one was held in Mexico (John Victor
Murra c.v. Murra, NAA). Aguirre Beltrán contributed
greatly to our understanding of the development of
anthropology in Mexico. He is the author of numerous
works including Formas de gobierno indígena (1953),
Aguirre Beltrán: Obra polémica (1976), Antropología medica
(1986, 1994), and Crítica antropológica (1990).
51
Wendell [Wendy] C. Bennett (1905-1953) held Ph.B.
(1927), M.A. (1929) and Ph.D. (1930) degrees from the
University of Chicago. His dissertation is a comparative
study of Polynesian religious structures. In the early 1930s
Bennett worked with Robert M. Zingg among Tarahumara
Indians of northern Mexico. From this project he formu-
lated an understanding that archaeology and ethnology
should be done in tandem when possible. In 1931 he
joined the American Museum of Natural History as
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
Cassagne52, Jesús Contreras Hernándes,53 Éric de
Dampierre,54 Pierre Duviols,55 Gordon D.
Assistant Curator of Ethnology and continued a program of
research in Andean archaeology established by his prede-
cessor, Ronald L. Olsen. Bennett made many major field
trips to the Andes during the 1930s and .40s, excavating at
Tiwanaku and Chiripa, in Bolivia, and in the Virú and
Lambeyeque Valleys, and at the sites of Chavín and Wari
in Peru. He also excavated in Venezuela, Colombia, and
Ecuador. In 1938, after holding a post at the Bishop
Museum in Hawaii, he became an Associate Professor at
the University of Wisconsin and in 1940 moved to Yale. A
short obituary of Bennett by Irving Rouse appears in
American Antiquity (1954). Another by Alfred Kidder II,
and a poem dedicated to Bennett by Eugene Davidson were
published in the American Anthropologist (1954).
52
Thérèse Bouysse-Cassagne is a historian and a Director
of Research at the Sorbonne and a member of the Institut
Français d’ Études Andines. She has contributed to our
understanding of the indigenous and Mestizo cultures of
Lake Titicaca, especially in terms of religious syncretism.
She is the author of La identidad Aymara: Aproximación
histórica, siglos XV-XVI (1987), Lluvias y cenizas: Dos
pachacuti en la historia (1999) and has edited Saberes y
memorias en los Andes (1997) in memory of Thierry Saignes
(see note 66). She is also, with Tristan Platt and Olivia
Harris, an author of Qaraqara–Charka: Mallku, inka y rey
en la “Provincia de Charcas”, siglos XV-XVII; Historia
antropológica de una confederación aymara (2006).
53
Jesús Contreras Hernándes (b. 1946) is a Spanish
historian. He is the author of Subsistencia, ritual y poder en
los Andes (1985), Identidad étnica y movimientos indios: La
cara india, la cruz de 92 (1988), Los retos de la inmigración:
Racismo y pluriculturalidad (1994), and La gestión comunal de
recursos: Economía y poder en los sociedades locales de España
y de América Latina (with Marie-Noëlle Chamoux, 1996),
among other works.
54
Éric de Dampierre (1928-1998) was one of the most
important French sociologists of the generation after the
Second World War and the founder of the Maison René-
Ginouvès de l’Archéologie et Ethnologie, part of the
Université de Paris and supported by the Centre Nacional
de Recherche Scientifique. He conducted field research in
Central Africa. He was deeply influenced by the two years
he spent at the University of Chicago as a member of the
Committee on Social Thought.
55
Pierre Duviols is a Professor at the Université de
Provence and Director of Studies at the École Practique des
- 16
Hadden,56 Olivia Harris,57 John Hyslop (Murra
1994a), Agustín Llagostera,58 José Matos Mar,59
Hautes Études. In 1993-94 he was a scholar at The Getty
Center. He takes an interdisciplinary approach to his
research, combining anthropology and history in the
study of Andean religious culture. His books include
Dioses y hombres de Huarochirí (with José María Arguedas,
1966), La lutte contre les religions autochthones du Pérou
colonial: L’extirpation de l’idolâtrie entre 1535 et 1660
(1971), and Procesos y Visitas de Idolatrías: Cajatambo, siglo
XVII (2003).
56
Gordon D. Hadden (b. 1932) was a curator at what is
now the Science Museum of Minnesota. After working at
Húanuco with John Murra and assisting in the reconstruc-
tion there, in 1967 Hadden participated in the reconstruc-
tion of the Ecuadorian Inca site of Ingapirca.
57
Olivia Harris (1943-2009) studied anthropology at the
London School of Economics. At the time of her death
she was a Professor at that institution. Previously she
taught at the University of London’s Goldsmith College
where she co-founded the Anthropology Department. Her
main research area was highland Bolivia. She explored
issues of gender, households, kinship, feminist theory, law,
economic anthropology, symbolism and ritual, as well as
the nature of historical time and change. She was the
author of To Make the Earth Bear Fruit: Essays on Fertility,
Work, and Gender in Highland Bolivia (2000). See note 52
for another of her major published works.
58
Augustín Llagostera Martínez obtained an under-
graduate degree in biology from the Universidad de Chile
(1967), studied archaeology at the Universidad Nacional
San Antonio Abad del Cusco (1973), and obtained his
doctorate in anthropology from the Centro de Investi-
gaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología, Mexico
(1984). He is now retired from the Instituto de Investi-
gación Arqueológico and the museum in San Pedro de
Atacama. He is a specialist in the early cultures of Chile.
His published works include his doctoral dissertation
Formaciones pescadoras prehispánicas en la costa del Desierto
de Atacama (1984).
59
José Matos Mar (b. 1921) was born in Coracora, Aya-
cucho. He studied at the École Practique des Hautes
Études de la Université de Paris and the Universidad
Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (Lima) where he obtained
a doctorate in anthropology (1958). He was Chairman of
the San Marcos Anthropology Department from 1950 to
1969 and Director of the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos
17 -
Craig Morris (Lynch and Barnes, Andean Past 8),
Sidney Mintz,60 Antoinette Molinié,61 Pierre
Morlon,62 Franklin Pease,63 Tristan Platt,64
from 1964 to 1984, as well as the Director of the Instituto
Indigenista Interamericano in Mexico City from 1989 to
1995. He was one of Peruvian President Alan Garcia’s
advisors during his first term (1985-1989) and has held a
number of important posts in his adopted Mexico. Matos
Mar has published more than twenty books including Perú
problema (1969), Desborde popular y crisis de estado (1984),
Población y grupos étnicos de América (1994).
60
Sidney Wilfred Mintz (b. 1922), a student of Julian
Steward and Ruth Benedict at Columbia, is an American
anthropologist known both for field-work in the Caribbean
and for historical research on the global commercial roots
of agro-industrial rural society. He taught at Yale (1951-74)
and then helped found the Anthropology Department at
Johns Hopkins. He is the author of Caribbean Transforma-
tions (1974), An Anthropological Approach to the Afro-
American Past (with Richard Price, 1976), and Sweetness
and Power: the Place of Sugar in Modern History (1985),
among many other works.
61
Antoinette Molinié (b. 1946) is Research Director at
the Maison René-Ginouvès de l’Archéologie et Ethnologie.
She specializes in the study of traditional Andean societies.
She has conducted field-work in the Cusco region, in the
Chancay Valley, and at Ambana in Bolivia. Currently she
works in Andalucia where she applies Freudian psychology
to the analysis of culture. Among her published works are
La vallée sacrée des Andes (1982), Mémoire de la tradition
(with Aurore Becquelin, 1993), Le corps de Dieu en fêtes
(1996), and Les néo-Indiens: Une religion du IIIe millénaire
(with Jacques Galinier, 2006).
62
Pierre Morlon (b. 1948) is an agronomist at the Institut
Nacional de la Recherche Agronomique, France who has
conducted research in Senegal, Peru, and France. His
varied interests include solar energy, the archaeology of
households, and adult literacy in indigenous languages. He
is the editor of Comprendre l’agriculture paysanne dans les
andes centrales (1992) and the author of La troublante
histoire de la jachère: Pratiques des cultivateurs, concepts de
lettrés et enjeux sociaux, with F. Sigaut, 2008).
63
Franklin Pease García Yrigoyen (1939-1999) was a
Peruvian historian born into a privileged background. He
was educated at the Universidad Pontificia Católica del
Perú in history and law. An obituary of Franklin Pease by
Noble David Cook appears in the Hispanic American
Barnes: John V. Murra
Ruggero Romano,65 Thierry Saignes,66 Ana-
María Soldi,67 and Enriqueta Vila Vilar68. Also
Historical Review (2000). Pease published general histories
of Peru and editions of important chroniclers.
64
Tristan Platt (b. 1944), the director of the Centre for
Amerindian Studies and a Reader at the University of St.
Andrews, Fife, Scotland, is an interdisciplinarian who has
done extensive ethnographic, enthnohistorical, and socio-
linguistic work in Andean countries, especially Bolivia. He
has lived with the Macha Ayllu in northern Potosí and has
published on peasants and markets, economic space, state
and society, mining, shamanism, and methods of child-
birth, among other broad and varied topics. See note 52
for one of his major recent works.
65
Ruggero Romano (1923-2002) was, for many years,
Director of Studies at the École d’Études des Sciences
Sociales and was a member of the Annales school of
history which elucidates the social and economic life of
the past through statistics and everyday documents. He
studied the European and Latin American economies
from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Among his
published works is Conjonctures opposées: La ?Crise” du
XVIIe siècle en Europe et en Amerique ibérique (1992).
66
Thierry Saignes was a French historian who
concentrated on the Andes. Among his works are Los
Andes orientales: Historia de un olvido (1985).
67
AnaMaría Soldi (1919-2009) studied chemistry at the
Università di Genoa. A long time resident at the Ocucaje
vineyard in the Ica Valley, Peru, she developed a deep
knowledge of the archaeology of Peru’s South Coast. She
published Chacras excavadas en el desierto (1979) on the
prehistoric system of sunken field agriculture and edited
Tecnología en el mundo andino (with Heather Lechtman,
1981). Soldi was a steadfast colleague of Lechtman, Craig
Morris, Murra, and María Rostworowski, and, for more
than fifty years, of many other scholars of the Andean
region.
68
Enriqueta Vila Vilar obtained a doctorate from the
Universidad de Sevilla (1972). She is a research professor
of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas at
the Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, Seville. She
has concentrated on colonial Spanish America. Among
her works are a series of publications of letters from the
cabildos of Guatemala, Mexico, and Panama and Aspectos
sociales en América colonial: De extranjeros, contrabando, y
esclavos (2001).
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
among Murra’s close friends were his fellow
Spanish Civil War veterans Harry Fischer and
anthropologists Ángel Palerm,69 and Elman R.
Service.70 Murra preserved numerous letters to
and from these scholars and others. The bulk are
in the Smithsonian Institution’s National
Anthropological Archives, while others are in
the Anthropology Division of the American
Museum of Natural History, and in private
hands. These letters are important not only in
69
Ángel Palerm (1917-1980) arrived in Mexico in 1939.
There he studied, and worked as a field assistant for
archaeologist and I.A.R. member Isabel Truesdale Kelly
and became her co-author. He worked for the Pan-Ameri-
can Union/Organization of American States in Washing-
ton, D.C. in their publications program. After leaving the
O.A.S. he spent a year in Peru. He returned to Mexico
where he became a professor at the Escuela Nacional de
Antropología e Historia and the Universidad Ibero-
americana where he founded the Anthropology Depart-
ment. He founded the Centro de Investigaciones Su-
periores at Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Antropología y
Historia (now the Centro de Investigación de Estudios Su-
periores de Antropología Social), as well as the Anthropol-
ogy Departments of the Universidad Autónoma Ixtapalapa
and the Colegio de Michoacán. His major works on
prehispanic irrigation civilizations including Obras hidráu-
licas prehispánicas en el sistema lacustre del Valle de México
(1973) are still frequently cited. Among his other notable
works are Antropología y marxismo (1980) and Historia de la
etnología: Los precursores (1973). In many ways Palerm
personified Murra’s ideal of an anthropologist who followed
Marx’s advice in founding institutions to insure the contin-
uance of the discipline.
70
Elman R. Service (1915-1996) graduated from the
University of Michigan. He earned his Ph.D. at Columbia
University (1951) and taught there until 1953. He taught
at Michigan from 1953 until 1969 and at the University of
California, Santa Barbara from 1969 until retirement in
1985. Service’s research included Latin American Indian
ethnology, cultural evolution, and method and theory. He
developed theories on social systems and the rise of the
state. Among his books are Spanish-Guarani Relations in
Early Colonial Paraguay (1954), Tobati: Paraguayan Town
(with Helen S. Service, 1954), A Profile of Primitive Culture
(1958), Profiles in Ethnology (1963), Cultural Evolutionism:
Theory in Practice (1971), Origins of the State and Civiliza-
tion: The Process of Cultural Evolution (1975), and A Century
of Controversy: Ethnological Issues from 1860 to 1960 (1985).
- 18
terms of Murra’s life and thought, but also for
those of the many well-known anthropologists
who were in communication with Murra over a
span of some seventy years.
VASSAR COLLEGE YEARS
Murra left Puerto Rico and worked as a
lecturer at Brooklyn College during the 1949-50
academic year. In 1950 Murra was hired as a
lecturer in anthropology by Vassar College, then
an academically and socially exclusive insti-
tution emphasizing the liberal arts education of
undergraduate women. Murra was to fill in for
Dorothy Lee who was on leave.71 In the
Department of Economics, Sociology, and
Anthropology he first taught general courses
that had already been established. Murra’s
intellectual interests made him a good fit in a
department dominated by economics. Likewise,
time spent during the early 1950s in close
contact with an economics faculty probably
helped to shape the orientation of Murra’s
dissertation which he was preparing at the time.
Murra’s Vassar courses included the inter-
mediate level “Cultural Anthropology”, that he
co-taught at first with Helen Codere. This is
described in the 1950-1951 catalogue number of
the Bulletin of Vassar College as “a study of
primitive social groups. The nature of culture.
71
Dorothy Demedracapoulou Lee (1906-1975), a Greek
immigrant to the United States, graduated from Vassar
College (1927). She taught there from 1939 until 1953
when she left to teach at the Merrill Parker School in
Detroit which she helped to found, and where she re-
mained until 1959. At Harvard from 1959 to 1961, she
helped to establish the Freshman Seminar Program. She
was married to Vassar philosophy professor Otis Hamilton
Lee. A member of the Culture-Personality school of
anthropology, she specialized in the cultures of American
Indians and in issues concerning women, education, and
family life, as well as in Greek folklore. She is the author
of Freedom and Culture (1959), a collection of her essays.
For an obituary see the April 20, 1975 issue of The New
York Times.
19 -
Social and economic aspects of subsistence,
kinship, and marriage.” Murra also taught
advanced courses including “Language, Myth,
and Society”, which explored “concepts and
values as reflected in the language and myth-
ology of different primitive groups. Relative
status of animistic and mechanistic attitudes,
magic and science, knowledge and belief” (ibid.).
Murra was sometimes responsible for another
advanced course, “Primitive Society” which
included “Discussion of different approaches to
the study of society. An intensive study of certain
societies with a view to discovering their basic
values and their relation to our own society”
(ibid). “Cultural Dynamics”, the only course
mentioned in the catalogue which specifically
dealt with ancient Peru, was taught by Helen
Codere, until the 1955-56 academic year when
Murra taught it. In a c.v. prepared in the late
1960s Murra stated that he taught an Inca course
at Vassar (c.v. Murra, NAA). Perhaps he is
referring to “Cultural Dynamics”.
During six months of 1951 Murra worked as
a United Nations Economic Affairs Officer and
Africa Area Specialist in the Trusteeship Di-
vision, helping to resolve issues of African land
tenure and decolonization. Although he had
never been to that continent, he at least had the
advantage of being untainted by colonial
involvements. Also in 1951 he was employed as
a consultant by Stringfellow Barr’s72 Foundation
for World Government. His time at the U.N.
proved to be another pivotal experience. In the
72
Stringfellow Barr (1897-1982) was a historian and
president of St. John’s College, Annapolis, Maryland, and
founder and President (1948-1958) of the Foundation for
World Government, as well as a developer of the Great
Books Curriculum. He was an editor of the Virginia Quar-
terly Review (1931-1937). Among his books are The Will of
Zeus . . . (1961) and The Mask of Jove . . . (1966), studies of
ancient Greek and Roman culture, and, with Stella Stan-
dard, The Kitchen Garden Book . . ., a guide to growing and
cooking vegetables. He also published a novel, Purely
Academic (1958). Barr advocated tolerance of Communism.
Barnes: John V. Murra
U.N.’s early years it had very high levels of
popular and international governmental sup-
port. Many prominent Africans and Afro-
Americans worked on U.N. sponsored projects
and Murra had the opportunity to come to
know some of them personally, including his
supervisor, Ralph Bunche. 73 Murra’s
commitment to improved civil rights for Afro-
Americans enhanced his interest in their
ancestral homelands. As with his field-work in
Ecuador, Murra took a brief practical
experience, combined it with the anthropology
courses he had taken from Radcliffe-Brown in
Chicago in 1935 and 1936 and his own
prodigious reading in multiple languages, and
began to present himself as an expert, in this
case on African affairs.74
For a while Murra maintained his active
interest in the Caribbean. In the summer of
1953, accompanied by Tommy Sawyer Murra,
he worked for Sidney Mintz and Yale University
in Jamaica. After their work was completed the
Murras went to Cuba (intending to visit Ernest
Hemingway who proved to be off the island)
and on to Yucatan to visit Maya sites, and then
to Mexico City to visit Ángel Palerm (Castro et
al. 2000:42-43). This was Murra’s first trip to
73
Ralph Johnson Bunche (1903-1971) was an Afro-
American Marxist political scientist, educator, and
diplomat and a holder of the Nobel Peace Prize for his
mediation in Palestine, as well as a recipient of the
presidential Medal of Freedom. He helped to found and
administer the United Nations and was active in the cause
of Afro-American civil rights. Bunche earned a B.A. from
the University of California Los Angeles (1927), and a
master’s degree(1928) and doctorate (1934) from Har-
vard. Bunche chaired the department of political science
at Howard University (1928-1950), taught at Harvard
(1950-1952), and was a member of the New York City
Board of Education (1958-1964).
74
Anon. 1951b, 1951c, 1951d, 1951e, 1951f, 1951g,
1954b, 1956c, 1957b, 1960a, 1961b, 1961c, 1961e; Murra
1951b, 1951c, 1951d, 1951e, 1951f, 1951g, 1954a, 1955a,
1955c, 1955g, 1955h, 1956b.
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
Mexico. At that time it was possible for United
States citizens to go to that country without a
passport.
Murra returned to teaching at Vassar in
1954. Around this time he began to collaborate
with Vassar professor, David Lowenthal, and
other members of the geography, economics,
anthropology, sociology, history, and political
science faculty in teaching Geography 208, an
interdepartmental area study course focusing on
the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. This
course was offered in the spring of 1953, and in
the 1953-1954, and 1954-1955 academic years
according to various catalogue numbers of the
Bulletin of Vassar College.75
During the 1956-57 academic year, Murra
initiated a course at Vassar on “The African
Heritage”, described in that year’s catalogue as
“A survey of a series of African cultures south of
the Sahara; their history, characteristic social
structures and value systems; the transfer of
African institutions and arts to the New World
and the changes they have undergone in Brazil,
the Caribbean and the United States.” Murra
had previously taught a course on Africa in
Chicago in 1944 (Murra in Rowe 1984:841) and
it was in that context that he met Tommy
Sawyer. This course became the basis for other
courses on Africa that Murra taught at the
Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos
(Lima), at the Universidad de Puerto Rico, and
at the Université de Paris, at Columbia
University, and at the New School for Social
Research (Murra in Rowe 1984:641). Africa
interested Murra in part because he believed that
early twentieth century field studies of that
continent’s native kingdoms that had not been
75
According to Lowenthal’s recollection, his collaboration
with Murra began in January, 1953 (David Lowenthal,
personal communication to Heather Lechtman, 11 June
2009). However, this chronology conflicts with c.v.’s Murra
prepared in the 1960s (see note 86).
- 20
overthrown until the late nineteenth century
reflected a pre-European, pre-Capitalist, and
preliterate past (Murra in Rowe 1984:641).
However, the extensive international slave
trade had enmeshed African societies with
European, Islamic, and American colonial
economies for centuries.
The version of this course that Murra
presented at Vassar suggested Africa as a possi-
ble home of the human species, and surveyed
the ecology, languages, and biology of that
continent. Topics included East and South
African pastoralism, the lineage, age sets and
their meaning for political organization among
the Masai, Nuer, Nyakyusa, and Zulu, as well as
state formation in East and South Africa as
found among the Nuer, Ankole, Ganda,
Rwanda, Garotse, and Zulu peoples. The matri-
lineal belt of Central Africa was discussed with
the Mayombe-Kongo, Bemla, and Ila cultures as
exemplars. European settlement and its con-
sequences in East and Central Africa was
another broad topic covered using the work of
Godfrey Wilson,76 Monica Hunter Wilson,77
76
Godfrey Wilson (1908-1944) was a British social
anthropologist who studied change in Africa. He received
a degree in classics from Oxford University (1931). He
studied under Bronislaw Malinowski at the London
School of Economics and married Monica Hunter (note
77). In Tanganyika he worked with the Nyakyusa-
Ngonde. He was the first director of the Rhodes-Living-
stone Institute, an anthropological institution in what was
then Northern Rhodesia. With Hunter he wrote The
Analysis of Social Change Based on Observations in Central
Africa (1945). He served in the South African Medical
Corps during World War II and committed suicide while
on active service.
77
Monica Hunter Wilson (1908-1982) was a South
African social anthropologist who conducted field-work
among the Pondo, a Xhosa group. She spoke Xhosa since
childhood and was, for many years Professor of Social
Anthropology at the University of Capetown. Monica
Wilson and her husband Godfrey Wilson were members
of Malinowski’s seminar at the London School of Econom-
ics. Her major work is Reaction to Conquest (1936). She is
21 -
Peter Abrahams,78 Julius Lewin,79 and Ellen
Hellmann80 as sources. African law and litigation
also the author of The Analysis of Social Change, Communal
Rituals among the Nyakyusa (1959), Langa: A Study of Social
Groups in an African Township (with Archie Mafeje, 1963),
and the editor of The Oxford History of South Africa (with
Leonard Monteith Thompson, 1969).
78
Peter Abrahams (b. 1919) is a South African novelist.
His books include Mine Boy (1946), Tell Freedom (1954),
and The View from Coyaba (1985), among others.
79
Julius Lewin was a lawyer and Senior Lecturer in Native
Law and Administration at the University of Witwaters-
rand. He was a liberal Jewish opponent of the South
African apartheid regime. He is the author of various books
and pamphlets on race relations and inequality in Africa
including The Colour Bar in the Copper Belt (1941), Studies
in African Native Law (1947), Politics and Law in South
Africa: Essays on Race Relations (1963), and The Struggle for
Racial Equality (1967). Like Murra, Lewin wrote for The
Nation.
80
Ellen Hellmann (1908-1982) was the first woman to
obtain a D.Phil. from the University of Witwatersrand
(1940). Her thesis is entitled Early School Leaving Among
African School Children and the Occupational Opportunities
Open to the African Juveniles. She was a Zionist-Socialist and
the author of numerous studies of race relations in South
Africa including Rooiyard: A Sociological Study of an Urban
Native Slum Yard (1948) based on field-work conducted in
Johannesburg, South Africa in 1933, Handbook of Race
Relations in South Africa (with Leah Abrahams, 1949), The
Application of the Concept of Separate Development to Urban
Areas (1961), The Impact of City Life on Africans (1963),
and Conflict and Progress: Fifty Years of Race Relations in
South Africa . . . (with Henry Lever, 1979). She realized the
importance of combining diachronic studies with function-
alism in order to understand migrant communities.
Barnes: John V. Murra
as seen by Max Gluckman,81 A. L. Epstein,82 J.
B. Danquah,83
81
Max Gluckman (1911-1975) was a South African born
British social anthropologist who had been a Rhodes
Scholar at Oxford University. He was the second director
of the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute (after Godfrey Wil-
son, see note 76) and the first Professor of Social Anthro-
pology at the University of Manchester. He founded the
Manchester School of anthropology which emphasized
case studies. He is the author of Custom and Conflict
(1955), African Traditional Law in Historical Perspective
(1974), and Economy of the Central Barotse Plain (1968),
among other work. He was a Structural-Functionalist, a
Marxist, and active in the African independence struggle.
82
Arnold Leonard (Bill) Epstein (1924-1999) was a
Jewish-British anthropologist who worked in Africa,
particularly in the copper belt of what is now Zambia, as
well as in Melanesia. Educated first in the law, he ob-
tained a doctorate from the University of Manchester.
Early in his career he was a Functionalist, but later he
began to appreciate the role of individual emotions and
representations. He was a member of the Manchester
School of anthropology (see note 81) and, from 1950 to
1955 he was associated with the Rhodes-Livingstone
Institute. He studied issues of urban and rural life, law
courts, trade unionism, black-white relations, and mining.
He is the editor of The Craft of Social Anthropology (1967).
His book, Mantupit: Land, Politics and Change among the
Tolai of New Britain (1967) was a result of his Melanesian
field-work. An interview of Epstein is in Current Anthro-
pology (1997) and an obituary by Moshe Shokeid appears
in the American Anthropologist (2000).
83
Joseph Kwame Kyeretwi Boakye Danquah (1895-
1965) was a Ghanaian statesman, nationalist, and writer.
He was a descendant of Akan royalty. He held a doctorate
from the University of London. Danquah died in a
Ghanaian prison where he had been incarcerated for
political reasons. He is the author of Gold Coast Akan
Laws and Customs and the Akim Abuakwa Constitution
(1928) and Akan Doctrine of God (1944).
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
T. O. Elias,84 and Julius Lewin were included in
the course, as was a consideration of West Africa
as a center of plant domestication. The shift to
agriculture practiced by males, and surplus and
redistributive economies in forest and savanna
ecozones were the foci of other lessons. The
West African history of state formation, with
emphasis on the army and warfare, was another
topic with the examples of ancient Ghana and
Timbuktu, as well as the Fulani, Hausa, Ashanti,
Benin, Yoruba, and Dahomey. There was
consideration of the Ewe and Ibo, stateless West
African groups presented from the perspective of
Cheikh Anta Diop.85 Dogon, Nupe, and Nuer
84
Taslim Olawale Elias (1914-1994) was a distinguished
Nigerian jurist and pan-Africanist. He received LL.B.
(1946), LL.M. (1947), Ph.D. (1949), and LL.D. (1962)
degrees from the University of London. He was called to
the bar in London’s Inner Temple in 1947. In 1951, while
holding a UNESCO fellowship, he became a research fellow
and instructor in anthropology at Manchester University.
In 1954 he became a research fellow at Oxford University.
In 1956, as a visiting professor, he was instrumental in
developing an African Studies Department at the
University of Delhi, India. He was a governor of the School
of African and Oriental Studies (London) and a professor
and dean at the University of Lagos. In the late 1950s he
helped to draft Nigeria’s independence constitution and in
1961-62 the constitution of Congo. He was the first
attorney general of Nigeria, chief justice of the Supreme
Court of Nigeria, and a president of the International Court
of Justice (World Court). He was the author of Nigerian
Land Law and Custom (1951), Groundwork of Nigerian Law
(1954), Makers of Nigerian Law (1956), the Nature of
African Customary Law (1956), and Africa and the
Development of International Law (1972). He valued both
British and traditional African law, believed that law
evolved in tandem with social development, and advocated
hybrid systems. He contributed to the development of
concepts of a non-Eurocentric international law. In his
writings Elias romanticized the medieval African empires of
Songhai and Timbuktu.
85
Cheikh Anta Diop (1923-1986) was a Senegalese
historian, anthropologist, physicist, and politician. He
studied pre-colonial African culture and is one of the most
influential African intellectuals of the twentieth century. In
Paris he studied physics under Frédéric Joliot-Curie, son-in-
law of Pierre and Marie Curie. Diop’s 1960 Paris doctoral
- 22
religions and cosmologies rounded out the
course, along with an exploration of the
African heritage in the New World (course
syllabus, Murra, NAA). Although this course
appears to have been a thorough introduction to
African ethnology, human ecology, and ethno-
history, it would be daunting for a scholar with
decades of practical experience in Africa to
attempt such a panorama. For someone with
Murra’s limited experience, it was a feat of
breathtaking intellectual daring.
Murra remained on the Vassar faculty, with
gaps, until 1963. He taught there in the 1950-51
academic year, and, nominally, from spring of
1954 to 1963.86 Murra often expressed appre-
thesis, first presented in 1951, argues that Pharaonic Egypt
was a black culture. It remains an influential work in the
Black Pride movement. Diop’s book Nations nègres et
culture (1955) is based on that thesis. He established a
radiocarbon laboratory at the University of Dakar (now
the Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar). Among his
many works are The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or
Reality (1974), The Cultural Unity of Black Africa . . .
(1978), Civilisation ou barbarie: Antropologie sans com-
plaisance (1981), and the chapter on ancient Egypt in the
UNESCO General History of Africa (1981-). Diop de-
nounced racial biases and believed that there were broad
patterns of African cultural unity. He argued that all lan-
guages could develop scientific terminology and translated
Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity into the Wolof
language, Diop’s mother tongue.
86
Although Heather Lechtman remembers Murra
teaching at Vassar during her freshman year, 1952-53
(personal communication, 11 December 2008), the
documentary record at Vassar suggests he was not teach-
ing there from fall of 1951 through fall 1953. In a “to
whom it may concern” letter in Spanish setting out his
professional qualifications and experience, dated 17 June
1964, Murra describes himself as a professor (catedrático)
on leave (con licencia) from Vassar College when he
worked for the United Nations in 1951 (Húanuco Project
files, Junius B. Bird Laboratory of South American Ar-
chaeology, Anthropology Division, American Museum of
Natural History, hereinafter Húanuco Files, A.M.N.H.).
At the time Murra had been a part-time lecturer whose
contract had not been renewed. Up until the late 1960s,
in a series of dated c.v.’s which form part of the Murra
23 -
ciation to Vassar for having supported him at a
time in his life when his Communist background
and citizenship problems increased his diffi-
culties in finding employment. However, by the
time Vassar hired Murra he was already a United
States citizen, and his Vassar contract was
apparently not renewed during the worst years of
McCarthyism. Murra encouraged student
interest in politics from a leftist perspective,
giving his favorites subscriptions to The Nation as
graduation presents (Murra 1958d). These gifts
were well in accord with Vassar’s liberal political
culture. Concurrently with his work at Vassar
Murra taught at Columbia University in the
spring of 1954-55, at Fordham University in the
summer of 1954, and at the New School for
Social Research in 1958-59. At Columbia he
presented a course on the peoples of the Andes
(Murra 1956a: iv).
In 1958 and 1959, with his passport in hand,
and on leave from Vassar, Murra conducted
ethnological and ethnohistorical work in Peru.
He was joined in Lima by Harriett Davis (now
Harriett Haritos) after her 1959 graduation with
a major in anthropology. Davis had previously
worked with Murra in Martinique in 1957
(Harriett Davis Haritos, personal commu-
nication, 15 June 2009). Davis later obtained a
master’s degree in anthropology from Columbia
University. In the 1959-60 academic year Murra
did additional archival research in Lima. During
this period Murra taught a general course, “The
Economic Organization of the Inca State”, based
on his dissertation87 and an advanced seminar,
Papers in the National Anthropological Archive, Murra
stated that from 1951 through 1953 he worked full-time on
his doctoral dissertation and then resumed teaching at
Vassar in 1954. However, at some point in the late 1960s
he began to list his time at Vassar as continuous from 1951
to 1963 and he omitted the detail that he had first been
hired as an adjunct lecturer.
87
“To whom it may concern” letter by John V. Murra, 17
June 1964, Húanuco Files, A.M.N.H.
Barnes: John V. Murra
“Ethnohistorical Uses of the XVIth Century
Sources on Inca Social and Economic Organ-
ization” at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de
San Marcos in Lima.88 Up to this point Murra
had had little opportunity to work with un-
published archival sources himself, although he
saw the potential and had subjected available
published sources to close readings. Attending
his classes were many individuals who later
became famous archaeologists or historians and
close colleagues of Murra’s, including Duccio
Bonavia,89 Luís Lumbreras,90 Ramiro Matos
88
This is according to typed notes, presumably by John V.
Murra, in the John Victor Murra File, Vassar College.
89
Duccio Bonavia (b. 1935) is an Italian-Peruvian
archaeologist. He has investigated bioarchaeological topics
including the introduction and development of maize in
South America and the domestication of camelids.
Among his books are Arqueología de Lurín (1965), Ricchata
quellccani: Pinturas murales prehispánicas (1974) published
in English as Mural Painting in Ancient Peru (1985), Los
Gavilanes: Mar, desierto, y oásis en la historia del hombre
(1982), and Perú, hombre y historia: De los origines al siglo
XV (1991).
90
Luís Guillermo Lumbreras (b. 1936) received both a
bachelor’s degree and a doctorate from the Universidad
Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. He established Peru’s first
Social Sciences faculty at Ayacucho’s Universidad San
Cristóbal de Huamanga during the 1960s and later helped
to establish a similar unit at the Universidad Nacional
Mayor de San Marcos. Among his achievements are the
construction of a cultural-chronological framework for
Peruvian prehistory and the development of social archae-
ology, a Marxist analysis which relates the Andean past to
the political present. He has held many important museum
and teaching posts within and beyond Peru. Among his
main publications are La arqueología como ciencia social
(1981) and Chavín: Excavaciones arqueológicas (2007).
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
Mendieta.91 Franklin Pease, and María Rostwo-
rowski. Murra considered Rostworowski to be
“the most imaginative Andean scholar in the use
of ethnohistorical records” whose “earliest work
is full of insights” (Murra in Rowe 1984:640). In
Cusco Murra interacted with many exceptional
people including archaeologists Richard Schaedel
(see Dillehay, Andean Past 8) and John Howland
Rowe (see Burger, Andean Past 8), as well as
prominent writer Aldous Huxley (1894-1963).
Huxley was then near the end of his life, but at
the height of his fame and powers, and was
considered by many to be something of a guru.
His extended family, for at least four generations,
had been deeply entwined into the bedrock
supporting Britain’s literary, scientific,
educational, and religious communities.92 Cusco’s
91
Ramiro Matos Mendieta (b. 1937), a native Quechua
speaker, is currently Curator for Latin America at the
Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.
He obtained his doctorate in 1962 from Universidad Na-
cional Mayor de San Marcos where he taught from 1970 to
1988 and is now a professor emeritus. Matos has conducted
archaeological and ethnological research in Peru, Ecuador,
Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. Among his publications are
Pumpu: Centro administrativo inka en la Puna de Junín, Perú
(1994) and Prehispanic Settlement Patterns in the Upper
Mantaro and Tarma Drainages, Junín, Peru (with Jeffrey
Parsons and Charles Hastings, 2000).
92
One of Aldous Huxley’s maternal great grandfathers was
Thomas Arnold (1795-1842), a famous headmaster of
Rugby School. One of his maternal uncles was poet
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888). Another was literary scholar
Tom Arnold (1823-1900). Aldous Huxley’s maternal aunt,
Mary Augusta Arnold Ward (1851-1920) became famous
as the novelist Mrs. Humphrey Ward. Aldous Huxley’s
paternal grandfather, Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)
was Charles Darwin’s famous defender. His father, Leonard
Huxley (1860-1933), was an educator and biographer.
Aldous Huxley’s brother, Julian Huxley (1887-1957), and
half-brother, Andrew Huxley (b. 1917) became famous as
biologists. Another half-brother, jurist David Bruce Huxley
(1915-1992) compiled and revised the laws of Bermuda.
Aldous Huxley’s son, Matthew Huxley (1920-2005) was an
educator, epidemiologist, and anthropologist. Author
Elspeth Huxley (1907-1997) was a cousin by marriage.
Among Aldous Huxley’s early students were novelist
George Orwell (Eric Blair, 1903-1950) and medieval
- 24
elite was thrilled by Huxley’s visit and relished
the opportunity to learn from him. By contrast,
Murra had no such illustrious family
connections, and had not yet fully developed
the expertise that would make him famous.
Nevertheless, Murra undertook to educate an
unwilling Huxley about the Inca (Alita Kelley,
personal communication 19 April 2009).
In 1960 Murra also spent a few weeks in the
Archivo General de Indias in Seville. In 1961 he
taught under Organization of American States
auspices at Mexico’s Escuela Nacional de
Antropología e Historia. From 1961 to 1963 he
taught at Yale as a visiting professor, offering a
course on Andean anthropology. It was at
Vassar, however, that Murra attracted his first
principal students who went on to careers in
anthropology. These include Heather Lechtman
(Vassar class of 1956), then a physics major with
a keen interest in anthropology, and now
Professor of Archaeology and Ancient
Technology and Director of the Center for
Materials Research in Archaeology and
Ethnology (CMRAE) at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (M.I.T.). Immediately
after graduation Lechtman won a Vassar grant
to spend the summer with Murra and Davis in
Martinique, as a participant in the “Research
and Training Program for the Study of Man in
the Tropics” (Vassar College press release
February 13, 1956).
Another of Murra’s Vassar students who
went on to a successful career in anthropology is
archaeologist Nan Rothschild, a member of the
Vassar class of 1959.93 At Vassar Rothschild
historian Stephen Runciman (1930-2000).
93
Anita (Nan) Askin Rothschild (b. 1938) was awarded
a doctorate from New York University in 1975. She taught
at Barnard College from 1981 to 2007 and is now director
of Museum Studies at Columbia University. She has done
prehistoric, historic, and ethno-archaeology in New York
City and in New Mexico. She has also worked with
25 -
worked as Murra’s office assistant for two and a
half years. She recalls him as a charismatic
teacher who treated students as professionals,
encouraging them to attend American Anthro-
pological Association meetings and conduct
field-work. Murra also contributed to anthro-
pology at Vassar by inviting speakers to campus
and organizing an anthropology club called
Ohemaa after a Ghanaian term for “queen
mother” the woman who sits behind the throne
and advises the king (Rothschild, personal
communication, 19 June 2009). At Vassar Murra
also taught Janet Mathews Fitchen.94
Later, at Cornell, Murra’s well-known
students included, in addition to Denise
O’Brien95 who also studied with him at Vassar,
Javier Albó,96 Rolena Adorno, Martha Anders
museum collections. Among her major works are New York
City Neighborhoods: The Eighteenth Century (1990) and
Prehistoric Dimensions of Status: Gender and Age in Eastern
North America (1991), and Colonial Encounters in a Native
American Landscape: The Spanish and Dutch in North
America (1993). With Eleanor B. Leacock she edited The
Ethnographic Journals of William Duncan Strong, 1927-28
(1994).
94
Janet Mathews Fitchen (d. 1995, age 58) graduated
from Vassar in 1958. She was awarded a Master of Arts by
the University of Illinois at Urbana (1959), and a Ph.D.
from Cornell University (1973). All of her degrees were in
anthropology. Fitchen grew up on a dairy farm in upstate
New York, did field-work with Oscar Lewis in Mexico, and
made major contributions to our understanding of rural
poverty in the United States. At the time of her death she
was the chairwoman of Ithaca College’s department of
anthropology. She is the author of Poverty in Rural America:
A Case Study (1981) and Endangered Spaces, Enduring
Places: Change, Identity and Survival in Rural America
(1991). An obituary by Wolfgang Saxon was published in
the April 7, 1995 issue of The New York Times.
95
Denise O’Brien (d. 2008) obtained an A.B. from Vassar
College (1959) and a Ph.D. from Yale (1969). She was the
editor of Rethinking Women’s Roles: Perspectives from the
Pacific (with Sharon F. Tiffany, 1984).
96
Javier Albó (b. 1934) is a Bolivian ethnohistorian,
Barnes: John V. Murra
(Sandweiss, Andean Past 3), informal student
César Fonseca,97 Inge Harman, Enrique Meyer,98
Patricia Netherly (see Netherly this volume, pp.
72-73), Roger Rasnake, Frank Salomon, Izumi
Shimada99, and Freda Wolf (see Wolf, this
volume, pp. 69-72).
Quechua and Aymara speaker, and Roman Catholic
priest. Among his many publications are works on bilin-
gual education, politics, ethnic relations, Quechua and
Aymara language and literature, kinship, and aspects of
Bolivian history.
97
César Fonseca Martel (1933-1986) obtained a doctor-
ate from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos
(1972) where he taught. He worked with John Murra
informally at the Smithsonian, and at Cornell University,
as well as during the Huánuco Project. He was an eco-
nomic anthropologist who developed John Murra’s
theories of verticality. From 1968 to 1985 he worked with
his friend Enrique Mayer (see note 98) in Chaupiwaranga,
Cañete, Tulumayo, and Paucartambo, Peru, studying
Andean systems of production, forms of exchange, and
economic development. He is the author of Sistemas
agrarios de la cuenca del río Cañete del departamento de Lima
(with Enrique Meyer, 1979) as well as numerous articles
about the Peruvian peasant economy.
98
Enrique Meyer (b. 1944), the son of Jews who fled from
the Nazis, grew up in the Peruvian highlands. He studied
for his undergraduate degree at the London School of
Economics and received his Ph.D. from Cornell University
(1974). He has taught at the Pontificia Universidad
Católica del Perú, and has been head of the Department
of Anthropological Research at the Inter-American Indian
Institute in Mexico City. In 1982 he joined the faculty of
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 1995
he moved to Yale University. His research interests
include Andean agricultural systems and Latin American
peasantry. He is the author of The Articulated Peasant:
Household Economies in the Andes (2001).
99
Izumi Shimada (b. 1948) is a Distinguished Professor
of Anthropology at Southern Illinois University. He holds
a B.A. from Cornell University (1971) and a doctorate
from the University of Arizona (1976). He has excavated
at the Moche site of Pampa Grande. Since 1978 he has
directed the Sicán Archaeological Project and he also
works at Pachacamac. Among his numerous published
works are Pampa Grande and the Moche Culture (1994) and
the edited volume Technología y la producción cerámica
prehispánica en los andes (1994).
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
Murra’s requests for generous leaves from
Vassar became an issue. In 1963 he was awarded
an $89,300 National Science Foundation grant
to direct archaeological, ethnological, and ethno-
historical research on Inca provincial life in the
Huánuco, Peru region. In accord with British
sociocultural anthropologists such as Malinowski
and Radcliffe-Brown, Murra believed that field-
work should be continuous over several years.
When he requested three additional consecutive
years of leave for this research, there was a
parting of the ways. Although Vassar encouraged
faculty and student research, its commitment to
undergraduate education required that faculty
members spent much of their time teaching in
Poughkeepsie. Furthermore, the anthropology
section of the Department of Economics,
Sociology, and Anthropology seems to have been
experiencing some sort of crisis. Helen Codere
who had long taught at Vassar, moved to Bran-
deis, leaving a subdepartment essentially without
faculty. The dozen anthropology courses in the
1963-64 catalogue issue of the Bulletin of Vassar
College were all listed as to be taught by a new
lecturer, African specialist Alexander Alland, or
with the instructors “to be announced”. Alland
did not remain long at Vassar, although he
continued working in anthropology. It appears
that John Murra left a subdepartment in collapse.
However, Murra never expressed any bitterness
over his years at Vassar. On the contrary, he
seems to have appreciated the college’s support
during a difficult time in his life.
By the late 1960s, after an interim period
presided over by the prehistorian Morton Levine,
the Vassar Anthropology Department, which by
then had separated from Economics, and later
separated from Sociology, stabilized under the
chairmanship of Walter A. Fairservis, Jr.100 who
100
Walter Ashlin Fairservis, Jr. (1921-1994) was an
archaeologist, actor, and playwright who conducted field-
work principally in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Egypt. He
held an A.A. from Chicago (1941), a B.A.(1943), and an
- 26
joined the Vassar faculty in the fall of 1968 and
retired in 1993. The department has prospered
ever since. It now offers over thirty courses
taught by a full-time faculty of seven, plus
visiting professors.
In Peru I once heard a deliciously garbled
account of Murra’s Vassar years. There a
student, who had no idea I had graduated from
that college, earnestly told me his version of
John Murra’s struggles to gain a United States
passport. According to this account, Murra was
in trouble with United States authorities
because of his leftist background, but a convent
of very intellectual and liberal nuns took up his
cause and gave him sanctuary. Prior to the late
1960s Vassar’s all female student body and
somewhat isolated, walled campus with ex-
tensive grounds and neo-Gothic architecture
made it resemble a rural monastery. I couldn’t
wait to relate this version of the “telephone”
game to Murra who was aware of our mutual
connection. When I did he looked baffled at
first, then leaned closer and whispered in a
mock-conspiratorial tone, “But it’s true, you
know!” John did have a sense of humor.
PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL
M.A. (1948) from Columbia, as well as an M.A. (1954)
and Ph.D. from Harvard (1958). He began an association
with the American Museum of Natural History in 1941 as
a volunteer. He eventually became the scientific authority
for the Museum’s Gardner D. Stoat Hall of Asian Peoples.
He taught at Vassar College from 1969 to 1993. As an
actor and the son of an actress, Fairservis’s lectures had a
dramatic flair that attracted many students to Anthropol-
ogy. The emergence of civilization in the Old World was
one of his major theoretical interests and he often ex-
plored a speculative archaeology aimed at a mixed reader-
ship. Among his major works are Excavations in the Quetta
Valley, West Pakistan (1956), Archaeological Surveys in the
Zhob and Loralai Districts, West Pakistan (1959), The Roots
of Ancient India . . . (1971), An Experiment in Civilization:
An Experiment in Prehistory (1975), and field reports on his
Hierakonpolis Project, published by Vassar College
(1983). An obituary of Fairservis by Wolfgang Saxon
appeared in the July 16, 1994 issue of The New York Times.
27 -
During the 1950s John Murra functioned as
more than just a teacher at a small college for
women. He was a public intellectual who had
considerable credibility due to his anti-fascist role
in the Spanish Civil War. Murra’s
anthropological and political interests were
broad. In addition to Andean studies, they
included the evolution of the state in Africa,
patterns of land tenure, decolonization, and
African art.101 He also continued his active
research interest in Puerto Rico and the French
Caribbean, adopting advocacy positions on the
problems encountered by immigrants from these
islands to the United States.102
Fifty or sixty years ago most Puerto Ricans
who settled in New York City struggled with a
physical, social, economic, and cultural en-
vironment drastically different from what they
knew on their home island. Many found
themselves in the slums of Manhattan’s Spanish
Harlem or the West Side, a situation roman-
ticized by the contemporaneous musical “West
Side Story”. It is a shock to revisit anthro-
pological examinations such as Up to the Slums
(1958) by Murra’s friend and colleague Elena
Padilla, or investigative journalism reports like
Dan Wakefield’s Island in the City (1959) or “The
Other Puerto Ricans” (Wakefield 1959; see also
Murra 1959a). The photos alone convey the
horror of life in neighborhoods where every day
was a constant struggle against poverty,
discrimination, filth, overcrowding, crime, and
ill-health, the like of which we have not seen in
this country in decades. Murra did what he could
to raise consciousness of these problems without
blaming the victims, even living for a while in
101
Anon. 1956c, 1957b, 1957c, 1960a, 1961b, 1961c,
1961e; Murra 1951b, 1951c, 1951d, 1951e, 1951f, 1951g,
1954a, 1954b, 1955a, 1955h, 1956b, 1964c.
102
Anon. 1957d, 1958; Gillespie 1950; Murra 1951a,
1955b, 1955d, 1957a, 1957b, 1959a.
Barnes: John V. Murra
Spanish Harlem, at 321 East 121st Street103 in a
house that was later destroyed in preparation for
a public housing project. Later he moved to 27
Pierrepont Street, in Brooklyn Heights.104
Murra wrote for a general readership in
national publications, most notably The Nation
(Murra 1954b, 1955a, 1955c, 1955e, 1955g,
1955h, 1958d, 1959a). He also published brief
articles in limited circulation papers such as the
Vassar Miscellany News (Murra 1955b) and the
Vassar Chronicle (Murra 1956c; Murra and
Mercer 1957). During the 1950s and early 1960s
he often spoke to educated general audiences,
most frequently about Africa (Anon. 1956c,
1957b,1960a, 1961b, 1961c, 1961e), Puerto
Rico and the Caribbean (Anon. 1958), and least
frequently about Peru, the Incas, and Andean
culture in general (Anon. 1961f, 1961g). Some-
times, though, Murra expressed impatience with
the use of anthropology to shed light on
contemporary problems. In a comment made to
the Vassar Miscellany News Murra said anthro-
pology “is like the case of the man who sold the
bear skin while the bear was still in the forest”
(Zahner 1950:3). People expected anthropology
to provide overnight answers to questions
arising in modern nations.
Meanwhile, in 1949, Murra had begun
Freudian psychoanalysis, a process that became
a vital part of his personal identity. In the mid-
twentieth century, psychoanalysis was accepted
by most intellectuals as an important heuristic
system and Murra committed to it fully. Murra
103
Wakefield 1959:82; Memo, September 1950, the
Vassar College Office of Public Relations, John Victor
Murra File, Vassar College.
104
An envelope sent to Murra at that address by César
Fonseca and postmarked March 27, 1968 is among the
Húanuco files in the Junius B. Bird Laboratory of South
American Anthropology, Anthropology Division,
American Museum of Natural History, hereinafter Bird
Lab. A.M.N.H..
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
had met one of his future psychoanalysts, Saul B.
Newton105 during the Spanish Civil War (Castro
et al. 2000:33). Newton seems to have influenced
Murra deeply in terms of Murra’s attitudes
towards both sexual and parent-child
relationships. At Newton’s suggestion, starting in
1951 and continuing until 1996, Murra kept
diaries recording his dreams, thoughts, con-
versations, and personal activities. Sometimes
chaotic and impressionistic, sometimes clearly
written, these are intimate and emotionally
charged. They reveal a private personality very
different from that of the confident authority
Murra projected in public. Another of Murra’s
psychoanalysts was the Chilean Lola Hoffman
who also worked with Murra’s friend José María
Arguedas. Murra placed great trust in Hoffman,
crediting her with curing him of a Seconal
(barbiturate sleeping pill) addiction and of
keeping Arguedas alive longer than would
otherwise have been the case. In the early 1950s
Murra also worked with psychoanalyst Leon N.
Goldensohn106 (Murra 1956a:v).
105
Saul B. Newton, né Cohen (d. 1991, age 85) was a
New York psychoanalyst with ties to University of Chicago
radical circles. From its foundation in 1957, until his death,
Newton headed a controversial Manhattan therapeutic
commune, the Sullivan Institute for Research in
Psychoanalysis. Membership in the Institute peaked in the
1970s. Newton taught that family ties were at the root of
most mental illnesses and urged the separation of parents
from young children. He advocated personal liberation
through multiple sexual partners, but denied that he
pressured Institute members into unwelcome relationships.
Newton was, however, an avowed Com-munist, a labor
union organizer, and an opponent of nuclear arms and
power. An obituary of Newton by Bruce Lambert was
published in the December 23, 1991 issue of The New York
Times. The Sullivan Institute/Fourth Wall Community by Amy
B. Siskind is a disillusioned insider’s view of Newton’s
commune (2003).
106
Leon N. Goldensohn (d. 1961, age 50) was a United
States Army psychologist who assessed the mental health
of Nazi defendants during the Nuremberg Trials. The notes
of his interviews were published as The Nuremberg
Interviews (2004).
- 28
THE HUÁNUCO PROJECT
Murra conceived the idea for his major field
research, the “Inca Provincial Life Project”,
better known as the Huánuco Project, early in
his career. According to Murra, Wendell Ben-
nett first drew his attention to Iñigo Ortiz de
Zúñiga’s 1562 Huánuco Visita (Castro et al.
2000:109). Bennett was both an advocate and
practitioner of interdisciplinary studies that
combined archaeology with ethnography,
geography, botany, history, and other fields of
research. A portion of Ortiz’s Huánuco Visita as
transcribed by Padre Domingo Angulo, head of
the colonial section of Peru’s national archive,
had been published between 1920 and 1925 in
the Revista del Archivo Nacional del Perú. In
1955-1962 more of this visita appeared in the
same journal, while in 1955-56 Marie Helmer
published the 1549 visita to the Chupachos in
the Travaux de l’Institut Français d’Études
Andines. Murra was also influenced by the
Annales school of historiography and his friend
Alfred Métraux107 who, in his general synthetic
work Les Incas (1961) stated that study of
administrative records was often more fruitful
than examination of formal, published
chronicles about the Inca.
107
Alfred Métraux (1902-1963) was a Swiss-Argentinian
ethnographer and civil rights leader. Educated mainly in
France, he received a doctorate from the Sorbonne
(1928). Métraux was the founder and first director (1928-
1934) of the Institute of Ethnology at the Universidad de
Tucúman, Argentina. From 1941 to 1945 he played an
important role in the production of the Smithsonian’s
Handbook of South American Indians. Métraux held a
number of short term teaching posts in the United States,
Latin America, and Europe. He conducted field research
on Easter Island, in Argentina, Peru, Chile, Brazil, Mex-
ico, Haiti, and in Europe immediately after the Second
World War. He worked for the United Nations (1946-
1962). Among his many works are La civilization matérielle
des tribus Tupi-Guarani (1928), Médecine et vodou en Haiti
(1953), Ethnology of Easter Island (1971), and Les Inca
(1961).
29 -
During the late 1950s Murra had made field
visits to the Huánuco area and knew from
personal observations that late period arch-
aeological sites of many types were abundant
there, and that the great Inca administrative
center of Huánuco Pampa was well preserved.
Murra proposed an integration of several lines of
evidence to create a more advanced inter-
pretation of Inca life. The visitas provided a list of
sites with a variety of functions. These included
villages, shrines, markets, and fortresses, as well
as roads and their way-stations or tambos. In his
successful National Science Foundation appli-
cation Murra expressed the belief that it would
be possible to locate and visit every place
mentioned, excavating a selection.
Archaeological evidence could then be
integrated with the detailed historical accounts.
Because the documents included much economic
data, including information on agricultural
practices, Murra suggested that a botanist be an
integral part of the project. He could observe
contemporary plant use which, Murra believed,
would shed light on past practices.
As project staff, Murra assembled a small
team of American and Peruvian field-workers.
Murra himself conducted the archival and ethno-
graphic research. Donald E. Thompson agreed to
serve as the senior archaeologist. Thompson was
the son of famous Mayanist J. Eric S. Thompson.
John L. Cotter,108 of the United States Park
108
John L. Cotter (1911-1999) held a B.A. (1934) and
M.A. (1935) in Anthropology from the University of
Denver and a Ph.D. (1959) from the University of Pennsyl-
vania. Over the course of his life he excavated at a variety
of famous North American sites including the Lindenmeier,
Colorado palaeoindian site; the Clovis, New Mexico type
site; the Bynum Mounds, a Mississippi Hopewell site; the
Emerald Mound temple in Natchez territory; in colonial
Jamestown, Virginia; and in urban Philadelphia. He was the
founder, and the first president, of the Society for Historical
Archaeology. He worked for the National Parks Service
and taught at the University of Pennsylvania and was a
curator at the University Museum there. A short obituary
by John Rose appears in a 1999 issue of Archaeology. An
Barnes: John V. Murra
Service, also joined the team. Robert McKelvey
Bird, then a graduate student at the University
of California, signed on as the botanist, bringing
along his wife, Mary Watson Bird. As a son of
Junius109 and Margaret [Peggy] Bird,110 Robert
Bird had grown up with South American
archaeology. Peter Jenson, a Peace Corps
volunteer with museum experience, ran the lab
for a while. Archaeologists Gordon D. Hadden
and Daniel Shea111 were also part of the team.
anthology of Carter’s writings, with biographical material
is Witness to the Past: The Life and Works of John L. Cotter
published in 2007 by John L. Cotter (posthumously),
Daniel G. Roberts, and David Gerald Orr.
109
Junius Bolton Bird (1907-1982) was, from 1931, until
his death, Curator of South American Archaeology at the
American Museum of Natural History. His work at Fell’s
Cave in the south of Chile suggested that all of the
Americas were first occupied quickly and at an early date,
while his Huaca Prieta excavations in the Chicama Valley
of Northern Peru yielded early decorated gourds and
twined textiles. Bird was President of the Society for
American Archaeology (1961) and received the order of
el Sol del Perú in 1974. He may have been an inspiration
for the fictional character Indiana Jones. His book Travels
and Archaeology in South Chile was put together after his
death by his colleague John Hyslop. Short biographies by
Hyslop appeared in Natural History (1989) and in Christo-
pher Winters’ International Dictionary of Anthropologists
(1991) An obituary by Craig Morris was published in the
American Anthropologist (1985).
110
Margaret (Peggy) Lee McKelvey Bird (1909-1996)
graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1931, the same year
she met her future husband Junius Bolton Bird whom she
married in 1934. That summer the newlyweds participated
in an archaeological excavation in Labrador, and then
spent nearly three years in South America, conducting
excavations at Fell’s Cave, Palliaike Cave, and Mylodon
Cave in southern Chile, among other projects. Peggy Bird
continued to assist her husband in a variety of professional
ways throughout his career.
111
Daniel Shea teaches at the Department of
Anthropology, Beloit College. He earned a MS (1967)
with a thesis entitled The Plaza Complex of Huánuco Viejo
and a Ph.D. (1968) with a dissertation entitled Wari-
Wilka: A Central Andean Oracle Site, both from the
University of Wisconsin, Madison. He currently conducts
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
The Peruvian archaeologists Manuel Chávez
Ballón,112 Ramiro Matos Mendieta, Luís Barreda
Murillo,113 and Rogger Ravines114 joined the
project, as well as Peruvian students César
Fonseca Martel, Emilio Mendizábal Losack,115
archaeological research in Chile’s Atacama Desert.
112
Manuel Chávez Ballón (1918-2000) obtained his
doctorate in education from the Universidad Nacional
Mayor de San Marcos. After a few years as a secondary
school instructor he began to teach at the Universidad
Nacional San Antonio Abad del Cusco and at San Marcos.
Chávez Ballón accompanied Julio C. Tello on some of his
expeditions, including to the site of Wiñaywayna near
Machu Picchu. Inspired by Tello, Chávez Ballón became a
self-taught archaeologist dedicated to elucidating and
preserving the cultural heritage of Cusco. In 1952 he led an
expedition to the now famous Qero ayllu in Paucartambo.
He discovered the site of Marcavalle, an Early Horizon site
near Cusco. He is the father of archaeologist Sergio Chá-
vez. Machu Picchu’s site museum is named for him.
113
Luís Barreda Murillo (1929-2009) held a doctorate in
anthropology and history from the Universidad Nacional de
San Antonio Abad del Cusco. He was an archaeologist who
specialized in the pre-Inca cultures of Peru’s Departments
of Apurímac, Puno, and Cusco and who held a variety of
important teaching and administrative posts at UNSAAC.
114
Rogger Ravines Sánchez (b. 1940) holds a doctorate
from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos and
has also studied at the University of California, Berkeley
and at Harvard. He is a Peruvian archaeologist who has
held a variety of important administrative positions. He is
the editor of Technología Andina (1978), and the author of
Panorama de la arqueología andina (1982), Chanchán:
Metropolí Chimú (1980), La cerámica tradicional del Perú
(with Fernando Villiger, 1989), Arqueología práctica (1989),
and 100 años de arqueología en el Perú (1970), among other
works.
115
Emilio Mendizábal Losack (1922-1979) was an
ethnologist and artist who contributed to our understand-
ing of Peruvian folk art traditions, especially Sarhua
paintings and Ayacucho retablos. Among his publications
are Pacaraos: Una comunidad en la parte alta del Valle de
Chancay (1964), Patrones arquitectónicos inkas (2002), and
Del Sanmarkos al retablo ayacuchano: Dos ensayos pioneros
sobre arte tradicional peruano (2003).
- 30
and Juan M. Ossio Acuña,116 and American
Freda Wolf.
According to the outline presented in
Murra’s N.S.F. proposal, and interim reports
submitted, the first year of the project, to begin
officially on July 1, 1963, was devoted to survey
to identify the installations mentioned by Ortiz
de Zúñiga, including the great site of Huánuco
Pampa and fortresses noted by Ortiz but not
visited by him. Of special interest was the
market town at Chinchacocha. The extent to
which markets, as opposed to other forms of
state-sponsored or local exchange, functioned in
the Andes remains somewhat unclear, but
Murra addressed this issue in many of his
writings, including his dissertation. In general,
Murra’s Huánuco-centered work has
contributed a great deal to our understanding of
the economic organization of the Inca state.
The second year of the Huánuco Project was
devoted to ethnological work and to excavation
of selected sites. The third and final year, to end
on July 1, 1966, was designated for analysis and
the preparation of manuscripts for publication
including the republication, with scholarly
commentary, of Huánuco visitas (Ortiz 1967,
1972).
In his interim report to the N.S.F. Murra
expressed some disappointment in the results
achieved by the mid-point of the project. Al-
116
Juan M. Ossio (b.1943) studied history at the Pon-
tificia Universidad Católica del Perú (1960-1965) and
anthropology at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San
Marcos (1963-1966). From the University of Oxford he
obtained a Diploma in Social Anthropology (1967), a
B.Litt. (1970), and D.Phil. (1978). He is a senior professor
at PUCP. He has twice been a Tinker Visiting Professor at
the University of Chicago (1988, 2000). He is the editor
of Ideología Mesiánica del Mundo Andino (1973) and the
author of Los indios del Perú (1992), Parentesco, reciprocidad
y jerarquía en los Andes (1992), Las paradojas del Perú oficial
(1994), El códice Murúa (2004), and En busca del orden
perdido: La idea de la historia en Felipe Guaman Poma de
Ayala (2008).
31 -
though at the start Murra presumed that a one
hundred percent match would be possible
between installations mentioned by Ortiz and
sites on the ground, Murra and his colleagues
had been able to find and visit only about half of
the places. Murra did feel that the project had
successfully documented the ethnic frontier
between the Yacha, including the site and village
of Cauri, and the Wamali country around the
present settlement of Jesús or Ñucon. Villages in
Yacha territory had been partially excavated. At
Huánuco Pampa Murra’s team had excavated a
house, as well as storehouses, and they had
examined the site’s extensive ceremonial
architecture. They had also made a pottery
sample and followed the Inca highway or Capac
Ñan (“Great Road” in Quechua) north to the
tambo of Tapataku and south to Tunsucancha.
However, Murra admitted that he had
underestimated both the difficulties of doing
archaeological field-work in a high altitude
location not served by paved roads, and the
suspicion with which Peruvians often regarded
foreign researchers. He said that the time spent
explaining and “mending fences” limited the
amount of research he was able to accomplish. In
an article published in a 1965 issue of Curator
Peter Jenson is more explicit. He acknowledges
tensions between foreign researchers and local
people, both educated and illiterate. Because the
concept of work done without monetary
recompense was unfamiliar in the area, the
motives of the scientists were widely questioned.
There was a lack of cooperation, attempts at
spying, and a formal accusation of gold theft.
This closely parallels the reception of Charles
Marie de La Condamine’s survey work in
Ecuador during the 1730s, suggesting that such
reactions were wide-spread and deeply rooted in
the Andes. Murra’s team attempted to counter
ill-will with gifts of photographs and a series of
community addresses. When it became apparent
that the costs of photo distribution were mount-
ing, Jenson developed an exhibition of four
Barnes: John V. Murra
panels that could be carried by two men or one
horse. This explained the work of the project
and circulated in remote areas.
At the time Murra began his Huánuco field
and archival research his practical experience
with archaeology and the use of unpublished
original documents was limited. He had
attended Fay-Cooper Cole’s Illinois summer
field school and had participated in Collier’s six
month reconnaissance of Ecuador. He had also
done some independent reconnaissance work in
the Huánuco region. He had spent a few weeks
in the Archivo General de Indias, and rather
more time in Lima and Cusco colonial archives.
Privately Murra was considerably more cir-
cumspect than one could be in a successful
grant application. On October 8, 1963, en route
to South America, he wrote in his diary “. . . I
have no idea even of what could be done in
Perú, re Inca, in Huánuco. . .” Inexperience and
enthusiasm may have led Murra to promise
more than could possibly have been revealed
through colonial documents and archaeological
remains.
In spite of disappointments and frustrations,
the Huánuco Project, especially Murra’s pub-
lication and studies of the Huánuco visitas
(Murra 1972a; Murra, editor, 1964; Ortiz 1967,
1972) led him to his most influential
explanatory framework, that of “verticality” or
the simultaneous access of an ethnic group or
state to various productive ecological niches.
Murra established case studies that he argued
supported his reconstruction. One encompasses
the small ethnic groups of Huánuco, the
Chupaychu and Yacha, each consisting of a few
thousand individuals, who controlled or shared
various resources at some distance from their
population centers. These included pasture
lands, salt works, cotton, maize, and coca fields,
and forests.
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
Perhaps the most important case is that of
the Lupaca, a large ethnic kingdom with its
population center in the Lake Titicaca Basin but
with outlying colonies in the desert oasis valleys
of what is now northern Chile, as well as in the
tropical forests of the eastern Andean slopes.
Murra also thought that small ethnic groups
centered on the central coast of Peru, as well as
large north coast polities, may have controlled
resources distant from their political and
population centers.
Over the years Murra’s insights have served
as templates for other studies (c.f. Jorge Hidalgo’s
2004 collection of articles, Historia andina en
Chile and the Chincha Project [1983-2005]
directed by Heather Lechtman, Luís Lumbreras,
Craig Morris, and María Rostworowski). One of
the outstanding Chincha Project participants is
Andean Past editor Daniel H. Sandweiss who
based his doctoral dissertation (Cornell
University 1989) on his Chincha field research.
This dissertation was published in 1992 as The
Archaeology of Chincha Fishermen: Specialization
and Status in Inka Peru in the Carnegie Museum of
Natural History Bulletin.
Several lines of criticism have developed
concerning Murra’s notions of “verticality” and
Andean complementarity. One is that a “pax
incaica” or pax Tiwanaku would have been
necessary for small and vulnerable groups of
individuals to maintain control over valuable
resources far from their major population centers,
a condition that Murra himself ad-mitted (Murra
1979b: 222). Another is that Murra was selective
in the details he chose to include in his models,
ignoring some of the information contained in his
sources and dismissing other sources as
“exceptions”. Fur-thermore, knowledge of
Andean agro-pastoral technology has developed
since the 1970s. Thanks to the work of William
M. Denevan,117 Clark Erickson,118 Alan L. Kola
117
William M. Denevan (b. 1931) earned his B.A. (1953),
- 32
ta,119 William P. Mitchell,120 Charles R. Ortloff
M.A. (1958), and Ph.D. (1963), all in geography, from the
The University of California, Berkeley. Among his teach-
ers were James Parsons, John H. Rowe, and Carl Sauer.
He is the Carl Sauer Professor Emeritus of the Depart-
ment of Geography of the University of Wisconsin,
Madison. His recent work has offered criticisms of the
“pristine myth” of American environments before 1492
and his current research includes a history of agriculture
in the Americas. He is the author of The Aboriginal
Cultural Geography of the Llanos de Mojos, of Bolivia (1966),
and Cultivated Landscapes of Native Amazonia and the
Andes: Triumph over the Soil (2001).
118
Clark Lowden Erickson (b. 1954) has an undergradu-
ate degree from the Washington University in St. Louis
(1976) and a doctorate from the University of Illinois
(1988) and is an associate professor in the Department of
Anthropology of the University of Pennsylvania and an
associate curator at the University Museum. He has made
enormous contributions to our geographical, archaeologi-
cal, and practical knowledge of South American agricul-
ture, especially of the raised fields in the Lake Titicaca
region, and of the fields, paths, and other earthworks of
the Bolivian lowlands. He is the editor of Time and
Complexity in Historical Ecology: Studies in the Neotropical
Lowlands (with William Balée, 2006). A biographical
sketch of Erickson by Deborah I. Olszewski was published
in Expedition magazine (2008).
119
Alan L. Kolata (b. 1951) obtained his Ph.D. from
Harvard University (1978). He is the Neukom Family
Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Social
Sciences at the University of Chicago. He leads interdisci-
plinary research projects studying the human ecology of
the Lake Titicaca basin during the past 3000 years. He has
also worked on the north coast of Peru and in Thailand
and Cambodia. He is the author of Valley of the Spirits: A
Journey into the Lost Realm of the Aymara (1996), The
Tiwanuku: Portrait of an Andean Civilization (2003), and
Tiwanuku and its Hinterland (2003).
120
William P. Mitchell (b. 1937) obtained his Ph.D. from
the University of Pittsburgh (1972). He is Professor of
Anthropology and Freed Professor in the Social Sciences
at Monmouth University, Monmouth, New Jersey. He has
made a longitudinal study of the town of Quinoa in Peru’s
Ayacucho Department, and of Quinoan immigrants to
Lima. He focuses on political economy, peace and war,
human ecology, socio-cultural evolution, and religion. He
is the author of Peasants on the Edge: Crop, Cult, and Crisis
in the Andes (1991), Picturing Faith: A Facsimile Edition of
33 -
and Michael E. Moseley (see Ortloff and
Moseley, this volume, 279-305), among others,
we now understand that altiplano raised fields
and irrigated highland terraces ameliorate micro-
climates and produce a variety of foodstuffs,
albeit with the investment of a fair amount of
labor. The management of concentrated
resources may have been more effective than
that of scattered ones.
Murra also formulated his ideas of settlement
patterns before the rapid native depopulation of
the Andes in the colonial period was fully under-
stood. Demographic collapse provides oppor-
tunities for settlement reorganization and re-
allocation of resources. The patterns observed
during and after drastic population reduction
may not reflect the pre-collapse situation, how-
ever vehemently litigants may have asserted real
or fictional past rights to bolster their claims as
they had supposedly been in an economy where
land purchase was unknown. Because Spanish
law, as applied to the New World, affirmed pre-
conquest land tenure arrangements, claimants
needed to present arguments to Spanish officials
that included claims to tenure extending into the
remote past. The only ethnohistorical accounts
of land use available to Murra, and to subsequent
scholars, come from colonial contexts in which
all participants, Spaniards, Indians, and even
African slaves, are adjusting rapidly to new and
shifting economic realities.
Most of the archaeological work conducted
as part of the Inca Provincial Life Project was
never published. Murra had the archaeologists in
his project turn over their field notes to him. For
many years he kept them in Ithaca, in upstate
New York, but eventually, through Craig Morris,
the Pictographic Catechism in the Huntington Free Library
(with Barbara H. Jaye, 1999), and Voices from the Global
Margin: Confronting Poverty and Inventing New Lives in the
Andes (2006). He is the editor of Irrigation at High Altitudes:
The Social Organization of Water Control Systems in the
Andes (with David Guillet, 1991).
Barnes: John V. Murra
they came to be stored in the Junius B. Bird
Laboratory of South American Archaeology in
the Anthropology Division of the American
Museum of Natural History. Numerous small
excavations were made at Huánuco Pampa, and
those at storehouses were reported in Morris’
doctoral dissertation, Storage in Tawantinsuyu
(1967) and in subsequent articles by Morris.
Daniel Shea’s 1967 University of Wisconsin
master’s thesis, The Plaza Complex of Huánuco
Viejo, and a preliminary article on the same
topic published in 1966 in the Cuadernos de
Investigación of the Universidad Nacional
Hermilio Valdizán (Huánuco) also report results
of the project. Reconstruction of the most
spectacular architecture at Huánuco Pampa was
also undertaken by the project after its N.S.F.
termination date of July 1, 1966 because the
Peruvian Patronato Nacional de Arqueología
provided funds for Murra’s team to rebuild a
portion of the site (see cover, this volume and
illustration, p. 64). John Murra hoped that Craig
Morris would eventually produce a monograph
that fully reported the archaeological aspects of
the “Inca Provincial Life Project”. However,
Morris continued at Huánuco for many years,
supported by his own major grants, then worked
at the La Centinela site in Peru’s Chincha
Valley, at Tambo Colorado, in the Ica Valley,
and, briefly, at Cochabamba, Bolivia. He was
not able to completely publish his own
independent work before his death, let alone
that of Murra’s Huánuco Project. Fortunately,
archaeologists can expect this situation to be
partially remedied soon. Alan Covey, who work-
ed with Morris at the American Museum of
Natural History, has prepared a monograph
drawing on Morris’ excavations at Huánuco.
However, he did not incorporate materials from
Murra’s project (R. Alan Covey, personal com-
munication, 20 January 2009). Having seen the
Huánuco field notes left by Murra’s team, it is
my opinion that a solid regional archaeological
survey report could have been produced.
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
Murra’s return to South America marked a
turning point for him. As he explained in a 1989
interview (Ansaldi and Calderón), much of his
life had been accidental up to that point. He was
sent to Chicago because he had an uncle there.
He learned Spanish because his commitment to
the anti-fascist left motivated his presence in
Spain during the Spanish Civil War. He went to
Ecuador in 1941 because he had to earn a living
and the project needed a Spanish-speaker. Legal
difficulties prevented him from returning to
Ecuador for doctoral research in a living
community, so he wrote a library dissertation on
an extinct civilization. Murra’s continuing need
to support himself financially, his excellent
Spanish and good French, and his citizenship
problems led him to work in Puerto Rico and
Martinique, although he had no special
commitment to the Caribbean. Just as he was
prevented from going to South America, he was
unable to travel to Africa, another continent that
interested him. However, once he obtained his
United States passport and was free to go
anywhere, Murra’s life came more under his own
conscious direction. From 1958, when he
returned to South America after an absence of
sixteen years, he devoted himself almost
exclusively to Andean topics, albeit with a
comparative perspective.
When Murra was able to travel to
conferences in Africa he had the opportunity to
interact with many European anthropologists,
missionaries, and colonial agents, primarily
British, French, and Belgian, who had decades of
field and administrative experience on that
continent. He also may have met Africans
studying their own cultures, and other scholars
whose university work in the British and French
systems had focused exclusively on Africa. In his
private writings there are hints that Murra
realized that British socio-cultural anthro-
pologists dominated African studies, leaving little
room for someone outside their circle. However,
until the end of his teaching career he continued
- 34
to integrate African material into his classes. He
also encouraged Mesoamerican/ Andean
comparisons (Murra 1977a, 1982e).
Nevertheless, after 1958, with one minor
exception (Murra 1964c), Murra never
published on Africa, Puerto Rico, or the French
Caribbean again except in the context of
comparisons with Andean material. He did,
however, remain for many years both a member
of the International African Institute, and a
fellow of the African Studies Association (c.v.
Murra, NAA). During the Huánuco Project
Murra acquired the deep expertise in Andean
cultures for which he was famous during the
second half of his life. His new focus allowed
him to develop an impressive body of work on
the Inca state, or Tawantinsuyu, as he preferred
to call it.
It was in 1964, during the Huánuco Project,
that Murra met his close associate, Craig Morris,
then a young archaeologist, and another
University of Chicago graduate. Murra and
Morris remained friends for the rest of their
lives. For some time Morris shared with Murra
the responsibility for teaching Andean
archaeology and ethnohistory at Cornell
University. Poignantly, their obituaries appear
side-by-side in the December 2007 issue of the
American Anthropologist. During the 1970s and
.80s, when Morris would commute from New
York City to Ithaca, he would stay in the damp
basement of John Murra’s house on 515 Dryden
Road near campus, which John Murra occupied
from 1971 (purchase contract, Murra, NAA).
Murra’s home was a rather dramatic place, with
a sun porch that combined ski lodge furniture
and life-size murals of figures taken from the
early seventeenth century account of the
Peruvian Mestizo chronicler Felipe Guaman
Poma de Ayala painted for him by Freda Wolf’s
younger brother. To a large extent Murra lived
with and for his work.
35 -
During the course of the Huánuco Project,
Murra was frequently away from the field sites to
do archival research, to attend conferences, to
consult with psychoanalysts, and to teach. He
taught at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de
San Marcos in Lima as a visiting professor of
ethnology from 1965 to 1966. Murra described
the space and facilities he was given as “lavish”,
which contrasts with the sad situation of the
university ten or fifteen years later. In 1966, upon
leaving, he was made an honorary professor of
San Marcos (investiture program, Murra, NAA).
In 1965 Murra was a visiting professor of Inca
studies at the Universidad de Chile in Santiago.
When the Huánuco Project ended he was offered
a professorship at the Universidad Nacional Her-
milio Valdizán under the same terms as Peruvian
professors. Murra did not accept this offer.121
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
In 1966-67, after returning from Huánuco,
Murra became the first N.S.F. post-doctoral
associate in anthropology at the Smithsonian
Institution. There he continued his studies of
Huanúco and of the Lupaca kingdom of Bolivia.
In 1968, after Allan R. Holmberg’s (1909-1966)
untimely death had opened a faculty position,
Murra was hired by Cornell University, from
which he retired in 1982 as a professor emeritus.
Murra’s situation as Holmberg’s successor was
problematic. Holmberg is best known for the
Vicos Project, which he directed. In 1952, with
the cooperation of the Peruvian government,
Cornell began an innovative development pro-
ject in northern Peru that continued for some
fifteen years. For five years the university leased
the highland Vicos Hacienda in the Callejón de
Huaylas, approximately 250 miles from Lima.
There some 1800 Peruvian Indians had been
living in virtual serfdom. The goal was to pro-
121
Letter from Ing. Pedro José Cuculiza, Rector,
Universidad Nacional Hermilio Valdizán, Huánuco to John
Victor Murra, 10 August 1966, Huánuco files, A.M.N.H.
Barnes: John V. Murra
mote modernization and equality by converting
Vicos into a semi-autonomous, self-directed
community. This was a truly revolutionary effort
in applied anthropology. The project im-
mediately attracted criticism from both the
political left and right, as well as from the
anthropological profession. In 1963, as part of a
national land reform program, the workers of
Vicos acquired the hacienda. The Vicos Project
had served as a model for the Peace Corps, but
attitudes towards foreign interventions
hardened in the 1960s. The Peace Corps itself
was expelled from Vicos in 1965. Although
Murra’s friend José María Arguedas had
supported the Vicos Project, Murra himself had
a far different research agenda, one much more
oriented towards understanding the past than
ameliorating the present, except through moral
encouragement. Nevertheless, assuming Holm-
berg’s academic line must have created certain
expectations Murra was unlikely to fulfill. When
I studied at Cornell in the 1980s mention of the
Vicos Project still elicited tense reactions from
some faculty members. Cornell University’s
Koch Library holds extensive records of this
project.
Murra’s Cornell teaching of undergraduate
and graduate students was more advanced and
tightly focused than the general instruction in
undergraduate anthropology he had given at
Vassar. During his last year at Cornell, 1981-82,
he offered an ethnohistory course,
Anthropology 418, consisting of two parts
African material, one quarter Andean topics,
and one quarter themes on Siberian
ethnography. The African portion examined the
dynastic and demotic oral traditions of Rwanda,
drawing upon the work of Alexis Kagame,122
122
Father Alexis Kagame (1912-1981) was a Rwandan
historian, ethnologist, philosopher, priest, and intellectual
leader of the Tutsi who articulated their cosmography in
contemporary terms compatible with Christianity. He
came from a family of court historians who converted to
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
Jan Vansina,123 Luc de Heusch,124 and Murra’s
old Vassar colleague, Helen Codere. It also
covered Ashanti administration and military oral
traditions as reported by Kwame Arhin125 and
Ivor Wilks.126 Written sources for the Andes
Roman Catholicism around the time of World War I. His
published works include the multi-volume La divine pasto-
rale (1952-1955), a creation myth and history of the world;
Le code des institutions politiques du Rwanda (1952), a defense
of Tutsi feudalism, and The Bantu-Rwandese Philosophy of
Being (1956). In 1959 the rival Hutu nation violently
overthrew Tutsi hegemony, but Kagame survived the
bloodbath.
123
Jan Vansina (b. 1929) is an historian and anthropolo-
gist specializing in the peoples of Central Africa, especially
in their history before European contact. He is a professor
emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Among
his books are Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodol-
ogy (1965), Kingdoms of the Savannah (1966), Oral Tradition
as History (1985), Living with Africa (1994), Antecedents to
Modern Rwanda: The Nyiginya Kingdom (2004), and How
Societies are Born: Governance in West Africa Before 1600
(2004).
124
Luc de Heusch (b. 1927) is a Belgian ethnographer and
film-maker who studied at the Sorbonne in Paris before
receiving a doctorate in anthropology from the Université
Libre de Bruxelles (1955). Among his films are Fête chez les
Hamba (1955), an account of daily life and ritual practice
in a village of the Hamba of Kasai; Ruanda: Tableaux d’une
féodalité (1956), an historic investigation of Rwandan
society; Sur les traces du Renard Pâle (with Jean Rouch and
Germaine Dieterlen, 1983), and Une république devenue folle
(Rwanda 1894-1994) (1996) in addition to films on Belgian
society. From 1955 to 1992 he taught at the Université
Libre de Bruxelles, as a full professor from 1960.
125
Kwame Arhin is the editor of Ashanti and the Northwest
(with Jack Goody, 1965), Ashanti and the Northeast (1970),
The Life and Work and Kwame Nkrumah (1993), and The
Cape Coast and Elmina Handbook: Past, Present, and Future
(1995) among many other works of a practical nature
dealing with politics, economics, land tenure, and history
of West Africa.
126
Ivor G. Wilks (b.1928) is a British historian and
anthropologist who did field-work in Western Africa (1956-
1996). He taught at the University of Northern Ghana
(1953-1966) and at Northwestern University (1971-1993).
He is the author of The Northern Factor in Ashanti History
- 36
including the accounts by indigenous
chroniclers Guaman Poma de Ayala and Blas
Valera and administrative, census, and litigation
papers were combined with archaeological data.
Siberian military and tribute collecting papers
and scholarly reports in the fields of ethno-
history and ethnology were used in discussions
of ethnogenesis.
Murra also taught a course on the history of
United States anthropology from Schoolcraft to
the death of Benedict which is discussed in
Frank Salomon’s contribution to this volume. In
addition, Murra taught Anthropology 633,
“Andean Research”, a course which emphasized
sources other than chronicles. These included a
microfilm of Gonzalez de Cuenca’s colonial visita
to what is now northern Peru, land and water
court records, quipu transcriptions, visitas,
Quechua oral traditions recorded in the Huaro-
chirí manuscript, the chronicle of Guaman
Poma de Ayala, reports by Domingo de Santo
Tomas, better known for his early Quechua-
Spanish dictionary, and by Juan Polo de Onde-
gardo.127
In the 1970s and 1980s Murra drew hun-
dreds of people to his lectures at Johns Hopkins,
at San Marcos, in European cities, and at other
distinguished venues. However, shortly before
retirement he could not always attract even the
four or six students he needed to run his ad-
vanced seminars at Cornell. Perhaps students
were eager to hear him in the relatively anony-
mous context of a large lecture hall, but did not
wish to accept the demands Murra would put
upon them in smaller, more specialized classes.
(1961), Asante in the Nineteenth Century: The Structure and
Evolution of a Political Order (1975), and is an editor of
“The History of Ashanti Kings and the Whole Country Itself”,
and Other Writings by Otumfuo, Nana Agyeman Prempeh I
(with Adu Boahen et al., 2003).
127
Letter from John V. Murra to Craig Morris, 26 iii 81,
Bird Lab, A.M.N.H.
37 -
I believe that Murra had his biggest impact on
South American audiences. In both his lectures
and his writing he drew upon his extensive
knowledge of general anthropology. Many of the
key works in this field were unavailable to Latin
American scholars both because there were few
Spanish-language editions of the English and
French classics and because Latin American
library resources did not equal those of Europe
and the United States (Murra in Rowe 1984:
646). John Murra, however, had the profound
insights of many great minds informing his
scholarship. Because these insights were not well-
diffused throughout the Spanish-speaking world,
Murra’s work incorporating them must have
seemed double-dazzling.
Just as at Vassar, Murra took frequent leaves
and many trips of short duration away from
Cornell, incidentally transferring many of his
teaching, counseling, and administrative re-
sponsibilities to other faculty members. In 1970-
71 he taught once again at Yale, replacing his
friend Sidney Mintz who was on leave. Judging
from published student evaluations, this was not
a success. From 1974 on Murra taught at Cornell
only in the autumn semester (Murra in Rowe
1984:646). In 1974-75 he was at the Institute for
Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. For
part of 1975 he was researching Aymara
kingdoms in the Archivo Nacional de Sucre. In
1975-76 he was at the Université de Paris X
Nanterre with Fulbright support. Simultaneously,
he taught a three-month seminar, “Ethnie et état
dans le monde Andin” (Ethnicity and the State
in the Andean World) at the École des Hautes
Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. In the spring
of 1976, with Einaudi Foundation support, Murra
lectured in Torino, at the Universidad de Sevilla,
at the Departamento de Antropología y Etnolo-
gía de América de la Universidad Complutense
(Madrid), at Bonn University, at the London
School of Economics, and at Cambridge
University. During the last weeks of 1976 and
the first weeks of 1977 he visited Bolivia, Lima,
Barnes: John V. Murra
Mexico, and Tokyo.128 By May he was back in
Mexico, at the Centro de Investigaciones Su-
periores of the Mexican Instituto Nacional de
Antropología e Historia.129 Here he encouraged
scholars to combine the study of Nahuatl
documents with Aztec archaeology.130 In the fall
of that year he was in Seville.131 In the fall of
1978 he was once more in Seville,132 but also
participated in a conference on páramos in
Venezuela (Murra 1979b). In 1978-79 he spent
a total of eight months at the Archivo General
de Indias. In January 1979 he taught at the
Universidad de Antofagasta, Chile, while in
June of that year he was in Paris.133 In the spring
of 1980 he was doing research in Lima under
the auspices of the Instituto de Estudios
Peruanos. In 1981 he was at Johns Hopkins
University.134 John Murra’s international
presence was vast and the time he spent at his
home base minimal.
Throughout his teaching career, one of John
Murra’s concerns was the education of Latin
American graduate students. With Ángel
Palerm he organized the “Comparative Seminar
on MesoAmerica and the Andes” in 1972. The
128
Letter from John V. Murra to Craig Morris, 13 Febru-
ary, 1977, Bird Lab, A.M.N.H.
129
Letter from John V. Murra to Craig Morris, 30 May
1977, Bird Lab, A.M.N.H.
130
Letter from John V. Murra to Toribio Mejía Xesspe, 9
April 1977, Bird Lab, A.M.N.H.
131
Letter from John V. Murra to Craig Morris, 10 October
1977, Bird Lab, A.M.N.H.
132
Letter from John V. Murra to Craig Morris, 30 October
1978, Bird Lab, A.M.N.H.
133
Letter from John V. Murra to Craig Morris, 4 June
1979, Bird Lab, A.M.N.H.
134
Letter from John V. Murra to Craig Morris, March 26,
1981, Bird Lab, A.M.N.H.
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
next year, he established the “Lake Titicaca Field
Project” with prominent Peruvian archaeologist
and Marxist theorist Luís Lumbreras and support
from the Fulbright Program. Among the
participants were Javier Albó, Mónica Checa,135
Freda Wolf, John Hyslop, Augustín Llagostera,
Elías Mujica,136 Franklin Pease, Marcela Ríos,137
Mario Rivera,138 and AnaMaría Soldi. “The Lake
Titicaca Field Project” was the genesis of John
Hyslop’s Columbia doctoral dissertation, An
Archaeological Investigation of the Lupaqa Kingdom
and its Origins. This, in turn was a first step
towards his 1984 book The Inca Road System
135
There is no biographical information available for
Mónica Checa.
136
Elías Mujica Barreda (b. 1950) has built a distinguished
career in Peruvian archaeology, anthropology, and history.
He participated in a variety of projects that have studied
the suitability and sustainability of traditional agricultural
practices, the ancient Moche, the urban archaeology of
Lima and Arequipa, colonial history, and Quechua folk
tales. He has dedicated himself to the kind of institution-
building advocated by John Murra. Mujíca is Vice-Presi-
dent of the Andean Institute of Archeological Studies
(INDEA) and the Deputy Coordinator of the Consortium
for the Sustainable Development of the Andean Eco-region
(CONDESAN), an Advisor for Cultural Heritage of the
Backus Foundation, a member of the Peruvian National
Technical Commission for Cultural Heritage, and a World
Heritage Center Regional Expert for the monitoring of and
regional reporting on the World Heritage in Latin America
and the Caribbean. Among his many published books are
a series of edited volumes on Moche conferences (with
Santiago Uceda), Arqueología de los valles occidentales del
area centro sur andina (1990), Perú andino prehispánico (with
Rafael Varón); La sostenibilidad de los sistemas de producción
campesina en los Andes (with José Luís Rueda, 1997), El
brujo: Huaca Cao, centro ceremonial Moche en el Valle de
Chicama (with Eduardo Hirose Maio, 2007), and Investiga-
ciones en la Huaca de la Luna . . . (with Santiago Uceda and
Ricardo Morales, 2007).
137
Marcela Ríos is the wife of Peruvian archaeologist Luís
Guillermo Lumbreras.
138
Mario Rivera is a Chilean archaeologist who received
his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
He teaches at Beloit College.
- 38
(Murra 1994a:2) and the basis of several other
publications.
In 1977 Murra organized the “Otoño
andino”, a semester-long program at Cornell
which brought together students and established
scholars from both Latin America and the
United States. One of Murra’s frustrations at
Cornell was that he could not always obtain
admission to graduate studies and fellowships for
Latin American students whom he considered
to possess real talent and personal merit. He
seemed to feel that Cornell was not sufficiently
flexible in matters of formal admission stan-
dards. On the other hand, he sometimes had to
teach students whose presence he had not
personally approved.
LIFE BEYOND CORNELL
Murra remained active for more than a
decade after his retirement from Cornell. In
1982-83 he was a consultant to the Banco
Nacional de Bolivia’s Museo Nacional de Etno-
grafía in La Paz. In 1983-84 he held a Guggen-
heim Fellowship for research in Spanish
archives, including the Archivo Nacional and
the Academia de Historia, both in Madrid, and
the Archivo de Indias in Seville. Simultaneously
he taught at the Universidad Complutense
(Madrid), and at the Universidad de Sevilla, as
well as at the Institut Català d’Antropologi in
Barcelona. He nevertheless found time to teach
a summer school course at the University of
Chile in 1984 (Castro, this volume). In the next
academic year, 1985-86, he was once again a
visiting professor at Complutense, at the
Universidad de Sevilla, and at the Institut
Català d’Antropologi. In the spring of 1987 he
was the Suntory-Toyota Visiting Professor at the
London School of Economics. In 1987-88 he
conducted research at the Instituto de Antro-
pología, Buenos Aires and taught as a visiting
professor at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. In
39 -
1990-91 he was a fellow at the Archivo de Indias.
By then most Civil War wounds had healed.
John Murra liked to tell the story of a chance
encounter he had in a Spanish bar. There he fell
into conversation with a fellow veteran, but was
unsure whether the man had been a former
Nationalist or a former Loyalist. The stranger
broke the ice by dramatically and emotionally
declaring, “Whichever side you were on, I was
your comrade!” It turned out that this un-
fortunate old soldier meant it literally, not
metaphorically. He had been fighting for one side
when he was captured by the other and made to
fight for it, allowing him the claim that he was a
fellow-in-arms with anybody who had fought in
the Civil War.
During the course of his long life John Murra
received many honors. Perhaps the greatest is
Peru’s Grand Cross of the Order of the Sun
which he was awarded in 1987. In addition to
being an Honorary Professor of the Universidad
Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Murra was also
an Honorary Professor of the Humanities of the
Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. In 1998
San Marcos again honored him with the
academic decoration “Honor al Mérito” and, on
the same occasion he received an academic
medal from the Universidad Nacional San
Antonio Abad del Cusco (see Lechtman’s
contribution, this volume, group photo, p. 68).
Murra was granted an honorary doctorate from
the Universitat de Barcelona in 1993. In 1969 he
presented the Lewis Henry Morgan139 Lectures at
139
Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881) was a lawyer and
pioneering anthropologist. He studied at Union College,
Schenectady, New York. His residence in the Iroquois
territory of upstate New York and contact with his Indian
neighbors allowed him to produce his breakthrough
account of Iroquois political organization, The League of the
Ho-dé-No-sau-nee or Iroquois (1851). He discovered the
phenomenon of social kinship systems and systematized
worldwide comparisons of kinship in Systems of Consanguin-
ity and Affinity in the Human Family (1870). He modeled a
Barnes: John V. Murra
the University of Rochester, Rochester, New
York. His series was entitled “Reciprocity and
Redistribution in Andean Civilizations”. Al-
though these lectures were never published in
Murra’s lifetime, Heather Lechtman and Freda
Wolf, with a grant from the Reed Foundation,
are transcribing the lecture tapes in preparation
for publication in the Morgan Lecture series of
the University of Chicago (Lechtman, personal
communication, 12 June 2009; Lechtman and
Wolf, n.d.).
At least nine important publications carry
John Murra’s name as editor.140 He also exerted
his influence by serving on editorial boards
including those of Chungará (Arica, Chile),
Histórica (Lima, from 1976), Historia Boliviana
(Cochabamba), the Revista del Museo Nacional
(Lima), and Runa (Buenos Aires). He was an
Advisory Editor of the Hispanic American
Historical Review (1984-89). He was also a
member of the Advisory Board of the Handbook
of Latin American Studies published by the
Library of Congress.
John Murra was active in many professional
organizations. He was on the Board of the
American Society for Ethnohistory (1962-1969)
and was president (1970-1971). Murra was also
a councilor of the American Ethnological
Society (1961-1964) as well as president (1972-
1973). He was president of the Institute of
universal unilinear sequence of “ethnical periods” in
Ancient Society . . . (1877) as an attempt to explain the
origin of family formations, political regimes, and econo-
mies. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels read Morgan
towards the end of Marx’s life and chose his model as the
cornerstone for Marxist ethnology. Several book length
biographies of Morgan have been published.
140
Arguedas 1996; Guaman Poma de Ayala 1980; Murra,
editor 1964, 1976, 1991; Ortiz de Zúñiga 1967, 1972;
Revel et al. 1978; Rojas Rabiela and Murra 1999.
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
Andean Research (1977-1983).141 He was
nominated for the presidency of the American
Anthropological Association in 1982, but not
elected. However, he circulated his campaign
statement widely, considering it to be an
important commentary on the state of
anthropology in the United States (Murra
1982f). He was a founding member of the Institu-
to de Estudios Peruanos and of the Asociación
Peruana de Antropología e Historia. He was a
member of the the Société des Américanistes de
Paris, of the Instituto Indígenista Interamericano
(Mexico), and the Sociedad Boliviana de Histor-
ia. After his retirement from Cornell John Murra
used the Institute of Andean Research as his sole
institutional affiliation, although he could have
claimed many others.
PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON
JOHN VICTOR MURRA
Murra’s international experiences, combined
with his work in ethnohistory, archaeology, and
ethnography helped him to formulate his holistic
views of anthropology in general, and Andean
studies in particular. To Murra, sub-disciplinary
boundaries were invisible. All sources of
information, as well as most approaches, were
necessary to understand the totality of culture.
However, although Murra maintained an
impeccable personal appearance, he otherwise
showed very little engagement with visual
culture. His dissertation contains no illustrations,
not even maps which would have been helpful to
readers not intimately familiar with the
geography of Peru. Of course, at the time Murra
was writing, he was embedding his arguments in
territory he, himself, had never seen. He
discussed the importance and glories of Inca
textiles, generally without providing any
141
For a short history of the I.A.R. see Daggett, this
volume, pp. 307-314 and J. Alden Mason’s 1967 pamphlet,
A Brief History of the Institute of Andean Research, Inc. 1937-
1967.
- 40
photographs or line drawings of them. Likewise
architecture, one of the universally
acknowledged accomplishments of Inca
civilization, seems to have interested Murra only
in so far as it functioned economically and
politically. He never published the vast majority
of the plans, drawings, and photographs amassed
by his Inca Provincial Life (Huánuco) Project,
although he must have known that these would
be of great interest to archaeologists. His
seemingly poor ability to visualize restricted his
full apprehension of Andean culture in subtle
ways. It is tempting to make a psychoanalytic
interpretation of this hiatus. Murra, the son of a
nearly blind mother, was limited in his own
visual skills.
Likewise, although Murra respected those
who focused on the religious, ideological, and
symbol systems of the Inca such as Pierre Du-
viols and R. Tom Zuidema,142 by Murra’s own
142
Reiner Tom Zuidema (b. 1927) began his studies at
the University of Leiden with the intention of joining the
civil service of the former Netherlands’ Indies (Indonesia).
However, in 1949 the Dutch government recognized the
independence of Indonesia, so Zuidema shifted his focus
to anthropology. From 1951 to 1953 he resided in Spain,
preparing his doctoral dissertation on problems of social
organization in the Inca empire. He then completed three
years of field-work and archival studies in Peru, in the
United States, and at Spain’s Archivo de Indias. From
1956 to 1964 he was curator of the South American,
North American, and Siberian collections of the State
Museum of Anthropology of the Netherlands. From 1964
to 1967 he taught anthropology at the Universidad de San
Cristóbal de Huamanga in Ayacucho, Peru, conducting
field-work there with his students. From 1967 until his
retirement in 1993 he was a professor of anthropology at
the University of Illinois, Urbana. At both Huamanga and
Illinois he was an inspiring teacher who educated many
successful students. Most of his publications examine Inca
culture, kinship, and social organization in relation to
ritual, mythology, art, and concepts of time. Although
often declared by others to be a structuralist, Zuidema’s
personal perspective is that, so much as possible, he
studies the Incas on their own terms. His book, The Ceque
System of Cuzco (1964) introduced a new paradigm to Inca
studies.
41 -
admission he found it difficult to comprehend
such approaches (see Castro, this volume, p. 75-
77). He showed little interest in music, poetry,
aesthetics, or ritual, except in so far as these
revealed social and economic structure. This is
striking given his devotion to Freudian psycho-
analysis with its emphasis on symbols. Murra’s
work does not employ statistics or any of the
“hard” sciences directly, although he saw the
value of scientific approaches and appreciated
the importance of human ecology.
Murra stressed the need to let the wishes and
perspectives of people in the Andean countries
guide research. By the time I had the opportunity
for private conversations with Murra I had
already done field-work in remote Mestizo and
Quechua communities of Ecuador and Peru. I
imagined that John was urging me to reach out to
the “la gente humilde”, everyday folk, perhaps
unlettered and monolingual in Quechua or
Aymara, poor, and without a public voice, but
knowledgeable in their world-views and the ways
of their cultures. I thought Murra was asking
researchers to integrate the cosmologies, politics,
aspirations, practices, and needs of these Ande-
ans into research plans and grant proposals. I
believed that he was advocating a search for
alternatives to Western science and its
methodology and underlying assumptions. From
experience I realized how difficult this would be,
even for ethnographers. Although Murra did not
admit this to me, he, too, understood the
problems from the perspective of his own field-
work. I believe that he considered the willingness
and ability to spend long periods of time in
constructive interaction with ordinary local
people to be a crucial test, and one that he,
himself, had perhaps failed. Later I learned from
the lives and work of Thomas Abercrombie,143
143
Thomas Alan Abercrombie (b. 1951) received a
B.G.S. from the University of Michigan (1973), and an
M.A. (1978) and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago
(1986). He is an anthropologist and ethnohistorian who
Barnes: John V. Murra
Denise Y. Arnold144 and Juan de Dios Yapita,145
Clark Erickson, Chris and Ed Franquemont
(Peters Andean Past 8), Tristan Platt, Matthias
Strecker,146 and Gary Urton,147 among others,
that an integration of science and non-scientific
world views was, indeed, sometimes partially
possible. However, at the time of my
conversations with Murra, I also saw it as the
has done field-work among Aymara-speaking people as
well as extensive research in Spanish colonial archives. He
is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director for
the Center of Latin American and Caribbean Studies at
New York University. He is the author of Pathways of
Memory and Power: Ethnography and History among an
Andean People (1998).
144
Denise Y. Arnold is an anthropologist who has, for
many years, worked within Aymara culture, along with her
partner, Juan de Dios Yapita. She is the director of the
Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Aymara, La Paz, Bolivia.
Among her recent books with Yapita are River of Fleece,
River of Song (2001), and The Metamorphosis of Heads:
Textual Struggles, Education, and Land in the Andes (2006).
Another of her recent books is Heads of State: Icons,
Power, and Politics in the Andes (with Christine Ann
Hastorf, 2008).
145
Juan de Dios Yapita Moya is an Aymara
anthropologist, linguist, and poet who often works with
his partner Denise Y. Arnold (see note 144).
146
Matthias Strecker (b. 1950) is a German-Bolivian
teacher who has dedicated himself to the preservation of
Bolivia’s cultural patrimony, especially its rock art. He is
the editor of numerous publications of the Sociedad de
Investigación del Arte Rupestre de Bolivia (SIARB).
147
Gary Urton (b. 1946) received a B.A. from the
University of New Mexico (1969), and an M.A. (1971)
and Ph.D. (1979) from the University of Illinois. For many
years he taught anthropology at Colgate University, but is
now the Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Pre-Columbian
Studies at Harvard University. He conducted field-work
at Pacariqtambo near Cusco, Peru. On the basis of that
research he published At the Crossroads of the Earth and
Sky: An Andean Cosmology (1981). For over a decade he
has been regarded as one of the world’s experts on the
quipu. On that topic he has published Signs of the Inca
Khipu: Binary Coding in the Andean Knotted-String Records
(2003) among other works.
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
political and quasi-mystical vocation that it
indeed is. As I got to know John Murra better I
also realized that the Andean people he often
had in mind were established intellectuals like
José María Arguedas or Franklin Pease who did
set much of their country’s research agendas.
One of Murra’s very great personal strengths
was that he was willing to change course abruptly
when he realized mistakes. He repudiated
Communism forever when he understood the
discordance between its ideology of a better
world and the cruel behavior of its Russian
leaders. Once he saw from face-to-face contact at
conferences how deeply versed the British socio-
cultural anthropologists were in African
knowledge, he knew he couldn’t match them and
no longer presented himself as a public expert on
Africa. However, by the time the Huánuco
Project was finished he had developed true
expertise in Andean cultures and he was the
John Murra who became famous in that field.
Murra was well-integrated into the Andeanist
communities of South America, Europe, and the
United States. His circle can be reconstructed
not just from the friends and colleagues he
mentioned in interviews, and from his
voluminous correspondence in the Smith-sonian
National Anthropological Archives and
elsewhere, but by noting the many reviews and
comments he published.148 Murra was generally
an appreciative reviewer except when he en-
countered films aimed at a popular audience. His
reflections on the relative merits of con-
tributions to ethnohistorical literature can be
found in the series of annotated biographies he
148
Murra1951a, 1954a, 1954b, 1955b, 1955c, 1956d,
1958c, 1959a, 1959b, 1960b, 1960c, 1964c, 1965, 1966c,
1967e, 1968c, 1969, 1970c, 1970d, 1970e, 1973, 1974c,
1975b, 1975c, 1976e, 1976d, 1977b, 1977c, 1977d, 1978e,
1978f, 1978g, 1978h, 1979d, 1980a, 1981b, 1981c, 1982c,
1982d, 1982e, 1983a, 1983c, 1984a, 1984c, 1985d, 1985e,
1988c, 1988d, 1988e, 1989b, 1990, 1993a, 1993b, 1994b,
1994c, 1996a, 1996b; Murra and Wachtel 1998.
- 42
produced for the Handbook of Latin American
Studies (Murra 1967c, 1970b, 1972b, 1974b,
1976c, 1978d, 1980a, 1982c). John Murra held
the keys to many doors, as I discovered when he
wrote my letter of introduction to the Archivo
de Indias in Seville.
Murra’s lecture style was outwardly
confident, elliptical, and even cryptic. He would
often make statements like, “. . . as Arguedas
said . . .” and students would have to figure out
that he meant José María Arguedas, the
Peruvian anthropologist, indigenista novelist, and
poet, not Alcides Arguedas (1879-1948), the
Bolivian statesman, diplomat, historian, and
indigenista novelist whose life overlapped in time
with José María’s. This was very difficult in the
days before the Internet. Murra was impatient
with direct questions. Students were just
supposed to know that “the Lake” was Titicaca,
not Poopó or Cayuga and prove themselves
worthy of his attention through their knowledge
of Andean cultures and their dedication to
them. In this respect those born into such
cultures clearly had the advantage. Although
Murra advocated a broad, internationalist
anthropology, he privileged the study of one’s
own culture, perhaps without intending to do
so, while divorcing himself from the subculture
into which he, himself, had been born (see
Salomon, this volume, p. 97). At the risk of
tedium, I have included many footnotes with
this biography, making explicit the identities
and accomplishments of people Murra
referenced only vaguely. The difficulty of this
task convinced me of its necessity.
Murra maintained a good personal library.
Towards the end of his life he divided his books
to be sent to Latin America. Then, as now, theft
from Latin American public and university
libraries was a problem. I asked Murra if it
bothered him that many of his books would not
remain where they were sent, but would
disappear into private collections. He gave me
43 -
one of his sphinx-like smiles. He assured me that
anyone who would appropriate his books would
be someone who would appreciate them. He then
gave me a few duplicates for my own private
library with his signature and good wishes. He
encouraged scholarship in many ways and had a
fine sense of irony.
Murra sometimes wrote about the
anthropologists he knew personally, enhancing
our understanding of their lives. Murra’s greatest
contribution along these lines was his pub-
lication of letters to him, and to their mutual
psychoanalyst Lola Hoffmann, by José María
Arguedas (Arguedas 1996; see also Murra 1978e
and 1983a). Murra first met Arguedas in 1958 at
a conference during which he also met histor-
ians María Rostworowski and Franklin Pease.
Reading Arguedas’ letters is a haunting ex-
perience. One perceives him slipping deeper and
deeper into a depression which, in those pre-
Prozac days, could not be interrupted, in spite of
the efforts of Arguedas and his physicians. One
knows the sad ending in advance. Murra also
published an appreciation of Julio C. Tello149
(Murra 1980b) and an obituary of his close
associate in the Institute of Andean Research,
John Hyslop (Murra 1994a).
149
Julio César Tello (1880-1947) was one of the founders
of Peruvian archaeology. In spite of a humble background
he obtained a bachelor’s degree in medicine in Peru (1909)
and then studied at Harvard where he earned an M.A. in
anthropology (1911). Tello was an energetic field worker
who discovered the famous Paracas mummy bundles in
1925, and also identified the Chavín culture. Between 1917
and 1929 he represented his native district of Huarochirí in
the Peruvian national congress. He founded the Museo de
Arqueología y Etnología of the Universidad Nacional
Mayor de San Marcos and the Museo de Arqueología
Peruana. Chapters in the life of Julio C. Tello as
reconstructed by Richard Daggett have appeared in Andean
Past 1, 4, and 8. Tello communicated his findings mainly
through a series of newspaper articles, especially in Lima’s
El Comercio. His articles have been collected in The Life and
Writings of Julio C. Tello (2009), edited by Richard L. Burger.
Tello is also the author of Paracas (1959).
Barnes: John V. Murra
My first encounter with John Murra was at
the London School of Economics when he
lectured there in 1976. His presence created
buzz, and a large number of people assembled to
hear the famous intellectual expound. Murra’s
talk was highly specialized and tightly focused,
with no compromises made toward his audience.
It was obvious that some people had come
expecting a more general presentation, but were
trapped in the intricacies of vertical archipelagos
and household inventories of four hundred years
before. It was impossible to leave, with eager
academics standing in every space not occupied
by a chair. A few people at the back of the large
room began unobtrusively to pass the time by
reading books and newspapers held on their
laps. Most speakers would have ignored this, but
John Murra demanded everyone’s full attention
whenever he spoke. He turned adults into
recalcitrant and embarrassed schoolboys by
telling them to put away their books or leave.
On the other hand, if Murra himself was bored
by a lecture, he did not hesitate to convey that
to the speaker. At one of the Northeast Con-
ferences on Andean Archaeology and Ethno-
history, a student had lost control of his pre-
sentation and was talking beyond his allotted
time. Although he was neither the organizer nor
the moderator, Murra began clapping loudly,
slowly, and rhythmically, completely humiliating
the student. Murra could be fearsome, indeed,
and few had the force of personality to
withstand him.
One of my regrets in life is that although I
studied in two of the places Murra taught, our
time in those places did not overlap much, if at
all. When I first came to Cornell in 1966 as a
high school advanced placement student Murra
had not yet arrived there and I had not yet
developed an interest in the Andean countries.
When I returned to Cornell eighteen years later
he had already retired, although he was still
quite a Presence in Ithaca, and on campus
during his relatively rare visits. He would,
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
however, usually participate in Cornell projects
and events, if expressly invited to do so. He was
a gracious moderator at the Fifth Northeast
Conference on Andean Archaeology and Ethno-
history, held at Cornell in 1986, and contributed
to Andean Past 4.
The trajectory of John Murra’s life has been
eloquently set out elsewhere, both in his own
words, and in those of others. At least nine
interviews of Murra have been published,
broadcast, recorded, or posted on the Internet.150
One, Castro et al., is book length. Other details
of Murra’s life can be gleaned from Arguedas’
letters to him (Arguedas 1996) and from tributes
published during Murra’s lifetime (Castro et al.
2002; Contreras 1993; Henderson and Netherley
1993; Lorandi et al. 2003; Neira 2006; Raczynski
1995; Vásquez 1970; Vega 1983) as well as from
the many appreciative obituaries written in his
memory.151 Salomon’s tribute, in particular, is an
insightful summary of Murra’s intellectual
contributions to anthropology. Readers should
also not miss Comrades (1998), Harry Fisher’s
memoir of the Spanish Civil War, which contains
many admiring recollections of Murra. At least a
couple of denunciations of Murra have also been
published (Anon. n.d. [c. 1950]; Condarco
1977).
In spite of all that has been written about
John V. Murra, an original book length biography
remains possible, and I have begun that task. In
it I am making use of the richness of Murra’s
personal and professional papers which are now
part of the Smithsonian Institution’s National
Anthropological Archives. These include the
150
Ansaldi and Calderón 1989; Castro et al. 2000; Gerassi
1980; Harriman 1983; Hermosa n.d.; Ipiña 1976; Rowe
1984; de Siles 1983; Wolf 1966.
151
Albó and Bubba 2007, Anonymous 2006a, 2006b,
2006c, 2006d, 2007e; Gleach et al., Harris 2006; Hevesi
2006; Neira 2006; Salomon 2007, also forthcoming in an
edition of Formaciones edited by Jacques Poloni-Simard.
- 44
bulk of his correspondence and his diaries. The
latter reveal his second abiding intellectual
passion after Andean studies–psychoanalysis.
More than anything else, they demonstrate that
John Murra was, as Wordsworth wrote of Isaac
Newton in “The Prelude”, “a mind forever
voyaging through strange seas of Thought,
alone”.
For years I sought to understand John
Murra’s transition from young Communist
activist to anthropologist, scholar, and sage, but
without success. It was only over the course of
writing this biography that I realized that from
youth to old age he seems to have been drawn
into the deep river of utopian thought, a stream
that runs from Plato to Thomas More, to
nineteenth century Welsh socialist Robert
Owen, to Karl Marx and the Marxists, to the
Quechua utopia of José María Arguedas, and to
the psychotherapeutic commune of Saul B.
Newton. The abandonment of Communism did
not end Murra’s longings for an ideal society, or
rather, for ideal societies. Like other utopians
Murra sometimes produced authoritative work
before he had experienced the facts on the
ground.
Inca culture has long served as a template
for utopian thinkers such as Garcilaso de la
Vega, el Inga in the early seventeenth century,
Voltaire in the eighteenth, and Philip Ains-
worth Means in the first half of the twentieth.
Around the time that Means wrote Fall of the
Inca Empire . . . (1932), anthropology was
suggesting new models for living, with its
insistence on cultural relativism and its
explorations of cultural diversity. Murra’s
attraction to the Incas seems quite natural in
terms of his utopian vision. At the same time,
anthropology helped Murra appreciate the
thousands of possible solutions to human
problems. Murra learned to identify, elucidate,
and praise the Andean approaches to those
problems. Eventually he came to admit that his
45 -
enthusiasm for the Andean world probably
bordered on exaggeration, but he did not lose his
faith in the overall importance of Andean
contributions to culture. The Communist step-
ped to one side, but the Anthropologist-
Advocate took his place.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
AND AN INTRODUCTION
Because Murra’s life story has already been
well told by others, I realized that to add to the
narrative already established I would need not
only to draw upon my own experiences,
recollections, impressions, and interpretations,
but also to channel the spirit of John Murra
himself by conducting some original archival
research. Partial records of John Murra’s Civil
War experiences and of the Fear and Courage
Under Fire Project can be found in New York
University’s Tamiment Library & Robert F.
Wagner Labor Archives. I thank the librarians
there for granting me access.
Ghostly footprints of Murra’s time at Vassar
College remain there, and I thank Dean Rogers
of The Catherine Pelton Durrell ’25 Archives
and Special Collections Library, Vassar College,
and Lucy Lewis Johnson and Terri Lynn Cronk of
the Vassar Anthropology Department for helping
me discern them. Clifford Sather and I shared
memories of Vassar in the 1960s and ’70s.
Heather Lechtman worked with me to mesh her
memories with the documentary evidence.
Harriett Davis Haritos and Nan Rothschild also
gave me their perspectives as Murra’s Vassar
students.
Lechtman, along with Andean Past board
member Richard L. Burger facilitated my access
to Institute of Andean Research records at the
Anthropology Division of the American Mu-
seum of Natural History. Paul Beelitz and Alex
Lando of the A.M.N.H. assisted my access.
Sumru Aricanli graciously made available John
Barnes: John V. Murra
Murra’s Huánuco Project files, Craig Morris’
files of letters, articles, and unpublished papers
by John Murra, and John Hyslop’s file of letters
and articles by Murra, all at the A.M.N.H.’s
Junius B. Bird Laboratory of South American
Archaeology. The cover photograph of this issue
of Andean Past and the one accompanying the
bibliogaphy of works by and about John Victor
Murra come from the A.M.N.H. My discovery
of the Cooper Family Files at the Brooklyn
Historical Society was entirely fortuitous.
Robert S. Leopold, Director, Smithsonian
Institution, National Museum of Natural
History, National Anthropological Archives and
Leanda Gahegan, Archivist made my research
there a valuable and enjoyable experience. As
Marcus Porcius Cato the Censor wrote more
than two millennia ago, “Pabulum aridum quod
consideris in hiemem quam maxime conservato,
cogitatoque hiemis quam longa siet.”152
Jacinta Palerm shared childhood
recollections of John Murra and her father,
Ángel Palerm. Laura Rand Orthwein/Laura
Murra/Laura X confirmed details of her
relationship with John Murra. I am grateful to
Jesús Contreras Hernándes, William M. Den-
evan, Pierre Duviols, Jorge Hidalgo, Antoinette
Molinié, Pierre Morlon, Elías Mujíca, Juan
Ossio, Ann Peters, Tristran Platt, Frank
Salomon, and Tom Zuidema for providing me
with autobiographical information. Eugene B.
Bergmann, Alita and Alec Kelley, Daniel J.
Slive, and Freda Wolf were also of enormous
assistance in the preparation of this biography.
I thank Junie Valhund for her cheerful
companionship. My fellow editor Daniel H.
Sandweiss helped me imagine Murra in his
teaching days at Cornell. I am grateful to
Thomas F. Lynch for letting me borrow some of
152
“Keep as much dry fodder as possible for winter and
remember how long winter lasts” (loose translation by the
author).
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
his insight. Ellen FitzSimmons Steinberg joined
the search for references. It was Ellie Schrum
who pointed out that Murra did not adhere to
old mistakes. My husband and fellow editor
David Fleming participated in, and supported,
my research and suggested many good leads.
In many ways Dick Daggett’s serial biography
of Julio C. Tello, published in earlier issues of
Andean Past, has inspired my approach to this
biography of John V. Murra. It was Dick who
showed me that truth resides in the details.
Josephine P. Meeker taught me the value of
constructing a time-line as a tool to under-
standing. If David Block had not spontaneously
sent me a draft of what became our bibliography
of works by and about John Murra I could never
have begun the research for this appreciation of
Murra’s life and work. I also owe a debt to John
Murra himself. I believe that by depositing his
papers in the Smithsonian, Murra invited
biographical scrutiny. I think he showed implicit
approval of such projects by publishing, late in
his life, both the Arguedas letters and a book
length interview of himself (Castro et al. 2000).
While I have worked hard to establish and
confirm the time-line and connections of John
Murra’s life, I have felt free to indulge myself by
relating anecdotes and to write about John
Murra’s writing and teaching, and to make
certain leaps of interpretation. I hope that my
tribute will serve as a good introduction to the
rest of our special section on Murra which
emphasizes his place as a mentor. This is among
the most important roles scholars assume and
some of their most penetrating insights are often
conveyed during classes, and in private
consultations, but are seldom recorded for
posterity.
For instance, in the fields of philosophy,
jurisprudence, and Hispanic studies, Francisco de
Vitoria (1492 [?]-1546) exemplifies both the
importance and the elusiveness of teaching.
- 46
Vitoria was a Dominican priest who taught at
Salamanca, Spain for many years. Credited with
developing the important concepts of both
natural law and international law, and a
defender of the rationality of Amerindians,
Vitoria influenced many people, including King
Charles V of Spain and Bartolomé de las Casas,
the Indians’ great advocate. Nevertheless,
Vitoria’s ideas are only known to us through the
books of his students.
Although Murra published widely during his
lifetime, he did not publish everything he
wished. Frank Salomon is able to convey some
of Murra’s ideas which, otherwise, would fade
with human memory–Murra’s thoughts on the
history of American anthropology as revealed in
his courses, classes described in his published
interviews (Castro et al. 2000:80-83) but never
converted into a book by Murra himself. In
addition, Rolena Adorno, Victoria Castro, Inge
Harman, Heather Lechtman, AnaMaría
Lorandi, Patricia Netherly, Silvia Palomeque,
and Freda Wolf de Romero share Murra’s
impact as a mentor of women, collectively
presenting a remarkably coherent portrait.
Complementing all this is a bibliography of
works by, in honor of, and about John Murra
which David Block and I have compiled.
Its length, breadth, and complexity serve as
an approximation of John Murra’s scholarship.
In addition to appearing in this volume of
Andean Past, an earlier version will be part of
the French language translation of Formaciones,
Murra’s pioneering collection of articles on
Andean culture. I hope that this special section
of Andean Past dedicated to the memory of John
Victor Murra will stimulate fresh thought on the
cultural dynamics of the Andean region to
which he dedicated most of his adult life.
47 - Barnes: John V. Murra

John Victor Murra instructs Vassar College anthropology class in Blodgett Hall, c. 1960. The student
second from the viewer’s right is Laura Rand Orthwein/Laura Murra/Laura X. Photo by Howard
Green, Poughkeepsie, New York courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural
History, National Anthropological Archives.
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS BY, IN HONOR OF, AND
1
ABOUT JOHN VICTOR MURRA
BOOKS, ARTICLES, AND REVIEWS
Collier, Donald and John Victor Murra
1943 Survey and Excavations in Southern Ecuador.
Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History
Anthropological Series 35, Publication 528. Also
published in Spanish as Reconocimientos y excava-
ciones en el sur del Ecuador. Cuenca: Centro de
Estudios Históricos y Geográficos de Cuenca
(1982); and as Reconocimientos y excavaciones en
el austro ecuatoriano (2007). Cuenca: Casa de la
Cultura Ecuatoriana, Nucleo del Azuay.
Condarco Morales, Ramiro and John Victor Murra
1987 La teoría de la complementariedad vertical eco-
simbiótica. La Paz: Hisbol. Series Breve Biblioteca
del Bolsillo 2. Contains Murra’s essays, El “con-
trol vertical” de un máximo de pisos ecológicos
en la economía de las sociedades andinas, pp. 29-
85 (Murra 1972a) and “El Archipiélago vertical”
revisitado, pp. 87-104 (Murra 1985c).
1
Bibliographers’ note: We have not been able to include all
of John Victor Murra’s writings of which we are aware. For
example, we have not located the articles on soccer and
the literary pieces he published in the Romanian-language
periodical Dimineata during the 1930s (Castro et al. 2000:
22, 24). We have also not been able to find the periodical
articles and speeches Murra said he wrote on behalf of
unnamed African leaders (ibid: 96). During the 1950s
Murra contributed regularly to The United States Quarterly
Book List published by Rutgers University Press for the
Library of Congress. However, it is not possible to identify
the individual reviews that Murra wrote. When page
numbers or other details are omitted it is because articles
were discovered in clipping files in The Catherine Pelton
Durrell ’25 Archives and Special Collections Library,
Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York; in the archives
of the Anthropology Division of the American Museum of
Natural History, New York City; or in the Smithsonian’s
National Anthropological Archives, Suitland, Maryland
without such details recorded. We thank Rolena Adorno,
Sumru Aricanli, Richard E. Daggett, Jean-Jacques Decos-
ter, Pierre Duviols, David Fleming, Leanda Gahegan,
Heather Lechtman, Robert S. Leopold, Dean Rogers,
Deborah Santeliz-Lockwood, Daniel J. Slive, Frank Solo-
man, Ellen Fitz Simmons Steinberg, and the staff of New
York University’s Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner
Labor Archives for assistance in the preparation of this
bibliography.
- 48
Lechtman, Heather and Freda Wolf, editors
n.d. [in preparation] Reciprocity and Redistribution in
Andean Civilizations. Lewis Henry Morgan Lec-
tures presented at the University of Rochester,
1969. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago
Press, Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture Series.
Murra, John Victor
1942 Cerro Narrío and Andean Chronology. M.A.
Thesis, University of Chicago.
1946 The Historic Tribes of Ecuador. In Handbook of
South American Indians, edited by Julian H.
Steward. Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of
American Ethnology Bulletin 143, Volume 2,
The Andean Civilizations, pp. 785-881. Washing-
ton, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
1948 The Cayapa and the Colorado. In Handbook of
South American Indians, edited by Julian H.
Steward. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin
143, Volume 4, pp. 277-291, plates 57-60. Wash-
ington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
1951a Review of The Puerto Rican Journey: New York’s
Newest Migrants by C. Wright Mills, Clarence
Senior, and Rose Kohn Goldsen. Hispanic Amer-
ican Historical Review 31(4):680-681.
1951b Land Legislation of the Cameroons Under Brit-
ish Administration. United Nations Document
T/AC.36/L.3. Mimeographed.
1951c Land Legislation of the Trust Territories of
Togoland and the Cameroons under French
Administration. United Nations Document
T/AC. 36/L.6. Mimeographed.
1951d Land Legislation of Togoland under British
Administration. United Nations Document
T/AC.36/L.11. Mimeographed.
1951e Land Legislation of Tanganyika. United Nations
Document T/AC.36/L.12. Mimeographed.
1951f Population, Land Categories, and Tenure in
Tanganyika. United Nations Document T/
AC.36/L.17. Mimeographed.
1951g Constitutional Developments in Tanganyika,
1949-1951. United Nations Special Document
Prepared for 1951 East African Visiting Mission.
1954a Review of The Struggle for Africa by Vernon
Bartlett. American Anthropologist 56(6):1156-
1157.
1954b The Unconscious of a Race. Review of The Palm-
wine Drinkard [sic] and My Life in the Bush of
Ghosts, both by Amos Tutola. The Nation, Sep-
tember 25, 179(13):261-262.
1955a Trusteeship System: How it Operates. The
Nation, January 1, 180(1):10-13.
1955b Puerto Rico: New Immigrant, Old Story, Murra
Views Questions and Dilemmas Involved in
Puerto Rican Migration. Vassar Miscellany News,
October 5, 40(3):3.
49 -
1955c An African Autobiography. Review of The Dark
Child by Camara Laye. The Nation, January 1,
180(1):16-17.
1955d Puerto Rican Myths. Review of Transformation:
The Story of Modern Puerto Rico by Earl Parker
Hanson. The Nation, February 26, 180(9):181-
182.
1955e Reply to Damned with Faint Praise, a letter by
Frances R. Grant in response to Murra. The
Nation, March 26, 180(13):275-276.
1955f Correction: Drinking Tubes on Archaeological
Vessels from Western South America. American
Antiquity 20(3):288.
1955g United Nations Publications Obtainable from
the Columbia University Press. Booknotes. The
Nation, January 22, 180(4):79.
1955h Books on Africa. Booknotes. The Nation, January
29, 180(5):106.
1956a The Economic Organization of the Inca State.
Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago. This
was first published in 1978 as La organización
económica del estado inca, translated by Daniel H.
Wagner and modified by the author. México:
Siglo Veintiuno, América Nuestra series 11. This
work appears as four subsequent editions by Siglo
Veintiuno, as well as in an English language
edition, The Economic Organization of the Inka
State. Greenwich, Connecticut: JAI Press (1980).
The Rumanian-language edition, Civilizatie inca:
Organizarea economic| statuli incas, translated by
John Murra’s sister, Ata Iosifescu. (Bucharest:
Editura Ôtintificä Ôi Enciclopedicä, 1987),
includes additional material from Murra’s pub-
lished articles. Material from the English lan-
guage version is included in Human Relations
Area Files, Inka: Outline of World Cultures
codes SE13 and SE80 (an Internet resource).
1956b Kenya and the Emergency. Current History
30(177):372-378.
1956c Murra Sees Here Egg-head Culture. Vassar Chro-
nicle, March 5, 24:4, 6.
1956d Review of Man and Land in Peru by Thomas R.
Ford. American Anthropologist 58(5):930-931.
1957a Studies in Family Organization in the French
Caribbean. Transactions of the New York Academy
of Sciences (series II) 19(4):372-378.
1957b Discussion [of Raymond T. Smith’s The Family
in the Caribbean] in Caribbean Studies: A Sym-
posium, edited by Vera D. Rubin, pp. 75-79.
Mona, St. Andrews, Jamaica, British West
Indies: Institute of Social and Economic
Research, University College of the West Indies.
1958a On Inca Political Structure. In Systems of Political
Control and Bureaucracy in Human Societies,
edited by Verne F. Ray, pp. 30-41. Seattle:
Block and Barnes: John V. Murra
American Ethnological Society. Also distributed
as a reprint and reprinted as On Inca Political
Structure. Bobbs-Merrill Reprint Series in the
Sciences, A-169. Indianapolis, Indiana: Bobbs-
Merrill (1958); also published in Comparative
Political Systems: Studies in the Politics of Pre-
industrial Societies, edited by Ronald Cohen and
John Middleton, pp. 339-353. Austin: University
of Texas Press (1967). A revised Spanish lan-
guage version, En torno a la estructura política
de los inka, appears in Murra (1975a), pp. 23-43.
An unauthorized Spanish language version
appears in El Modo de producción asiático: Antolo-
gía de textos sobre problemas de la historia de los
paises coloniales, edited by Roger Bartra. México:
Ediciones Era (1969).
1958b La función del tejido en varios contextos sociales
y políticos. Actas y Trabajos del Segundo Congreso
de Historia del Perú, Volume 2, pp. 215-240, Also
published as a reprint (1961); and in 100 años de
arqueología en el Perú, edited by Rogger Ravines,
pp. 583-608 (1970). The latest updated version
appears in Fuentes e Investigaciones para la Histor-
ia del Perú 3:145-170. Lima: Instituto de Estudios
Peruanos, Petróleos del Perú edition (1978); in
Arte mayor de los Andes: Museo Chileno de Arte
Precolombino, by Paulina Brugnoli and Soledad
Hoces, edited by Julie Palma, with photographs
by Fernando Maldonado, and translation by
Cecilia Contreras and Barbara Caces, pp. 9-19.
Santiago de Chile: El Museo (1989); and in
Murra (2002a), pp. 153-170. This article was
originally based on Chapter 4 of Murra (1956a).
An English language version was published as
Cloth and its Functions in the Inca State. Ameri-
can Anthropologist 64(4):710-728 (1962) Murra
previously updated the English language version
for Cloth and Human Experience, edited by
Annette B. Weiner and Jane Schneider, pp. 275-
302. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution
Press (1989). See also Cloth, Textile, and the
Inca Empire in The Peru Reader: History, Culture,
Politics, edited by Orin Starn, Carlos Iván De-
gregori, and Robin Kirk, pp. 55-69. Durham,
North Carolina: Duke University Press (1995).
1958c Review of The Ancient Civilizations of Peru by J.
Alden Mason. American Anthropologist
60(4):767-768.
1958d Wonderful Week’s Bouquet. The Nation, May 31
180(22):484.
1959a Up to the Slums. Review of Up from Puerto Rico
by Elena Padilla and of Island in the City by Dan
Wakefield. The Nation, May 2,188(18):411-412.
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
1959b Review of Power and Property in Inca Peru by
Sally Falk Moore. American Sociological Review 27(5):727.
1960a Rite and Crop in the Inca State. In Culture in
History: Essays in Honor of Paul Radin, edited by
Stanley Diamond, pp. 33-47. New York: Pub-
lished for Brandeis University by Columbia
University Press. A revised version was published
in Peoples and Cultures of South America: An
Anthropological Reader, edited by Daniel R.
Gross, pp. 377-389. Garden City, New York:
Doubleday and Natural History Press (1973). A
revised Spanish language version, La papa, el
maíz y los ritos agrícolas del Tawantinsuyu, was
published in Amaru 8:58-62 (1968); in Murra
(1975a), pp. 45-58; in Cosmos, hombre y sacrali-
dad: Lecturas dirigidas de antropología religiosa,
edited by Marco Vinicio Rueda and Segundo
Moreno Yáñez, pp.181-193. Quito: Departa-
mento de Antropología PUCE and Ediciones
Abya Yala (1995); and in Murra (2002a), pp.
143-152.
1960b Review of Power and Property in Inca Peru by
Sally Falk Moore. American Anthropologist
62(6):1082-1083 [This review differs from Murra
1959b].
1960c Review of The Incas by Pedro Cieza de León,
edited by Victor Wolfgang von Hagen and trans-
lated by Harriet de Onis. The Hispanic American
Historical Review 40(2):281-282.
1961a Guaman Poma de Ayala: A Seventeenth-Cen-
tury Indian’s Account of Andean Civilization.
Natural History 70(7):35-46 and Guaman Poma
de Ayala: The Post-Conquest Chronicle of the
Inca State’s Rise and Fall 70(8):52-63, separately
titled parts of a unified article. A Spanish lan-
guage version was published in Murra (2002a),
pp. 375-425.
1961b Social Structural and Economic Themes in
Andean Ethnohistory. Anthropological Quarterly
34(2):47-59. Also published as a reprint. A
Spanish language version, Temas de estructura
social y económica en la etnohistoria y el antiguo
folklore andino, was published in Folklore Ameri-
cano 10:22-237 (1962); and in La etnohistoria en
Mesoamérica y los Andes, edited by Pedro Carras-
co Pizana, Juan Manuel Pérez Zevallos, and José
Antonio Pérez Gollán, pp. 95-111. Mexico, D.F.:
Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Historia
(1987). An expanded version was published in
Cuadernos de Investigación: Antropología (Huán-
uco, Perú, Universidad Hermilio Valdizán,
1966).
1962 An Archaeological “Restudy” of an Andean
Ethnohistorical Account. American Antiquity.
28(1):1-4. An expanded, Spanish language
- 50
version was published in Cuadernos de Investiga-
ción: Antropología (Universidad Hermilio Valdi-
zán, Huánuco, Perú, 1966).
1964a Una apreciación etnológica de la visita. In Visita
hecha a la provincia de Chucuito por Garci Diez de
San Miguel en el año 1567 by Garci Diez de San
Miguel, edited by John Victor Murra, pp. 421-
444. Lima: Casa de la Cultura del Perú.
1964b Rebaños y pastores en la economía del
Tawantinsuyu. Revista Peruana de Cultura 2:76-
101. Also published in Murra (1975a), pp. 117-
144; and in Murra (2002a), pp. 309-327. An
English language version, Herds and Herders in
the Inca State, was published in Man, Culture,
and Animals: The Role of Animals in Human
Ecological Adjustments, edited by Anthony Leeds
and A. P. Vayda, pp. 185-215. Washington:
American Association for the Advancement of
Science (1965). Also distributed as a reprint.
1964c Review of The Sonjo of Tanganyika: An Anthro-
pological Study of an Irrigation-based Society by
Robert F. Gray. American Anthropologist 66(2):
471-472.
1965 Review of Los obrajes en el Virreinato del Perú by
Fernando Silva-Santisteban. American Anthro-
pologist 67(5, part 1):1329-1330.
1966a El Instituto de Investigaciones Andinas y sus
estudios en Huánuco, 1963-1966. Cuadernos de
Investigación: Antropolgía, pp. 7-21 (Huánco,
Perú, Universidad Nacional Hermilio Valdizán).
1966b New Data on Retainer and Servile Populations
in Tawantinsuyu. In XXXVI Congreso Inter-
nacional de Americanistas, España. 1964, Actas y
Memorias. Volume 2, pp. 35-45 (Seville). An
updated Spanish language version, Nueva
información sobre las poblaciones yana, was
published in Murra (1975a), pp. 225-242; in
Murra (2002a), pp. 328-340; and as Nuevos
datos sobre las poblaciones yana en el Tawant-
insuyo. Antropología Andina 1-2:13-33 (Cusco,
1976).
1966c Review of Life, Land, and Water in Ancient Peru
by Paul Kosok. American Anthropologist
68(5):1306-1307. A Spanish language version
published in Revista Peruana de Cultura, 7-8:270-
273 (1966).
1967a Nota preliminar sobre el manuscrito de la visita
de los chupachu y la transcripción usada en la
presente edición. In Ortiz de Zúñiga (1967), pp.
v-ix.
1967b La visita de los chupachu como fuente etnoló-
gica. In Ortiz de Zúñiga (1967), pp. 381-406.
1967c Ethnohistory: South America. Handbook of Latin
American Studies 29:200-213.
51 -
1967d L’Étude de Huánuco: Une experience inter-dis-
ciplinaire. Études Latino-Américaines 3:241-246.
Faculté des Lettres, Aix-en-Provence, France.
1967e Review of films Aspects of Land Ownership and
Land Use in the Rural Community of Montero,
produced by the Land Tenure Center, University
of Wisconsin; Market at La Paz, Patterns of Living
and Land Use at Vilaque and near Lake Titicaca,
producer unknown; and Campesinos and Farming
on Isla del Sol: Annual Market Days at Casani
(Peru-Bolivia Border), producer unknown. Ameri-
can Anthropologist 69(6):792.
1968a An Aymara Kingdom in 1567. Ethnohistory
15(2):115-151. Included in Human Relations
Area Files, Aymara Kingdoms: Outline of World
Cultures SF50 (electronic resource). A Spanish
language version was published in Murra
(1975a), pp. 193-224; and in Murra (2002a), pp.
183-207. An unauthorized Spanish language
translation was published as Un reino aymara en
1567. Pumapunku 6:87-93 (1972); 9:31-49
(1975).
1968b Perspectivas y actuales investigaciones de la
etnología andina, Revista del Museo Nacional
35:124-158 (1967-1968); republished as Las
investigaciones en etnohistoria andina y sus
posibilidades en el futuro in Murra (1975a), pp.
275-312; in Murra (2002a), pp. 445-470; and in
La Etnohistoria en Mesoamérica y los Andes, edited
by Pedro Carrasco Pizana, Juan Manuel Pérez
Zevallos, and José Antonio Pérez Gollán, pp.
113-158. México, D.F.: Instituto Nacional de
Antropología e Historia (1987). An English
language version, Current Research and Pros-
pects in Andean Ethnohistory appears in the
Latin American Research Review 5(1):3-36 (1970)
and was also re-published as a pamphlet by the
Cornell University Latin American Studies
Program, Reprint Series 35, n.d.
1968c Review of Indianische Fische: Feldbauer und Vieh-
züchter: Beiträge zur peruanischen Völkerkunde by
Horst Nachtigall. American Anthropologist
70(6):1224-1225.
1969 Review of Sozialpolitik in Inca-Staat by Angela
Müller-Dango. Hispanic American Historical
Review 49(4):741-743.
1970a Información etnológica e histórica adicional
sobre el reino Lupaqa. Historia y Cultura 4:49-61.
1970b Ethnohistory: South America. Handbook of Latin
American Studies 32:103-117, edited by Henry E.
Adams. Gainesville: University of Florida Press
for the Hispanic Foundation, Library of Con-
gress.
Block and Barnes: John V. Murra
1970c Comment on Depopulation of the Central
Andes in the 16th Century by C.T. Smith. Cur-
rent Anthropology 11(4, 5):461-462.
1970d Review of Francisco de Avila by Hermann Trim-
born and Antje Kelm and Dioses y hombres de
Huarochirí by José María Arguedas. American
Anthropologist 72(2):443-445.
1970e Review of The Last Inca Revolt by Lillian Estelle
Fischer. Ethnohistory 17(3, 4):173-174.
1970f Nispa Ninchis 1. This is a mimeographed first
issue of a Quechua studies newsletter that Murra
intended to produce with José María Arguedas.
Arguedas’ suicide in 1969 prevented the news-
letter from continuing.
1972a El “control vertical” de un máximo de pisos
ecológicos en la economía de las sociedades
andinas. In Ortiz (1972), pp. 427-476. Also
published privately as a pamphlet by John Victor
Murra (n.d.) Ithaca, New York: Glad Day Press;
as a pamphlet published by the Universidad Na-
cional Aútonoma de México (U.N.A.M.) Izta-
palapa, División de Ciencias Sociales; in Murra
(1975a), pp. 59-115; in Textos de historia de
América latina by Heraclio Bonilla, German
Carrera Damas, Tulio Halperin Donghi, D.C.M.
Platt, John Murra, and Juan Carlos Garavaglia,
México: U.N.A.M (1981); and with updates in
Murra (2002a), pp. 85-125.
1972b Ethnohistory: South America. Handbook of Latin
American Studies 34:129-144, edited by Donald
E. J. Stewart. Gainesville: University of Florida
Press for The Latin American, Portuguese, and
Spanish Division of the Library of Congress.
1973 Review of Changement et continuité chez les mayas
du mexique: Contribution à l’étude de la situation
colonial en Amerique latine by Henri Favre. His-
panic American Historical Review 53(1):159-160.
1974a Las etno-categorías de un khipu estatal. In
Homenaje a Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán, edited by
Roberto Bravo Garzón, Volume 2, pp. 167-176,
plus foldout chart. México: Universidad Vera-
cruzana and Instituto Indigenista Inter-
americano; republished in Murra (1975a), pp.
243-254, and foldout chart; also published in La
tecnología en el mundo andino/Runakunap
kawasayninkupaq rursqankunaqa, edited by
Heather Lechtman and AnaMaría Soldi, Volume
1 Subsistencia y mensuración, pp. 433-442, plus
foldout chart. México: Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investiga-
ciones Antropológicas (1981), and distributed as
an offprint. Also published as “Etno-categorías
de un khipu regional” in Quipu y yupana: Colec-
ción de escritos, edited by Carol Mackey, Hugo
Pereyna Sánchez, Carlos Radicati, Humberto
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
Rodríguez Pastor, and Oscar Valverde Ayala pp.
53-58, plus foldout chart. Lima: CONCYTEC
(1990), and in Murra (2002a), pp. 248-260.
1974b Ethnohistory: South America. Handbook of Latin
American Studies 36:91-99, edited by Donald E.
J. Stewart. Gainesville: University of Florida
Press for The Latin American, Portuguese, and
Spanish Division of the Library of Congress.
1974c Andean Cultures. Encyclopaedia Britannica (15th
edition), pp. 854-856.
1974d Review of Kuyo Chico: Applied Anthropology in an
Indian Community by Oscar Núñez del Prado.
The Americas 31(2):226-227.
1975a Formaciones económicas y políticas del mundo
andino. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos.
This consists of 12 essays, originally published
between 1958 and 1970, and almost all revised
for this collection. Each gives a genealogy of
publication. There is an Italian language edition,
Formazioni economiche e politiche nel mondo
andino: Saggi di etnostoria, translated by Ana
María Soldi. Turin, Italy: Giulio Einaudi (1980).
A French translation edited by Jacques Poloni-
Simard and published by the École des Hautes
Études en Science Sociale with the Maison des
Sciences de l’homme is forthcoming. It will
include an introduction based on Salomon
(2007) and Salomon (this volume, pp. 87-102) as
well as an earlier version of this bibliography.
1975b Review of The Men of Cajamarca: A Social and
Biographical Study of the First Conquerors of Peru
by James [Marvin] Lockhart. American Anthro-
pologist 77(3):652-654.
1975c Review of Struggle in the Andes: Peasant Political
Mobilization in Peru by Howard Handelman. The
Americas 32(1):167-168.
1976a Los límites y las limitaciones del “Archipiélago
Vertical” en los Andes. In Homenaje al Dr.
Gustavo Le Paige, S.J., edited by José María
Casassas, pp. 141-146. Antofagasta, Chile:
Universidad del Norte. Based on a paper read at
the Congreso del Hombre Andino, Arica, Chile,
June 1973. Also published in Avances: Revista
Boliviana de Estudios Históricos y Sociales 1:75-80
(La Paz, Bolivia; 1978); in Ensayos sobre el des-
arrollo económico de México y América Latina
(1500-1975), edited by Enrique Florescano,
pp.193-198. México: Fondo de Cultura Econó-
mica (1979); and in Murra (2002a), pp. 126-131.
An English language version, The Limits and
Limitations of the “Vertical Archipelago” in the
Andes, was published in Andean Ecology and
Civilization: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on
Andean Ecological Complementarity, edited by
Shozo Masuda, Izumi Shimada, and Craig Mor-
- 52
ris, pp. 15-20 (1985; article translated by Freda
Wolf de Romero). Tokyo: University of Tokyo
Press.
1976b American Anthropology, The Early Years, intro-
duction to Murra (editor 1976), pp. 3-7.
1976c Ethnohistory: South America. Handbook of Latin
American Studies 38, pp. 108-118, edited by
Dolores Mayano Martin and Donald E. J. Stew-
art. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida for
the Latin American, Portuguese, and Spanish
Division of the Library of Congress.
1976d Review of Investigaciones arqueológicas en los
Valles de Caplina y Sama by Hermann Trimborn.
Man n.s. 11(3):445-446.
1976e Review of films The Incas, produced by Coronet
Films; Lost City of the Andes, produced by
Simmel and Meservey; and Intirumi, produced by
UNESCO. American Anthropologist 78(2):383-
384.
1977a Comparando las civilizaciones andinas y meso-
americanas: Dos simposios. Historiografía y
Bibliografía Americanistas 21:265-266.
1977b Review of Los aymara de Chinchera, Perú: Per-
sistencia y cambio en un contexto bicultural by John
M. Hickman. American Anthropologist 79(1):153.
1977c Review of The Men of Cajamarca: A Social and
Biographical Study of the First Conquerors of Peru
by James Marvin Lockhart. Historica 1(1):136-
139.
1977d La arquitectura inka: Un nuevo estudio de
Graziano Gasparini. Review of La arquitectura
inka by Graziano Gasparini and Luise Margolies.
El Comercio, p. 10, 31 August (Lima). An
abridged version published as Introducción.
Arquitectura Inka by Graziano Gasparini and
Luise Margolies, pp. vii-ix. Caracas: Centro de
Investigaciones Historicas y Estéticas: Facultad
de Arquitectura y Urbanismo, Universidad
Central de Venezuela (1977). An abridged
English language version was published as the
Foreword to the English language translation of
Arquitectura Inka, Inca Architecture by Graziano
Gasparini and Luise Margolies, translated by
Patricia J. Lyon, pp. ix-xxi. Bloomington and
London: University of Indiana Press (1980).
1978a La correspondencia entre un “Capitán de la
Mita” y su apoderado en Potosí. Historia y Cultu-
ra (Lima) 3:45-48. Also published in Murra
(2002a), pp. 223-234. An amplified English
language version, Aymara Lords and their Euro-
pean Agents at Potosí, was published in Nova
America 1:231-243 (1978, Turin, Italy)
1978b La guerre et les rébellions dans l’expansion de
l’état inka. In Revel et al. Anthropologie historique
des sociétés andines, Anales 33(5-6): 927-935. An
53 -
English language version, The Expansion of the
Inka State: Armies, War, and Rebellions, was
published in Murra et al. (1986), pp. 49-58. A
Spanish language version, La expansión del
estado inka: Ejércitos, guerras y rebeliones, was
published in Murra (2002a), pp. 57-66.
1978c Los olleros del Inka: Hacia una historia y
arqueolgía del Qollasuyo. In Historia, problema y
promesa: Homenaje a Jorge Basadre, edited by
Francisco Miro Quesada Cantuaras, Franklin
Pease G. Y., and David Sobrevilla A., Volume 1,
pp. 415-423. Lima: Universidad Pontifícia
Católica del Perú, Fondo Editorial; also pub-
lished as Los olleros del Inka: Hacia una historia y
arqueología del Qollasuyo. La Paz: Centro de
Investigaciones Históricas (1983); and in Murra
(2002a), pp. 287-293.
1978d Ethnohistory: South America. Handbook of Latin
American Studies 40:77-89, edited by Dolores
Moyano Martin. Austin: University of Texas
Press for the Hispanic Division of the Library of
Congress.
1978e Introduction. In Deep Rivers by José María
Arguedas, translated by Frances Horning Barra-
clough, pp. ix-xv. Austin: University of Texas
Press.
1978f Review of Inequality in the Peruvian Andes: Class
and Ethnicity in Cuzco by Pierre L. Van den
Berghe and George P. Primov. Hispanic American
Historical Review 58(2):345-346.
1978g Review of The Vision of the Vanquished by Na-
than Wachtel. The Americas 34(4):567-568.
1978h Review of Peru: A Cultural History by Henry F.
Dobbins and Paul L. Doughty. Ethnohistory
25(4):393-394.
1979a El valle de Sama: Isla periférica del reino lupaqa
y su uso dentro de la economía minera colonial.
In Amerikanistische Studien/Estudios Ameri-
canistas: Festschrift für Hermann Trimborn
Anlässlich seines 75 Geburtstages/Libro jubilar en
homenaje a Hermann Trimborn con motivo de su
septuagésimoquinto aniversario, Volume 2, edited
by Roswith Hartmann and Udo Oberem, pp. 87-
91. Collectanea Instituti Anthropos 21. St.
Augustin, Germany: Haus Völker und Kulturen,
Anthropos-Institute.
1979b Algunos contrastes entre los páramos y las punas
como zonas de establecimientos humanos. In El
medio ambiente páramo: Actas del seminario de
Mêrida, Venezuela 5 a 12 de noviembre de 1979,
edited by M. L. Salgado-Labouriau, pp. 219-224.
Mérida, Venezuela, Instituto Venezolano de
Investigaciones Científicas.
1979c Derechos a las tierras en el Tawantinsuyu.
Revista de la Universidad Complutense
Block and Barnes: John V. Murra
28(117):273-287. Special issue entitled Economía
y sociedad en los Andes y Mesoamérica, edited by
José Alcina Franch. Also published in Revista del
Museo Inka (Cusco) 25:103-117 (1995); and in
Dos décadas de investigación en historia económica
comparada en América Latina, edited by Margarita
Menegus Bornemann, Antonio Ibarra, Juan
Manuel Pérez Zevallos, and Jorge Silva, pp. 97-
111. México, D.F.: Colegio de México, Centro
de Estudios Históricos; Centro de Investiga-
ciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología
Social; Instituto Doctor José María Luis Mora
(1999); and Centro de Estudios Sobre la
Universidad, UNAM; and in Murra (2002a), pp.
294-307.
1979d Review of The Vision of the Vanquished: The
Spanish Conquest of Peru through Indian Eyes,
1530-1570 by Nathan Wachtel, translated by
Ben and Siân Reynolds. American Anthropologist
81(1):171.
1980a Ethnohistory: South America. Handbook of Latin
American Studies 42:135-159, edited by Dolores
Mayano Martin. Austin: University of Texas
Press for the Hispanic Division of the Library of
Congress.
1980b Dimensión internacional de Julio C. Tello. El
Comercio, El Dominical, p. 7, 6 April (Lima). A
longer version was published as La dimensión
internacional de la obra de Julio C. Tello.
Histórica 6:53-63 (1982). A footnote, p. 53,
states “La revista solo publicó una primera parte,
la segunda fue añadida a una publicación privada
hecha por el autor.” (“The journal only pub-
lished a first part; the second was added to a
private publication by the author”). This has not
been located. A revised English language trans-
lation, The International Relevance of Julio C.
Tello is in The Life and Writings of Julio C. Tello:
America’s First Indigenous Archaeologist, edited by
Richard L. Burger, pp. 55-64. Iowa City: Univer-
sity of Iowa Press (2009).
1981a Socio-political and Demographic Aspects of
Multi-Altitude Land Use in the Andes. In
Cahiers Népalais: l’Homme et son environnement à
haute altitude, Environmental and human popula-
tion problems at high altitude, Seminaire, Centre
National de la Recherche Scientifique [and] Na-
tional Science Foundation, Paris, 1-3 octobre 1980.
Edited by Paul T. Baker, Corneille Jest, and
Jacques Ruffié, pp. 129-135. Paris: Editions du
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.
1981b Commentary on Reciprocity and the Inca State:
From Karl Polanyi to John V. Murra by Nathan
Wachtel. Research in Economic Anthropology
4:688-691.
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
1981c Review of History of the Inca Empire: An Account
of the Indians’ Customs and their Origin together
with a Treatise on the Inca Legends, History, and
Social Institutions by Father Bernabé Cobo, trans-
lated by Roland Hamilton. American Ethnologist
8(1):202.
1981d Prólogo. In La tecnología en el mundo
andino/Runakunap kawasayninkupaq rursqan-
kunaqa, edited by Heather Lechtman and Ana
María Soldi, Volume 1, Subsistencia y mensura-
ción, pp. 7-9. México: Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investiga-
ciones Antropológicas.
1982a The Mit’a Obligations of Ethnic Groups to the
Inka State. In The Inca and Aztec States: 1400-
1800, edited by George A. Collier, Renato I.
Rosaldo, and John D. Wirth, pp. 237-262. New
York: Academic Press. Also distributed sepa-
rately as a paper read at a meeting comparing the
state in Meso-America and the Andes (1978),
revised October, 1981. Included in Human
Relations Area Files, World Cultures, South
America, Inka SE13 (an Internet resource). A
Spanish language version, La Mit’a al Tawan-
tinsuyu: Prestaciones de los grupos étnicos, was
published in Chungurá 10:77-94 (1983); and in
Murra (2002a), pp. 261-286.
1982b El tráfico de mullo en la costa del Pacífico. In
Primer Simposio de Correlaciones Antropológicas
Andino-Mesoamericano, 25-31 de Julio de 1971,
Salinas Ecuador, edited by Jorge Marcos G. and
Presley Norton, pp. 265-273. Guayaquil: Escuela
Superior Politécnica del Litoral. Also published
in Murra (1975a), pp. 255-267; and in Murra
(2002a), pp. 171-179; and in Reconocimientos y
excavaciones en el austro ecuatoriano (see Collier
and Murra 1943), pp. 403-418 (2007).
1982c Ethnohistory: South America. Handbook of Latin
American Studies 44:102-121, edited by Dolores
Mayano Martin. Austin: University of Texas
Press for the Hispanic Division of the Library of
Congress.
1982d Review of Parentesco y matrimonio en los Andes,
edited by Enrique Mayer and Ralph Bolton.
American Anthropologist 84(4):909-910.
1982e Review of The Transition to Statehood in the New
World by Grant D. Jones and Robert R. Kautz.
Hispanic American Historical Review 62(4):713-
714.
1982f Platform Submitted to Support Candidacy for
President, American Anthropological Associa-
tion. Circulated by the American Anthropologi-
cal Association and by John Victor Murra.
Photocopy. On file in the archives of Andean
Past.
- 54
1983a José María Arguedas, dos imágines. Revista Ibero-
Americana 122:43-54. Republished in Arguedas
1996:265-298.
1983b Prioridades en la etnografía antigua del mundo
andino. Semana de Ultima Hora (La Paz), 25 -
February, p. 3.
1983c Review of Chan Chan: Andean Desert City by
Michael Moseley and Kent C. Day. Man n.s.
18(2):410-411.
1984a Andean Societies. In Annual Review of Anthro-
pology 13:119-141.
1984b The Cultural Future of the Andean Majority. In
The Prospects for Plural Societies, edited by David
Maybury-Lewis, pp. 30-38. Washington, D.C.:
American Ethnological Society.
1984c Review of Estructuras andinas del poder: Ideologîa
religiosa y política by María Rostworowski de Diez
Canseco. Hispanic American Historical Review
64(4):790-791.
1985a Andean Societies before 1532. In The Cambridge
History of Latin America, edited by Leslie Bethell,
Volume 1, pp. 59-90. Cambridge and New York:
Cambridge University Press. Spanish language
version, Las sociedades andinas antes de 1532
published in Historia de América Latina 1, Améri-
ca Latina Colonial: La América precolombiana y la
conquista, edited by Leslie Bethell and translated
by Antonio Acosta. Barcelona, Editorial Crítica
(1990).
1985b Andean Societies before 1532 (bibliographic
essay). In The Cambridge History of Latin Amer-
ica, edited by Leslie Bethell, Volume 11, pp. 15-
18. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press. Spanish language version, Las
sociedades andinas antes de 1532 (Ensayo Biblio-
gráfico) in Historia de América Latina 1, América
Latina Colonial: La América precolombiana y la
conquista, edited by Leslie Bethell. Barcelona,
Editorial Crítica (1990).
1985c “El archipiélago vertical” Revisited. In Andean
Ecology and Civilization: An Interdisciplinary
Perspective on Andean Ecological Complementarity,
edited by Shozo Masuda, Izumi Shimada, and
Craig Morris, pp. 3-13 (article translated by
Freda Wolf de Romero). Tokyo: University of
Tokyo Press. A Spanish language version, El
archipiélago vertical: Once años después, was
published in Condarco 1987, pp. 87-104, and in
Murra (2002a), pp. 132-139.
1985d Commentary on Staple Finance, Wealth Fi-
nance, and Storage in the Inka Political Econ-
omy by Terence N. D’Altroy and Timothy K.
Earle. Current Anthropology 26(2):200.
1985e Review of Religion and Empire: The Dynamics of
Aztec and Inca Expansion by Geoffey W. Conrad
55 -
and Arthur A. Demarest. Man n.s. 20(3):553-
554.
1986a Notes on Pre-Columbian Cultivation of Coca
Leaf. In Coca and Cocaine: Effects on People and
Policy in Latin America, Proceedings of the Confer-
ence, The Coca Leaf and Its Derivatives–Biology,
Society, and Policy, Sponsored by the Latin Ameri-
can Studies Program (LASP), Cornell University,
April 25-26, 1985, edited by Deborah Pacini and
Christine Franquemont, pp. 49-52. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Cultural Survival and Ithaca,
New York: Cornell LASP. Also distributed as an
Audiobook by Cornell LASP (1985).
1986b Le difficile accouchement d’une histoire andine.
In Economies méditerranéennes:Équilibres et inter-
communications, XIIIe-XIXe siècles. (Actes du IIe
Colloque International d’Histoire), Volume 3, pp.
309-313. Athens: Centre de Recherches Néo-
helléniques de la Fondation Nationale de la
Recherche Scientifique.
1987a ¿Existeron el tributo y los mercados antes de la
invasion española? In La Participación indígena en
los mercados surandinos: estrategías y reproducción
social siglos XVI a XX, edited by Olivia Harris,
Brooke Larson, and Enrique Tandeter. La Paz,
Bolivia: Centro de Estudios de la Realidad
Economica y Social. Also published as ¿Existeron
el tributo y los mercados en los Andes antes de la
invasion española? in Arqueología, antropología, e
historia en los Andes: Homenaje a María
Rostworowski, edited by Rafael Varón Gabai and
Javier Flores Espinoza, pp. 737-748. Lima:
Instituto de Estudios Peruanos and Banco Cen-
tral de Reserva del Perú (1997); and in Murra
(2002a), pp. 237-247. An English language
version, Did Tribute and Markets Prevail in the
Andes before the European Invasion? was pub-
lished in Ethnicity, Markets, and Migration in the
Andes: At the Crossroads of History and Anthropol-
ogy, edited by Brooke Larson and Olivia Harris
with Enrique Tandeter, pp. 57-72. Durham,
North Carolina: Duke University Press (1995).
1987b ¿Inventando una historia andina? Discurso Liter-
ario 4(2):347-353.
1987c La etnohistoria. In La etnohistoria en Mesoamérica
y los Andes, edited by Juan Manuel Pérez Zevall-
os and José Antonio Pérez Gollán, pp. 159-175.
Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Antropología y
Historia.
1988a El Aymara libre de ayer. In Raíces de América: El
mundo Aymara, edited by Xavier Albó, pp. 51-74.
Madrid: Alianza Editorial.
1988b El Doctor Barros de San Millán, defensor de los
“señores naturales” de los Andes. In Actas del IV
Congreso Internacional de Etnohistoria. Lima:
Block and Barnes: John V. Murra
Universidad Pontifícia Católica del Perú, Volume
2, pp. 359-377. Also published as El Doctor
Barros de San Millán: Defensor de los “señores na-
turales” en los Andes. Barcelona: Servei de
Publicacions de la Universitat de Barcelona
(1993); and in Murra (2002a), pp. 426-438.
1988c Review of La heterodoxia recuperada: En torno a
Ángel Palerm, edited by Susana Glantz. American
Anthropologist 90(1):196-197.
1988d Review of The Orgins and Development of the
Andean State, edited by Jonathan Haas, Shelia
Pozorski, and Thomas Pozorski. Hispanic Ameri-
can Historical Review 68(4):820-821.
1988e Review of The Evolution of Human Societies: From
Foraging Group to Agrarian State by Allen W.
Johnson and Timothy Earle. Man n.s. 23(3):586-
587.
1989a High Altitude Andean Societies and their Econ-
omies. In Geographic Perspectives in History,
edited by Eugene D. Genovese and Leonard
Hochberg, pp. 205-214. Oxford and New York:
B. Blackwell.
1989b Review of Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness
in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries
by Steve J. Stern. American Anthropologist
91(1):214-215.
1990 Review of Suma y narración de los Incas by Juan
de Betanzos, edited by María del Carmen Martín
Rubio. Ethnohistory 37(1):95-97.
1991a Le débat sur l’avenir des Andes en 1562. In
Cultures et sociétés: Andes et Méso-Amérique: Mé-
langes en homage à Pierre Duviols, edited by
Raquel Thiercelin, Volume 2, pp. 625-632. Aix-
en-Provence: Université de Provence, Service
des Publications.
1991b “Nos hazen mucha ventaja”: The Early European
Perception of Andean Achievement. In Transat-
lantic Encounters: Europeans and Andeans in the
Sixteenth Century, edited by Kenneth J. Andrien
and Rolena Adorno, pp. 73-89. Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press. A Spanish language
version, Nos hacen mucha ventaja: Percepción
europea temprana de los logros andinos, was
published in Semillas de industria: Trans-
formaciones de la tecnología andina en las Américas,
edited by Mario Ruz, pp. 19-35. México: Ciesas
and Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution
(1994); and in Murra (2002a), pp. 25-40.
1992 Guaman Poma’s Sources in Guaman Poma de
Ayala: The Colonial Art of an Andean Author by
Rolena Adorno, Tom Cummins, Teresa Gisbert,
Maarten van de Guchte, Mercedes López-Baralt,
and John Victor Murra, pp. 60-66. New York:
Americas Society.
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
1993a Review of Ancient Andean Political Economy by
Charles Stanish. The American Historical Review
98(2):616-617.
1993b Review of Provincial Power in the Inka Empire by
Terence N. D’Altroy. The American Historical
Review 98(4):1355.
1994a John Hyslop 1945-1993. Andean Past 4(1-7).
1994b Review of Domination and Resistance by Daniel
Miller, Michael Rowlands, and Christopher
Tilley. American Anthropologist 21(3):628.
1994c Review of the Inca Empire: The Formation and
Disintegration of a Pre-Capitalist State by Thomas
C. Patterson. Latin American Antiquity 5(2):184-
185.
1996a Prólogo. In Las Cartas de Arguedas, edited by
John Victor Murra and Mercedes López-Baralt,
pp. 13-16. Lima: Universidad Pontifícia Católica
del Perú. Second edition (1998).
1996b [1977] Semblanza de Arguedas. In Las Cartas de
Arguedas, edited by John Victor Murra and Mer-
cedes López-Baralt, pp. 283-293. Lima: Universi-
dad Pontifícia Católica del Perú. Second edition
(1998).
1998 Litigation Over the Rights of “Natural Lords” in
Early Colonial Courts in the Andes. In Native
Traditions in the Postconquest World: A Symposium
at Dumbarton Oaks, edited by Elizabeth Hill
Boone and Tom Cummins, pp. 55-62. Washing-
ton, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library
and Collection. A Spanish language version,
Litigio sobre los derechos de los “senores natur-
ales” en las primeras cortes colonials en los
Andes published in Historias 49:101-105 (2001).
1999 El Tawantinsuyu. In Historia general de América
Latina, edited by Federico Mayor and Germán
Damas, Volume 1, pp. 481-484. Madrid: Edito-
rial Trotta and Paris: Ediciones UNESCO. Also
published in Murra (2002a), pp. 67-82, plus
foldout map.
2002a El Mundo andino: Población, medio ambiente y
economía. Lima: Pontifícia Universidad Católica
del Perú, Fondo Editorial and Instituto de Es-
tudios Peruanos, Series Historia Andina 24.
2002b Barros de San Millán. In Diccionario histórico de
Bolivia, edited by Josep M. Barnadas, Guillermo
Calvo, and Juan Ticlla. Volume 1, pp. 272-273.
Sucre: Grupo de Estudios Históricos.
Murra, John Victor and Gordon Hadden
1966 Apéndice: Informe presentado al Patronado
Nacional de Arqueología sobre la labor de liem-
pieza y consolidación de Huánuco Viejo. In
Cuadernos de Investigación, Antropología 1.
(Universidad Nacional Hermilio Valdizan,
Huánuco, Perú.)
- 56
Murra, John Victor and Caroline G. Mercer
1957 Brown Will Discuss Faulkner’s Negro; Frazier,
the Negro Community and Conf. Vassar Chroni-
cle, February 23. 14(17):3.
Murra, John Victor and Craig Morris
1976 Dynastic Oral Tradition, Administrative Re-
cords, and Archaeology in the Andes. World
Archaeology 7(3):269-279.
Murra, John Victor. and Nathan Wachtel
1978 Présentation. In Revel et al. (1978), pp. 889-894.
An English language version, Introduction, was
published in Murra et al. (1986), pp. 1-9.
Sinclaire Aguirre, Carole, Soledad Hoces de la Guardia
Chellew, Paulina Brugnoli, and John Victor Murra
2006 Awakhuni: Tejiendo la historia andina. Santiago de
Chile: Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino.
An English language version published as Awak-
huni: Weaving the History of the Andes, in Memory
of John Victor Murra (1916-2006). Santiago de
Chile: Museo Chileno de Arte Precololombino
(2007).
Thompson, Donald E. and John Victor Murra
1966 The Inca Bridges in the Huánuco Region Ameri-
can Antiquity 31(5) Part 1:632-639. Also pub-
lished in Peruvian Archaeology: Selected Readings,
edited by John Howland Rowe and Dorothy
Menzel, pp. 235-242. Palo Alto, California: Peek
Publications. A Spanish language version, Puen-
tes incaicos en la region de Huánuco Pampa was
published in Antropología: Cuadernos de Investiga-
ción 1, pp. 79-94 (Universidad Nacional Her-
milio Valdizán, Facultad de Letras y Educación,
Huánuco, Perú, 1966).
VOLUMES EDITED BY JOHN VICTOR MURRA
Arguedas, José María
1996 Las Cartas de Arguedas, edited by John Victor
Murra and Mercedes López-Baralt. Lima:
Universidad Pontifícia Católica del Perú. Second
edition (1998).
Guaman Poma de Ayala, Felipe
1980 El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno, edited by
John Victor Murra and Rolena Adorno. Quech-
ua translations by Jorge Urioste. Colección
América Nuestra 31. 3 volumes. México: Siglo
XXI. Reprinted 1988, 1992. Expanded and
corrected edition published in Madrid by His-
toria 16 in its Crónicas de América series (1987);
facsimile CD-ROM of manuscript GKS 2232 4o,
Copenhagen: Royal Library of Denmark, n.d.
and on-line facsimile:
(http://www.kb.dk/permalink /2006/poma/info/
en/frontpage.htm, consulted 21 March 2008),
plus the Murra-Adorno-Urioste transcription,
57 -
searchable and corrected by Ivan Boserup and
Rolena Adorno.
Murra, John Victor, editor
1964 Visita hecha a la Provincia de Chucuito por Garci
Díez de San Miguel en el año 1567. Transcription
and bibliography by Waldemar Espinoza Soriano.
Includes Padrón de los mil indios ricos de la Pro-
vincia de Chucuito en el año 1574, by Fray
Pedro Gutiérrez Flores. Lima: Casa de la Cultura
Peruana.
1976 American Anthropology, The Early Years: 1974
Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society.
St. Paul, Minnesota; New York, New York;
Boston, Massachusetts; Los Angeles California,
and San Francisco, California: West Pub. Co.
1991 Visita de los valles de Sonqo en las yunka de coca de
La Paz (1568-1570). Madrid: Instituto de Co-
operación Iberoamericana, La Sociedad Estatal
del Quinto Centenario, and Instituto de Estudios
Fiscales. Includes Notas preliminarios sobre el
manuscripto de la visita de los cocales de Sonqo
y la transcripción usada en esta edición, pp. 6-13;
Introducción al estudio histórico del cultivo de la
hoja de la coca [Exythroxylon coca] en los Andes,
pp. 565-581; also published in Murra (2002a),
pp. 359-372, and Los cultivadores aymara de la
hoja de coca: Dos disposiciones administrativas
[1568-1570], pp. 653-674; also published in
Murra (2002a), pp. 341-358.
Ortiz de Zúñiga, Iñigo
1967 Visita de la provincia de León de Huánuco en 1562,
edited by John Victor Murra, Volume 1, Visita de
las cuatro waranqa de los chupachu, transcribed by
Domingo Angulo, Marie Helmer, and Felipe
Márquez Abanto. Huánuco, Perú: Universidad
Nacional Hermilio Valdizán, Facultad de Letras
y Educación, Series Documentos para la Historia
y Etnología de Huánuco y la Selva Central.
1972 Visita de la provincia de León de Huánuco en 1562,
edited by John Victor Murra, Volume 2, Visita de
los Yacha y mitmaqkuna cuzqueños encomendados
en Juan Sanchez Falcon, transcribed by Felipe
Márquez Abanto. Huánuco, Perú: Universidad
Nacional Hermilio Valdizán, Facultad de Letras
y Educación, Series Documentos para la Historia
y Etnología de Huánuco y la Selva Central.
Revel, Jacques, John Victor Murra, and Nathan Wachtel,
editors
1978 Anthropologie historique des sociétés andines,
Annales 33(5-6), special issue. Published as an
English language edition, Anthropological History
of Andean Polities, edited by John Victor Murra,
Nathan Wachtel, and Jacques Revel. Cambridge
and New York: Cambridge University Press and
Block and Barnes: John V. Murra
Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de
l’Homme (1986).
Rojas Rabiela, Teresa and John Victor Murra, editors
1999 Historia General de América Latina, Volume 1,
Los sociedades originarias. Madrid: Editorial
Trotta and Paris: Ediciones UNESCO.
PAPERS OF JOHN VICTOR MURRA
The bulk of John Victor Murra’s papers are in the Na-
tional Anthropological Archives of the Smithsonian
Institution. For a register of these papers see:
http://www.nmnh.si.edu/naa/fa/murra.pdf
(consulted 3 June 2009).
Other archival collections with documents relevant to the
life and work of John Victor Murra include The Catherine
Pelton Durrell ’25 Archives and Special Collections
Library, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York.
New York University’s Bobst Library contains extensive
records of the Research Institute for the Study of Man
with much material relevant to Murra’s work in the
Caribbean.
New York University’s Tamiment Library & Robert F.
Wagner Labor Archives houses documents and audio-
tapes relevant to Murra’s participation in the Spanish
Civil War.
The Harry S Truman Library and Museum, Independence,
Missouri, Records on the President’s Committee on Civil
Rights Record Group 220 incorporates Murra’s citizenship
case records.
Several collections of documents in the Anthropology
Division of the American Museum of Natural History
have papers relevant to John Victor Murra. The records
there of the Institute of Andean Research contain docu-
ments pertinent to John Murra’s 1941-42 fieldwork in
Ecuador, to the Inca Provincial Life (Huánuco Project),
and to his tenure as President of the IAR. The AMNH’s
Junius B. Bird Laboratory of South American Archaeology
contains further records of Murra’s Huánuco Project,
including field notes and photographs, transcriptions of
archival documents relevant to Huánuco, maps of the
region, official documents authorizing the project, interim
reports, and professional and personal letters by or to
Murra. Certain letters in the Bird Lab to and from E.
Craig Morris and to and from John Hyslop are also
relevant to Huánuco John Victor Murra’s life and work.
Information on Murra in the Archivo General de la
Guerra Civil, Salamanca, Spain was said by him to be
partially incorrect.
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
Some significant John Murra papers remain in Andean
countries and in private hands.
INTERVIEWS
“En la obra de cualquier autor, poeta, lo que sea, cual-
quiera, hay un retrato que se hace del el, y otra cosa es lo
que él percibe de sí mismo” John Victor Murra speaking to
Waldo Ansaldi and Fernando Calderón G., 1989 (“In the
work of any author, poet, whoever, there is a portrait that
is made of him, but how he perceives himself is something
else”, translation by Monica Barnes).
Ansaldi, Waldo and Fernando Calderón G.
1989 Reconocer el valor de esta sociedad que por
casualidad encontré: Conversación con John
Murra. David y Goliath 18(54):2-14. Also pub-
lished as Pon la vida, pon los sueños: Conversa-
ción con John Murra. In Los esfuerzos de Sísifo:
Conversaciones sobre las ciencias sociales en
América Latina, pp. 245-285, edited by Fernando
Calderón G. (2000). Heredia, Costa Rica:
EUNA.
Castro, Victoria, Carlos Aldunate, and Jorge Hidalgo,
editors
2000 Nispa ninchis/decimos diciendo: Conversaciones con
John Murra. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos
and New York: Institute of Andean Research.
Series Fuentes e Investigaciones para la Historia
del Perú 13.
Gerassi, John
1980 Unpublished audio-taped interview of John
Victor Murra. Abraham Lincoln Brigade Ar-
chive (ALBA) Audio #18, John Gerassi Oral
History Collection, The Tamiment Library, New
York University.
Harriman, Manny
1983 Video interview with John Victor Murra. Not
broadcast or distributed. To be deposited in the
archive of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Tami-
ment Library, New York University, New York,
New York.
Hermosa, Ernest
n.d. Fragamento de entrevista con John Murra.
Presencia Cultural, Televisión Nacional del Perú,
Program posted on YouTube,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12unr4yx83o
(consulted 4 June 2009). Nine minutes of a more
extensive interview.
Ipiña Melgar, José
1976 Etnológia andina: Entrevista con John Victor
Murra. Presencia Literaria 12 September, pp. 1ff.
Rowe, John Howland
1984 An Interview with John Victor Murra. Hispanic
American Historical Review 64(4):1-21. A Span-
- 58
ish language translation by Martha León
Urdaneta is posted on the website of the Banco
de la República de Colombia, La Biblioteca Luis
Ángel Urdaneta, Biblioteca Virtual
www.lablaa.org/blaavirtual/publicaciones
banrep/bolmuseo/1986/bol17/ boc3.htm ( c o n -
sulted 4 June 2009).
de Siles, María Eugenia
1983 Conversaciones con John Victor Murra, un
apasionado del mundo andino. Semana de Ultima
Hora, February 11, pp. 6-8 (La Paz, Bolivia).
Wolf de Romero, Freda
1966 An Interview with John Victor Murra. Lima
Times, August, pp. 31-32.
TRANSLATIONS
Murra, John V., Robert M. Hankin, and Fred Holling,
translators
1951 The Soviet Linguistic Controversy: Translated from
the Soviet Press. New York: King’s Crown Press
for the Columbia University Slavic Studies
Department.
Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, María
1960 Succession, Coöption to Kingship and Royal
Incest Among the Incas. Translated by John
Victor Murra. Southwestern Journal of Anthropol-
ogy 16(4):417-427.
FESTSCHRIFTS AND MEMORIAL VOLUMES
Editors of Chungará
2009? At the time Andean Past 9 went to press, an issue
of Chungará: Revista de Antropología Chilena.
dedicated to John Murra was in preparation.
Henderson, John S. and Patricia J. Netherly, editors
1993 Configurations of Power: Holistic Anthropology in
Theory and Practice. Ithaca, New York: Cornell
University Press.
Lorandi, AnaMaría, Carmen Salazar-Soler, and Nathan
Wachtel
2003 Los Andes: Cincuenta años después (1953-2003);
Homenaje a John Murra. Lima: Universidad
Pontifícia Católica del Perú.
WORKS ABOUT JOHN VICTOR MURRA
Albó, Xavier and Cristina Bubba
2007 John Murra, solidario militante. La Razón, No-
vember 4, A6 (La Paz, Bolivia).
Anonymous
1942 57 South Siders Receive Degrees at U. Of Chi-
cago: 642 Students Graduated Since Last Sum-
mer. Chicago Daily Tribune, December 20, p. S4.
59 -
1947a U.S. to Lift Lid on Red Asking for Citizenship.
Chicago Daily Tribune, January 1, p. 42.
1947b Denies U. Of C. Ex-Instructor Citizen Rights.
Chicago Daily Tribune, January 18, p. 1.
1947c Alien Rejected as U.S. Citizen to Appeal Case.
Chicago Daily Tribune, February 12, p. 38.
1947d Injustice from a Biased Judge. The Chicago Sun,
January 24.
1948a Red Gospel Advanced by Fund Grants: Exempt
Trusts Pay Writers. Chicago Daily Tribune, No-
vember 7, p. 1.
1948b Second Ruling Due Nov. 22 in Murra’s Citizen-
ship Plea. Chicago Daily Tribune, November 10,
p. B1.
1948c Igoe Studies Plea of Ex-U. Of C. Aid Accused as
a Red. Chicago Daily Tribune, November 23, p.
A10.
1948d Igoe Files Findings as Prof. Murra Acts in Citi-
zenship Ban. Chicago Daily Tribune, November
24, p. 3.
1948e Citizenship Request is Turned Down. A.P.
report. Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune, Novem-
ber 24, p. 2. Also published as Denies Citizenship
to Teacher. The La Crosse Tribune, November
24, p. 11.
1949a U.S. Opposes Appeal of Educator in Fight to
Gain Citizenship. Chicago Daily Tribune, Sep-
tember 22, p. 5.
1949b Reverse Denial of Citizenship to Ex-U.C. Aid:
U.S. Court of Appeals Clears Murra. Chicago
Daily Tribune, December 15, p. 9.
1950a Deny Rehearing to U.S. in Murra Citizenship
Bid. Chicago Daily Tribune, February 2, p. 7.
1950b Igoe, Reversed, Grants Citizen Oath to Russian.
Chicago Tribune, June 15, p. C10.
1950c Engineers Hear Talk by Anthropologist. Pough-
keepsie New Yorker, November 21.
1956 Columbia to Make a Study of Tropics. The New
York Times, April 21, p. 37.
1953 American Friends Plan Seminar. Vassar Miscel-
lany News, March 4, 37(17):5.
1954a J. Murra, M. Flack Join Vassar Faculty. Vassar
Miscellany News 38(15):3, February 17.
1954b Flack and Murra, New VC Faculty Members.
Vassar Chronicle, February 20,11(15):6.
1954c AAUW Study Group to Hear Mr. Murra.
Poughkeepsie New Yorker, October 22.
1954d Murra Named to Fair Club Board. Poughkeepsie
New Yorker, November 27.
1955a Vassar Lecturer Attends Meeting. Poughkeepsie
New Yorker, January 5.
1955b John V. Murra Speaking at Brandeis. Pough-
keepsie New Yorker, April 16.
Block and Barnes: John V. Murra
1955c Goals of Childhood Set Pattern for Adult Life
Anthropologist Says. Boston Globe, November
20.
1955d Engineers Hear Talk by Anthropologist, Pough-
keepsie New Yorker, November 21.
1956a Murra Chosen Series Moderator. Poughkeepsie
New Yorker, January 27.
1956b Grant Received by Vassar Senior. Poughkeepsie
New Yorker, February 13.
1956c John V. Murra . . . will be Moderator of a Series
of Four Meetings about African Arts . . . Vassar
Miscellany News, February 15, 40(15):1
1956d Vassar Professor Receives Degree. Poughkeepsie
New Yorker, March 19.
1956e Faculty Notes. Vassar Chronicle, December 15,
14(12):8.
1956f John V. Murra Attends AAA Meetings. Pough-
keepsie New Yorker, December 29.
1957a Faculty Notes. Vassar Chronicle 14(14):4, Janu-
ary 19.
1957b Program in Commemoration of New State of
Ghana. New Paltz Independent, April 18.
1957c 400 Attend Opening of African Unit. Afro-
American, October 5 (Baltimore, Maryland).
1957d John Murra to Attend Seminar in Puerto Rico.
Poughkeepsie New Yorker, November 11.
1957e John Murra to Speak at Brandeis. Poughkeepsie
New Yorker, November 25.
1958 Caribbean Course Slated by AAUN. Pough-
keepsie New Yorker, January 3.
1959a Murra Opens Convocation with Anthropology
Address. Vassar Miscellany News 44(1), Septem-
ber 23.
1959b New Faculty Members Cited, Professors on
Leave Return. Vassar Miscellany News 44(2):1, 4,
September 30.
1960a John V. Murra of the Anthropology Department
will lecture . . . on the All Africa Conference
which He Attended. Vassar Miscellany News,
March 2, 44(19):1.
1960b Professor to Talk to Harding Club. Poughkeepsie
New Yorker, May 10.
1961a Advisers Air Program of Health Unit. Advance ,
February 13 (Staten Island).
1961b Africa to Incas. News (Detroit, Michigan),
March 22.
1961c U-D Will Host Special Talks on African Ways.
Northwest Record, March 23.
1961d Trustees Grant Fourteen Faculty Leaves . . .
Vassar Miscellany News, May 10, 45(25)1, 6.
1961e Africa Lecture Slated. News (Detroit, Michigan),
October 13.
1961f Asks Truer Inca Study. News (Newark, New
Jersey), November 24.
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
1961g Ethnologist Seeks True Inca Image. Sun, Novem-
ber 30 (Baltimore, Maryland).
1961i True Picture of Inca. Science News Letter 80(23):
364.
1962a LWV Announces Names of Series Patronesses.
Register, January 18 (New Haven, Connecticut).
1962b Second Lecture in LWV Series Set Wednesday.
Register, January 28 (New Haven, Connecticut).
c. 1964 [exact date unknown] En Huánuco habría
“otro” Machupicchu: Así afirma catedrático de
EU. La Prensa (Lima).
1966 Carnet Social. La Chrónica, February 10 (Lima).
1983 292 Receive Fellowships from Guggenheim
Fund. The New York Times, April 10, Metropoli-
tan Desk, Late City Final Edition, Section 1, p.
48.
2006a [Frederic W. Gleach] John V. Murra. Ithaca
Journal, p. 4A, October 25.
2006b John Murra, Anthropologist. International Herald
Tribune, News Section, October 25, p. 3.
2006c John Victor Murra. Lives in Brief. The Times
[London], November, 1. Features, p. 66a.
2006d Anthropologist J. Murra: Expert on Incan Em-
pire. Watertown Daily Times [New York],
November 3.
2007e Correction of October 24, 2007 Obituary about
John V. Murra Regarding Incident in his Life.
The New York Times, November 2, Late Edition,
final, Metropolitan Desk section, page 2.
n.d. (c. 1950) Untitled editorial denouncing John
Victor Murra’s citizenship application and his
hiring by Vassar College. National Republic Letter-
gram 222 (Washington, D.C.). The National
Republic Lettergram, an offshoot of The National
Republic magazine was edited by Walter S.
Steele, an anti-Communist activist
Castro Rojas, Victoria, Craig Morris, and Carlos Ivan De
gregori
2002 Homenaje a John Murra. Gaceta Arqueológica
Andina 26:223-227.
Condarco Morales, Ramiro
1977 Un ataque a Murra. Presencia Literaria June 5, p.
2 (La Paz, Bolivia).
Collier, Donald
1942 Ecuador Expedition Returns. Field Museum News
13(3):3.
Contreras, Jesús
1993 Solemne investidura de doctor honoris causa al
professor John V. Murra: Discurs de presentació
pel professor Jesús Contreras. Barcelona: Univer-
sitat (in Catalan and Spanish).
Fisher, Harry
1998 Comrades: Tales of a Brigadista in the Spanish Civil
War. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Contains many mentions of John Victor Murra
- 60
in the context of his participation in the Spanish
Civil War.
Friedman, Rosalind
1960 Anthropologists, Philosophers, Historian Attend
Conference. Vassar Miscellany News 44(13):1,
January 13 .
Gillespie, Adele
1950 Murra Speaks on Conditions Prevailing Now in
Puerto Rico. Vassar Miscellany News 35(9):3, 6,
November 22 .
Gleach, Frederic W. and Frank Salomon
2006 Death Notices: John V. Murra. Anthropology
News 47(9):36.
Gleach, Frederic W. with David Block, Jane Fajans, John
Henderson, David Holmberg, Eduardo Kohn, Heather
Lechtman, Frank Salomon, and Gabriela Vargas-Cetina
2006 Obituary: John V. Murra
http://www.ethnohistory.org/sections/news/
index. php ?id=17 (consulted 26 June 2009).
Glaser, June
1959 Experience in Peru Related by Murra. Vassar
Miscellany News 44(2):1, 4, September 30.
Harris, Olivia
2006 John Victor Murra: An Anthropologist Who
Dedicated Himself to Understanding the Incan
Civilization. Guardian, p. 39, November 4.
Spanish language translation published in Íconos
26:164-66 and on-line:
http://www.flacso.org.ec/docs/i27murra.pdf
[consulted 1 August 2009].
Henderson, John S. and Patricia J. Netherly
1993 Murra, Materialism, Anthropology, and the
Andes. In Configurations of Power: Holistic An-
thropology in Theory and Practice, pp. 1-8. Ithaca,
New York: Cornell University Press.
Hevesi, Dennis
2006 John V. Murra, 90, Professor Who Recast Image
of Incas, Dies. The New York Times, October 24.
On-line at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/24/obituaries
/24murra.html?scp=1&sq=%22John%20Victo
r%20Murra%22&st=cse (Consulted 4 June
2009, includes correction).
Hirschman, Joan
1955 Upper Classmen Interview Professors; Compare
Freshmen. Seniors in Class, Loss of Spontaneity
. . . Vassar Miscellany News, 40(11):3, December
7.
Honan, William H.
1992 U.S. Returns Stolen Ancient Textiles to Bolivia.
The New York Times, September 27, page 23.
Jenson, Peter
1965 A Traveling Exhibit in the Andes. Curator 8(3):
223-227.
61 - Block and Barnes: John V. Murra

Klineberg, Rosemary Bauer, Arnold J.

1954 Murra Conducts Discussion Group. Vassar 1976 Review of Formaciones económicas y políticas del
Miscellany News, 39(7):3, November 3. mundo andino. Hispanic American Historical
Neira, Hugo Review 56(3):472-473.
2006 Hugo Neira comenta la trayectora de John Brading, David
Murra. Presencia Cultural, Televisión Nacional 1981 From the Peasant’s Point of View. Review of
del Perú. Economic Organization of the Inca State. The Times
http:/www.presenciacultural.com/blog/index. Literary Supplement, August 14, p. 938 .
php?s=Murra&submit= Caballero, Antonio
(Consulted 4 June 2009). 1987 La tragedia (ilustrada) de la conquista. Review of
Raczynski, Christiane Nueva corónica y buen gobierno. Cambio 16, May
1995 John Murra: Conquistado por los Andes. El 5, pp. 144-145.
Comercio, E24, 29 October (Lima). Cahill, David
Redfield, Robert and Fay-Cooper Cole 1990 History and Anthropology in the Study of An-
1947 ‘Case’ Against Murra. Letter to the Sun, January dean Societies. Review of Anthropological History
(Chicago, Illinois). of Andean Politics, edited by John Victor Murra,
Salomon, Frank Nathan Wachtel, and Jacques Revel, among
2007 John Victor Murra (1916-2006). American Anth- other books. Bulletin of Latin American Research
ropologist 109(4):793-795. 9(1):123-132.
Vásquez Aliaga, José Carter, William
1970 John Murra: Agudo peruanista. La Prensa, Sep- 1965 Review of Visita hecha a la provincia de Chucuito
tember 5 (Lima). por Garci Diez de San Miguel en el año 1567.
Vega, Roberto American Anthropologist n.s. 67(5), part 1:1327-
1983 Un maestro de la historia del Tawantinsuyu. 1328.
Tiempo Argentino, 30 May, p. 7. Dwyer, Edward B.
Wachtel, Nathan 1976 Review of Formaciones económicas y políticas del
1973 La reciprocidad y el Estado Inca: De Karl Polanyi a mundo andino. Ethnohistory 23(1):70-71.
John V. Murra. Lima: Publisher Unknown. Elliott, J. H.
Wakefield, Dan 1973 Review of Visita de la Provincia de León de
1959 The Other Puerto Ricans: Headlines Have Ob- Huánuco en 1562, Volume 1 by Iñigo Ortiz de
scured the Fight that Most Must Make Against Zúñiga. Journal of Latin American Studies
Slum Living and Intolerance. The New York 5(2):321.
Times Sunday Magazine, October 11, pp. 24, 25, Escajadillo, Tomás
82-85. 1996 Reveladoras cartas. Review of Las cartas de
Zahner, Barbara Arguedas, edited by John Victor Murra and Mer-
1950 Profile Mr. Murra. Vassar Miscellany News, cedes López-Baralt. Debate 18(91):63 (Perú).
October 18, 35(4):3, 5. Faron, Louis C.
1965 Review of Visita hecha a la provincia de Chucuito
REVIEWS OF THE WORKS OF JOHN VICTOR MURRA por Garci Diez de San Miguel en el año 1567.
Ethnohistory 12(3):263-265.
Albó, Xavier 1968 Review of Visita de la Provincia de Leon de
1983 Dos nuevas ediciones completas de Waman Huánuco en 1562, Volume 1 by Iñigo Ortiz de
Puma. Review of El primer nueva corónica y buen Zúñiga. American Anthropologist 70(3):620-621.
gobierno by Guaman Poma de Ayala. Annales 1981 Review of Anthropologie historique des sociétés
E.S.C. 38(3):633-635. andines, edited by Jacques Revel, John Victor
Ballesteros Gaibrois, Manuel Murra, and Nathan Wachtel. Hispanic American
1987 Guaman Poma de Ayala, cronista indio, Review Historical Review 61(1):106-107.
of Nueva corónica y buen gobierno by Guaman Gose, Peter
Poma de Ayala. Historia 16, March, pp. 83-88. 1987 Review of Anthropological History of Andean
Bankes, George Polities edited by John Victor Murra, Nathan
1983 Review of The Economic Organization of the Inca Wachtel, and Jacques Revel. Man n.s.
State. Journal of Latin American Studies 15(1):199- 22(4):762-763.
200. Ganster, Paul
1974 Review of Visita de la provincia de Leon de Huánu-
co en 1562, Volume 2, Visita de los Yacha y
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
Mitmaqkuna cuzqueños encomendados en Juan
Sánchez Falcón by Iñigo Ortiz de Zúñiga. Ameri-
can Anthropologist 76(4):923-924.
Guarisco, Claudia
1992 Nuevo aporte de John Murra: Visita de los valles
de Sonqo. El Peruano, 9 September, pp. 6-7.
Higgins, James
1982 Review of El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno
by Guaman Poma de Ayala. Bulletin of Hispanic
Studies 59:84-85.
Kjonegaard, Vernon
1982 Review of El primer nueva crónica y buen gobierno,
edited by John Victor Murra and Rolena Adorno
with Jorge L. Urioste. New Scholar 8(1, 2):442-
448.
Lavallé, Bernard
1982 Review of El primer nueva crónica y buen gobierno,
edited by John Victor Murra and Rolena Adorno
with Jorge L. Urioste. Bulletin Hispanique 84(1-
2):226-227.
Loza, Carmen Beatriz
1992a Review in Spanish of Visita a los valles de Sonqo
en los yunka de coca de La Paz, 1568-1570. Revista
Andina 10(1):251-252.
1992b Another review in French of Visita a los valles de
Sonqo en los yunka de coca de La Paz, 1568-1570.
Journal de la Société des Américanistes 78(1):158-
161.
Ludeña de la Vega, Guillermo
1985 Review of El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno
by Guaman Poma de Ayala. El Comercio, 20
March (Lima).
Mallku (sic)
1977 Etnohistoria e ideología. Review of Formaciones
económicas y políticas del mundo andino. El Diario,
January 23, p. 10 (Bolivia).
Means, Philip Ainsworth
1944 Review of Survey and Excavation in Southern
Ecuador by Donald Collier and John Victor
Murra. American Anthropologist 9(3):366-367.
Middleton, DeWight R.
1977 Peasantries and Other Topics: South and Meso-
america. Reviews Formaciones económicas y políti-
cas del mundo andino, among other works. Ameri-
can Anthropologist 79(1):98-104.
Millones, Luis
1982 Ethnohistorians and Andean Ethnohistory: A
Difficult Task, a Heterodox Discipline. A book
review article that evaluates La organización
económica del estado inca and Formaciones econó-
micas y políticas del mundo andino, among other
books. Latin American Research Review
17(1):200-216.
- 62
Mitchell, William P.
1988 Review of Etnografía e historia del mundo andino:
Continuidad y cambio, edited by Shozo Masuda
and of Anthropological History of Andean Polities,
edited by John Victor Murra, Nathan Wachtel,
and Jacques Revel. American Anthropologist
90(1):198-199.
Morris, Craig
1979 Review of La organización del estado Inca. Ameri-
can Anthropologist 81(4):922-924.
Moseley, Michael E.
1987 Review of Anthropological History of Andean
Polities, edited by John Victor Murra, Nathan
Wachtel, and Jacques Revel. Hispanic American
Historical Review 67(4):699-700.
Ortega, Julio
1981 Review of El primer nueva crónica y buen gobierno,
edited by John Victor Murra and Rolena Adorno
with Jorge L. Urioste. Vuelta 5(58):35-37.
Ossio, Juan M.
2001 Guaman Poma en Internet. Review of El primer
nueva corónica y buen gobierno (GKS 22324o) El
Comercio, El Dominical, 3 June (Lima) .
Pease, G. Y., Franklin
1973 Las visitas de Huánuco en el siglo XVI: Nuevas
Ediciones. Review of Visita de la Provincia de León
de Huánuco en 1562 by Ortiz de Zuniga. El
Comercio, El Dominical, 4 February (Lima).
Peters, Ann H., and Calogero Santoro
2004 Reviews of El mundo andino: Población, medio am-
biente, y economía. Chungará 36(1):241-245.
Schaedel, Richard P.
1968 Review of Visita hecha a la provincia de Chucuito
por Garci Diez de San Miguel en el año 1567. Chu-
cuito. Hispanic American Historical Review
48(2):290-292.
1969 Review of Visita de la Provincia de León de Huánu-
co en 1562. by Iñigo Ortiz de Zúñiga. Hispanic
American Historical Review 49(3):542-544.
1977 Review of Formaciones económicas y políticas del
mundo andino. Hispanic American Historical
Review 42(1):129-131.
Silverblatt, Irene
1989 Review of Anthropological History of Andean
Polities, edited by John Victor Murra, Nathan
Wachtel, and Jacques Revel. American Ethnolo-
gist 16(2):400-401.
Spector, Ivan
1952 Review of The Soviet Linguistic Controversy by
John Victor Murra, Robert M. Hankin, and Fred
Holling, among other works. American Slavic and
East European Review 11(1):82-83.
Villamarin, Juan A.
1989 Review of Anthropological History of Andean
Politics, edited by John Victor Murra, Nathan
63 - Block and Barnes: John V. Murra

Wachtel, and Jacques Revel. Ethnohistory

36(2):204-206.
2005 Review of Historia General de América Latina,
Volume 1, Los sociedades originarias, edited by
Teresa Rojas Rabiela and John Victor Murra.
Hispanic American Historical Review 85(3):499-
500.
Weinberg, Gregorio
1982 Crónica, alegato y utopía, review of El primer
nueva corónica y buen gobierno by Guaman Poma
de Ayala. La Nación, 14 February, pp. 2-3,
(Buenos Aires); also published in El Comercio 20
March, 1985 (Lima).
Willey, Gordon R.
1944 Review of Survey and Excavations in Southern
Ecuador by Donald Collier and John Victor
Murra. American Anthropologist 46(1, part
1):129-131. Reconstruction of Huánuco Pampa as directed by
Zuidema, R. Tom John Victor Murra and Gordon Hadden (1966). Photo
1982 Review of El primer nueva crónica y buen gobierno, courtesy of the Anthropology Division,
edited by John V. Murra and Rolena Adorno American Museum of Natural History.
with Jorge L. Urioste. Latin American Indian
Literatures 6(2):126-132.

Bibliography compiled by David Block, Bibliographer,

Benson Latin American Collection,
University of Texas at Austin
and Monica Barnes

29 October 2009
 JOHN VICTOR MURRA: A MENTOR TO WOMEN

John Victor Murra in his official portrait as the first National Science Foundation
Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution (1966-67)

INTRODUCTION what it means to have been his student and

Heather Lechtman
and Freda Yancy Wolf de Romero
In considering a contribution to the special
section of Andean Past 9 that honors John
Murra and that documents an historic era in
Andean anthropology, both of us agreed that a
unique contribution should come from women
who were students and colleagues of John
Murra. The most accurate and honest way to
document the strong support and unwavering
commitment Murra gave to women at various
stages in their intellectual and professional lives
was to ask them to write their own versions of
colleague and to have been mentored by him.
We contacted a few women–there are many
more–from North and South America and
asked each to comment on the ways in which
Murra affected her development and maturation
as an anthropologist. We added our own
perspectives. It is remarkable to see the
similarities in these accounts, not having
consulted with each other. As Freda notes,
“How quickly we recognized him, and perhaps
he us.” Some of the women whose texts appear
here were students of John Murra. All of us
were his colleagues.

ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009): 65-85.

ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
ANTHROPOLOGY IS MY VILLAGE
HEATHER LECHTMAN
Cambridge, Massachusetts
The Andean achievement is to combine such
very different things into a single system.
There is a tendency in the social and human
sciences to diminish differences. Then there is
the other stance, which is mine, that wants to
emphasize, to the point of exaggeration, the
Andean achievement, the effort it took to
combine all of that. Anthropology is the
science of differences, whereas science in
general is the systematic knowledge of
uniformities. But ours, no. Ours is a paean to
difference.1
(John Murra, in Castro et al. 2000:140-142.
Translation by the author)
I knew John Murra for 54 years. We met in
1952, when he was a new lecturer in
anthropology at Vassar College and I was a
sixteen year old freshwoman determined to
study physics there. During those 54 years I
would say that the two most consequential and
persistent identities he allowed himself were as
a soldier in the International Brigades of the
Spanish Civil War and as an anthropologist.
Murra refused to be consigned to any
category, a social tendency in the U.S. that he
hated. Born in Russia, he was no Russian, nor
did he consider himself Romanian, though he
left Romania for the United States at the age of
seventeen. He did not want or need a
nationality. When abroad he might respond
1
El logro de lo andino es combinar en un solo sistema
cosas tan distintas. Es que hay una tendencia en las
ciencias sociales y humanas a reducir diferencias. Y hay la
otra posición, que es la mía, de querer enfatizar y hasta
exagerar el logro, el esfuerzo que toma combinar todo esto.
La Antropología es la ciencia de las Diferencias. Mientras
que la ciencia en general, es la ciencia de Uniformidades.
Y lo nuestro no. Lo nuestro es un canto de la diferencia.
- 66
when questioned that he was from North
America. By his east European upbringing he
was culturally very much a Jew, but he avoided
any affiliations, personal, political, or otherwise
with Jews that might have been founded on a
sense of shared roots.
Murra was a soldier in the international
army that helped the people of Spain fight
against fascism. The only identity card he
carried with him and curated protectively
throughout his life was his Livret Militaire, issued
on 14 April 1937 by the Ministerio de Defensa
Nacional, República Española, Brigadas Interna-
cionales, Ejército de Tierra. For political party,
the ministerio entered “Antifascist”. For
profession, “Student of Archaeology”. By 15
May 1938 the carnet registers Murra as
Squadron Leader in the 15th Brigade. I have
Murra’s International Brigade carnet and will
deliver it to the Archive of the Abraham
Lincoln Brigade, located at the Tamiment
Library, New York University.
However, it is his identity as an
anthropologist that Murra’s students
experienced and that most of us appropriated.
For Murra, anthropology was a way of life, an
attitude by which one could relate to, capture
the peopled world, and recognize the
multiplicity of solutions humans devised to
manage that world. In his several day interview
with his Chilean colleagues–Victoria Castro,
Carlos Aldunate, and Jorge Hidalgo (2000)–he
makes his position clear. Ever since he
discovered anthropology at the age of eighteen,
in Radcliffe-Brown’s2 classes at the University of
Chicago, his concerns both as a social scientist
and as a political actor on this planet remained
anthropological concerns. He declared himself
an anthropologist, first and foremost, because he
was interested in and invested in an alternative
to the world in which we live presently. If there
2
For Radcliffe-Brown see Barnes, this volume, note 8.
67 -
were no interest in human diversity, there would
be no anthropology (2000:75).
When I studied at Vassar, from 1952 to
1956, there was one constant theme he
drummed into us, regardless of the subject
matter of the course: the existence and
continuity of cultural differences. Murra’s eye
was always on the multiplicity and adaptability
of solutions to what is essentially the human
social condition. The responsibility of
anthropology was to discover, to broadcast, and
to champion human social and cultural
diversity. That responsibility was not only his,
he made it ours. He insisted that the
fundamental contributions anthropology made
to social science were the concept of culture and
the methodology of field-work.
During my Vassar years Murra did not offer
classes on the Andean world. After his legal
battle in the federal courts to be accorded U.S.
citizenship, which he won in 1950, the
government still denied him a passport. He was
unable to travel to the Andes until 1956 when
his passport was issued. Instead, Murra taught
about African societies, especially because he
was seriously involved in the political viabilities
of newly established nations, such as Ghana and
Nigeria. He taught about the Nuer and the
indigenous peoples of the North American
Plains. We learned about culture.
But there was something else I recognized in
Murra, long after having graduated from Vassar,
that influenced my own intellectual trajectory
profoundly. He was as interested in and excited
by new approaches, uncommon methods by
which to represent human diversity as in
diversity itself. We all consider Murra an ethno-
historian. But he defined ethnohistory in his
own terms: “By ethnohistory I mean that I am
going to excavate but I am also going to read
documents” (2000:80). It was that new
combination of methodological approaches that
John V. Murra: A Mentor to Women
characterized his structuring of the Huánuco
Viejo project in 1958. Archaeology and history
were of a piece for Murra. He was unwilling to
draw firm distinctions, to construct boundaries
between them.
I had met Murra in New York briefly in
1952, one month before beginning college. I
decided to enroll in one of his anthropology
classes. I wound up taking every anthropology
course he and Helen Codere3 taught at Vassar
and graduated with a double major, in physics
and anthropology. My entire career has involved
an effort to mesh the two fields, to contribute to
anthropology from a platform built upon the
physical and engineering sciences.
Murra never tried to dissuade me from
studying physics, nor did he exert pressure to
focus my energies and interests solely on
anthropology. He described himself as
“interstitial”, as operating between systems
rather than wholly within them. He understood
what it took me decades to realize, that being
interstitial locates one at interfaces, which is
where the action is. In his own way he let me
know that it was O.K. to be an interstitial. His
goal was to discern and present cultural diversity
through the mechanisms of anthropology. Those
goals became mine. I understood that I might
approach them with tools that could become
tools of anthropology. Developing the tools was
my responsibility. It was a responsibility that
could stand as my reciprocal exchange with
Murra–student to teacher.
I did not continue with graduate school in
cultural anthropology or in archaeology. Yet my
materials engineering research that is focused on
Andean prehistoric production technologies has
been guided by a concern for identifying the
culture of technologies. What was Andean
about Andean metallurgy, and how and why did
3
For Codere see Barnes, this volume, note 42.
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009) - 68

it differ from metallurgies that developed in When I introduce students to my graduate,

equally sophisticated ways in other ancient
social settings? Ultimately my Andean studies
led me to propose not only that technologies are
culture bearing and culture producing systems,
but that they may represent and display ethno-
categories by which people order experience.
Ethnocategories are rendered through
technological behavior just as they are rendered
linguistically. The utility of a materials-
archaeological approach, of focusing on what
and how people do rather than on what and how
they say, is that it confines us to detailed
scrutiny of materials and their relationships in
practice. Ethnocategories arise from patterns of
technological practice, whether or not those
patterns are labeled linguistically (Lechtman
1999: 223, 230).
two semester seminar and laboratory classes in
the materials science of material culture, I begin
my remarks by assuring them that the class in
which they are enrolled is not a class in
laboratory analytical procedures, nor is it a “how
to” class. It is an anthropology class.
Murra hated when North Americans asked
him what he did. I learned to hate the question
too. Usually I respond that I am a New Yorker.
Only when pressed by those I admire do I reply,
“I am an anthropologist.” Murra often declared,
“Anthropology is my village.” What he gave
me–what he gave to all his students–was his
village.
REFERENCES CITED

Castro, Victoria, Carlos Aldunate, Jorge Hidalgo, editors

For Murra it was much more than O.K. for
me to be interstitial. It was important, and with
time we both understood his ease with respect
to my dual professional education and his
support for the ways in which my contributions
to anthropology were expressed. His support
helped me focus, and it surprised neither of us
that my focus aimed at discerning cultural
features of Andean technological behavior.
2000 Nispa Ninchis: Decimos Diciendo, Conversaciones
con John Murra. Lima: Instituto de Estudios
Peruanos and New York: Institute of Andean
Research.
Lechtman, Heather
1999 Afterword. In The Social Dynamics of Technology,
edited by Marcia-Anne Dobres and Christopher
R. Hoffman, pp. 223-232. Washington, D.C.:
Smithsonian Institution Press.

John Victor Murra (second from viewer’s left) wearing two academic decorations presented to him on his 82nd
birthday, August 24, 1998, by the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos and the Universidad Nacional
San Antonio Abad del Cusco. Seated outside the Centro Cultural de San Marcos (La Casona) are, from left to
right, AnaMaría Soldi, John Murra, Heather Lechtman, and Freda Wolf (photo: courtesy of Heather Lechtman).
69 -
MENTORS AS INTELLECTUAL PARENTS
FREDA YANCY WOLF DE ROMERO
Lima, Peru
Death ends a life. But it does not end a
relationship (Robert Anderson, I Never
Sang for My Father, 1966)
The personal relationship one has with a
mentor or intellectual father or mother is often
ignored. It is important to recognize that such
relationships are significant in academic
disciplines, as they are in life in general, and are
very much part of what graduate schools advo-
cate as scholars learning from scholars. Just as
we feel some aspects of our childhood and
family relationships were “good” or “bad” and
these perceptions consciously or unconsciously
affect how we relate to the world, they also exist
in our professional and intellectual lives and
what we want to accomplish and pass on, trying
to improve or equal what we received from
others. Teachers are important all through life
to help fill the gaps and empty spaces in our
experience and early family life.
I met John Murra in the spring of 1963 at
the American Ethnological Society meeting at
Cornell University. I was 20 and a sophomore at
Barnard about to go to Mexico for a first field
experience with Gary Martin, a student of
Murra and Sidney Mintz1 at Yale, who was
giving a paper in the Elsie Clews Parsons2 essay
1
For Mintz see Barnes, this volume, note 60.
2
Elsie Clews Parsons (1875-1941) received her doctorate
in sociology from Columbia University (1899). She was a
founder of the New School for Social Research and of the
American School of Research, the first female president of
the American Anthropological Association, and president
of the American Ethnological Society. For over twenty
years she was an associate of the Journal of American
Folklore. Her publications include The Social Organization
of the Tewa of New Mexico (1929), Hopi and Zuni Cere-
monialism (1933), Pueblo Indian Religion (1939), and Mitla:
John V. Murra: A Mentor to Women
competition. Murra, at that point, was about to
begin the Huánuco Project, about which he
spoke at the AES meetings. Murra, Martin, and
I drove from Ithaca back to New York City
together. It was a magical trip. Murra was in his
element. He was a terrific actor with a dynamic
stage presence who found his best voice when
he was in front of an audience, so he was in
excellent form in the afterglow from the AES
meetings. He also loved nothing better than a
young audience who hung on his every word,
which we certainly did. In addition to giving us
insightful advice about our upcoming field
experience and Mexico, he told us about the
forthcoming multidisciplinary Huánuco project–
encompassing ethnohistory, archaeology,
ethnobotany, and ethnology. He talked about
the Huánuco visita (Ortiz 1967 [1562]) and
about Peru and psychoanalysis and made me see
the world in a way I had never seen it before. I
had also never met a 46 year old man who was
so alive and open to change.
I had already recognized I was an anthro-
pologist, which is not something you choose, but
something you discover about yourself. When I
heard my first lecture in physical anthropology
as a freshman, I could finally put a name to what
I knew I was, even though I also knew it was not
physical anthropology that I wanted to do.
Courses in other disciplines just seemed to be
bad anthropology, and I graduated from Barnard
with more than double the number of credits I
needed for the major.
I served an apprenticeship with Murra on
and off for several years, and in exchange I was
his assistant. My own father died when I was a
child and my experience with John patched over
Town of the Souls (1936). Every other year the American
Ethnological Society awards the Elsie Clews Parsons prize
for a graduate student paper. Her obituary by Leslie Spier
and A.L. Kroeber appeared in a 1943 number of the
American Anthropologist.
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
some of the paternal gap. I think of Murra as my
intellectual father. I acted as a sounding board
for him and helped him write, which was not a
simple task. This was partly because English,
which he spoke very well, was not his mother
tongue, but mostly because it was very hard for
him to just spill out all the information he had
worked so hard to glean and understand, so that
just anybody could read it, and besides,
somebody might say he was wrong. This last is
really more realistic than paranoid, because in
anthropology there is almost nothing one can
say about a culture and even less about culture
or cultures in general that is not controversial.
He also wrote better when he had someone to
accompany him, argue with him, to rejoice with
him at those “eureka” moments, and to blame
when he was lit up by a possible connection
which didn’t pan out. He told me he could only
write with Karl Reisman,3 Irving Goldman4 and
me. I never met the other two so cannot
generalize.
We do not always choose what we learn
from our mentors and our teachers. Murra once
3
Karl Reisman earned a Ph.D. in social anthropology
with a speciality in anthropological linguistics. He has
published articles on aspects of the language and culture
of the West Indies and of Africa.
4
Irving Goldman (1911-2002) was one of Franz Boas’ last
students. A life-long resident of Brooklyn, he was John
Murra’s neighbor for a time. From 1936 to 1942 he was a
member of the Communist Party. Goldman did field-work
with the Modoc of Oregon (1934), with the Alkatcho
Carrier of British Columbia (1935-36), and with the
Cubeo of the Amazon (1939), as well as library research
on other groups. He was interested in issues of culture
change and political evolution, often re-interpreting
anthropological works. Among his publications are The
Cubeo: Indians of the Northwest Amazon (1963); Ancient
Polynesian Society (1970), an analysis of the region’s status
systems, and The Mouth of Heaven (1975), on the Kwa-
kiutl (now designated the Kwakwaka'wakw). From 1949
to 1980 he taught at Sarah Lawrence College. An obituary
of Goldman by Paula Rubel and Abraham Rosman ap-
peared in the December 2003 issue of American Anthropol-
ogist.
- 70
remarked he learned how to answer the phone
from Robert Redfield,5 to whom I think he was
an assistant in the Chicago days. An
anthropologist he held in great esteem was Ruth
Benedict,6 with whom he had also worked in the
early days. I think because of his own difficulties
in liberating himself, he tried to help women to
liberate themselves. In 1964, he gave me Doris
Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, now a feminist
classic, but at the time the novel had only been
published a couple of years before. He very
much approved of people creating themselves
and changing their names to fit the new person
they had become; he favored psychoanalysis. He
had particular sympathy for women. I think he
was especially sensitive to and intrigued by
women because mothering was the largest gap in
his own childhood. He especially sympathized
with prom queens, lonely, shy intellectuals, and
nuns, and others who felt trapped by what other
people expected of them. He accepted you as
you were, was supportive of what you wanted to
do, and very good about helping you find where
it fit the larger anthropological picture, and
finding ways of doing it.
Murra always took women seriously, treating
us with an intellectual respect I had not always
found at Barnard, and in the beginning I was
very young and knew virtually nothing about
the Andes. He emphasized the importance of
field-work, and of knowing the people well
where you were doing field-work. This included
not only the people whose culture you were
studying, but also local intellectuals. It was
essential to participate in the culture of
anthropology in the country where you did
research, and to maintain long-term
relationships (read lifetime commitments) both
with colleagues and informants. You could not
ever really know the culture unless you spoke
5
For Redfield see Barnes, this volume, note 11.
6
For Benedict see Barnes, this volume, note 32.
71 -
the local indigenous language as well as the
national language, in the latter case, well
enough to perform professional acts such as
giving papers, publishing results, teaching,
attending professional meetings, and
participating in, or helping form, the discipline
of anthropology in the country where you did
research. It was the way to protect
anthropology, not to mention the fact that we
will never have a true anthropology until we
have anthropologists of all different cultural
backgrounds. He believed in anthropology for its
importance to the informants themselves, who
were always the people who had a vested
interest in their own culture and history. One of
his favorite examples was how important Ruth
Landes’ work with the Mdewakantonwan
Santee (called by others the Mystic Lake Sioux)
was to the Santee themselves, when years after
her field-work they realized they had lost a lot of
their culture and were trying to retrieve it. He
was always aware of the importance of trying to
find out as much as possible about the Andean
past because it was important to Andean people
to know their own past, to be able to shape an
authentic identity of their own. Andean peoples
have only recently begun to have even limited
space in the history books used in their national
schools.
My own ethnohistorical work was with the
sixteenth and early seventeenth century Ay-
mara and Quechua dictionaries, grammar books,
and manuals written by Catholic priests as aids
in their proselytization efforts. I did a study of
Aymara kinship based on the terminology and
information found in these sources, kinship
being a particular concern of the church. In Juli
on Lake Titicaca, I copied and photographed
about eighty parish books recording births,
deaths, and baptisms, all in the European system
but with the occasional Andean detail that
made it all worthwhile, especially because most
of the early books are organized in terms of
Andean ayllus from 1621 until roughly the time
John V. Murra: A Mentor to Women
of independence (1821). Searching Catholic
parish records from the former Lupaqa kingdom
to study Aymara social organization historically
was, of course, very much in the Murra
tradition. I even found a baptism book in one of
the coastal valleys where the Lupaqa had
“islands” of resources where they cultivated
crops that couldn’t be grown in their altiplano
kingdom. In the 1670s their descendants were
still in the coastal valley and still claiming
membership in the ayllus located up above in
the seven divisions of the Lupaqa kingdom. In
addition to the usual participation in
anthropology and ethnohistory meetings in
Lima and Cusco, I taught an anthropology
course to young people from rural zones around
Puno as part of a teacher training course in a
normal school in Puno, and participated with
international development teams in writing new
bilingual textbooks in Aymara-Spanish and in
Quechua-Spanish, teaching them anthropology,
and suggesting chapters on local themes such as
planting, harvesting, and fiestas.
It is sometimes surprising to realize what we
have internalized from our mentors and
intellectual fathers and mothers, the parts of
them that live within us. I think I trained in
psychoanalytic psychotherapy largely due to
Murra’s indirect influence, and, although my
interest began with cultural anthropology and
ethnohistory, it moved toward the interface of
culture and psychology. While I did not follow
an academic career, Murra greatly influenced
the work I did in ethnohistory, my writing, work
with patients, and also my personal and family
life. Having married into a Peruvian family and
raising children in Peru, keeping or regaining a
cultural perspective certainly saved my sanity on
more than one occasion. Murra looked upon
everything as anthropology and was often
frustrated by his departmental colleagues in the
universities in which he taught because they
didn’t apply anthropology to themselves or the
world around them. In the case of women
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
Murra recognized the huge difference women’s
reproductive cycle and child-rearing activities,
as well as their culturally ascribed roles, make in
their professional lives, and was good at
considering individual strategies in working with
these differences, as well as building on the
peculiarities of personal backgrounds. He also
recognized the value of the motherhood
experience. I once commented to Murra about
the differences between the conversations of
groups of women and those of groups of men.
He looked thoughtful, and said, “But at least the
women talk about real things.”
Murra was complex, conflictive, brilliant,
and an anthropologists’ anthropologist. He was
true to anthropology and his friends, though
often nicer behind your back than to your face.
Anthropology was not just his profession or his
discipline, it really was his village, although it
stretched over the globe, and particularly in
Europe, the United States, and Latin America,
he had friends who cared deeply about him.
Anthropology is where he lived, it is what he
loved, what he defended. He left us a rich legacy
which is internalized within us as much as it
exists on library shelves and has become an
integral part of our vision of the Andean world
and anthropology. He never tried to persuade or
dissuade us that we could or could not do
anything as women, he always assumed we
could. And thank heaven, he did not make
being married a requirement for women to be
able to go into the field as Boas did with his very
famous women students Ruth Benedict, Ruth
Landes,7 and Margaret Mead.8
7
Ruth Landes (1908-1991) did field-work among the
Objibwa, the Dakota, and the Potawatomi, obtaining a
doctorate in 1935. On this basis she published Ojibwa
Sociology (1937), Ojibwa Woman (1938), Ojibwa Religion
and the Midéwiwin (1968), and The Mystic Lake Sioux
(1968). Landes pioneered the study of race and gender
relations, interests reflected in her study of candomblé, an
Afro-Brazilian religion (City of Women 1947). Landes had
strong interests in Afro-American, Jewish, Mexican, and
- 72
AN EXTRAORDINARY TEACHER
WHO TAUGHT ALL THE TIME
PATRICIA NETHERLY
Nashville, Tennessee
I have always felt privileged to have had the
opportunity to train under John Murra. That
this opportunity came my way was largely his
doing. We met in 1966, at a seminar at la
Católica, a university in Lima where I was
studying in the doctoral program in history.
John was just finishing the Huánuco Project and
still had research materials to hand. He sat me
down to practice paleography on a microfilmed
roll of notarial documents–all in letra cadinilla–
which in the hands of sixteenth century
notaries’ clerks became a kind of shorthand. I
could not make much progress, but my
perseverance was sufficient to earn me an
invitation to apply to Cornell for graduate work.
John Murra was an extraordinary teacher,
and he taught all the time. The first semester of
graduate school began the summer before with
an intensive Quechua course where John was
one of the students. He believed that knowing
this language was indispensable for a full
understanding of Andean culture in the present,
and in the past. To an unusual degree, John
directed his teaching toward students and
scholars from the Andean region. That first
semester we met twice a week with the late
César Fonseca Martel, who had carried out
ethnographic research as part of the Huánuco
project. César was attempting to map out the
meaning of the term ayllu. None of us knew at
the start exactly where the full meaning lay, but
John kept asking questions with exquisite
patience until the moment arrived when the
Louisiana Acadian cultures. Her biography, Ruth Landes:
A Life in Anthropology is by Sally Cooper Cole (2002).
8
For Mead see Barnes, this volume, note 33.
73 -
breakthrough in understanding finally came to
César and to us all.
Above all, the lesson and the legacy which
infused John’s work were his profound respect
for, and understanding of, the peoples of the
Andes and their achievements. He celebrated
their mastery of a harsh and exacting
environment and the skills they demonstrated in
farming, herding, water management, and
weaving. Beyond the study of living people,
Murra looked to colonial administrative records,
particularly the visitas, or official inspection
tours, where local leaders sought to explain their
culture to the Spaniards. His honesty and rigor
in the use of these materials can be seen in the
way he laid out the words of Andean people in
full quotation. His careful editions of colonial
visitas and other documents, which he
encouraged his former students and colleagues
to publish, are his achievement and his enduring
memorial to the creators of Andean civilization.
I had originally trained as an historian.
Studying in Peru had opened the possibility of
combining archaeology and linguistics with
history in the study of the past, but I had a very
hazy idea of anthropology and ethnohistory
when I began to work with John Murra as a
graduate student. In truth, I was a bit more
ecumenical than he was comfortable with.
However, one of Murra’s sterling virtues as a
graduate adviser was that while he insisted that
you do something in a particular way, he did not
stand in the way of your doing it. It is hard for
bright women to realize their potential. I didn’t
go to graduate school in the United States until
after I had “discovered” or been “discovered by”
John Murra. It probably would be better to say
recognized: we mutually recognized each other.
John was remarkably patient with the travails of
balancing career and family and was always kind
to my children in an Old World avuncular way.
This goes way beyond the formal academic
John V. Murra: A Mentor to Women
relationship and is a credit to his extraordinary
humanity.
KICKING OFF A NEW PERSPECTIVE IN
ETHNOHISTORY
ANA MARÍA LORANDI
Buenos Aires, Argentina
I had the opportunity to get to know John
Victor Murra, and to speak with him
extensively, during a rock art conference which
took place in Huánuco, Peru in 1967. At that
time I was conducting archaeological research in
northwestern Argentina and had a general
background in the Andean world. The date is
very significant because, during these years,
Murra was kicking off a new perspective in
ethnohistory, approaching colonial sources with
the eye of an anthropologist. Murra had been
working on the interdisciplinary project of
Huánuco Pampa and had analyzed the earliest
visitas (colonial inspection tour reports). On this
occasion he presented his model of “vertical
control of ecological niches”, or “archipelagos”
as he later called them. Along with other
congress participants we made an excursion to
the great Inca tambo, and, without any doubt,
this first direct contact with Tawantinsuyu,
guided by Murra’s fascinating discourse, was the
first change in direction of my professional
career.
From this moment we remained in contact
and my research, as well as the courses I offered
at the Universidad de la Plata, reflected the
interdisciplinary perspective which Murra
promoted. A short time later I prepared an
article in which I analyzed and compared
various models, presenting a global focus on
social interaction in the Andean world from the
double perspective of archaeology and ethno-
history (Lorandi 1977). These frameworks were
Murra’s model of vertical control (Murra 1972),
Augusto Cardich’s study of the upper limits of
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
cultivation (Cardich 1975), and the Huari y Lla-
cuaz article by Pierre Duviols (Duviols 1973), an
exploration of the prehispanic dual organization
of farmers and herders. In the original work I
also incorporated an analysis of María Rostwo-
rowski’s coastal dynamics (Rostworowski 1974),
but because of problems with length I had to
eliminate it. Murra really appreciated my
analytic approach. When, in 1971, I visited him
in New York and accompanied him to Yale
University where he taught at that time, he
encouraged me to disseminate my work. It was
subsequently published in France (Lorandi
1978) and in England (Lorandi 1986) as a
synthesis. On this trip to the United States, on
his advice, and through the contacts he gave
me, I visited the Universities of Illinois and
Michigan and gave seminars in those places.
In the following years, even though I
continued with my archaeological research in
Argentina, I kept abreast with developments in
ethnohistory, and each encounter with Murra at
different congresses, plus our frequent exchange
of letters, increased my interest in the subject.
However, the years I lived in Paris, 1976 to
1979, plus earlier visits, were decisive and
produced a substantial change in the course of
my professional career. I offered seminars at the
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales,
but, more importantly, I attended those offered
by Nathan Wachtel1 and his group in which, in
1978, John Murra also participated. Murra’s
pioneering teaching was the central axis of the
themes tackled.
1
Editors’ note: Nathan Wachtel is Professor of History and
the Anthropology of South and Meso-American Societies
at the Collège de France and Director of Studies at the
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Among his
published works are Vision des vaincus: Les indien du Pérou
devant la conquêt espagnole (1971), Anthropologie historique
des sociétés andines (edited with Jacques Revel and John V.
Murra, 1978), and Dieux et vampires: Retour à Chipaya
(1992).
- 74
When I returned to Argentina in 1980, I
began my first ethnohistorical research and
progressively I abandoned archaeology. In 1984
the Universidad de Buenos Aires offered me the
directorship of the Instituto de Ciencias
Anthropológicas of the Faculty of Philosophy
and Letters. The following year I founded the
Ethnohistory Section within the Institute. From
then on I could dedicate myself completely to
developing this discipline which lacked up-to-
date specialists in Argentina. I devoted myself to
research, but above all, to training new students
who incorporated John Murra’s teaching into a
core understanding of the Andean world. Murra
visited us in 1982 and in 1988 and participated
in the First Congress of Ethnohistory (Primer
Congreso de Etnohistoria) which I organized in
Buenos Aires in 1989, an occasion on which he
was paid a special tribute.
Murra was my tie to the academic world
outside my country. Frequently I met foreign
specialists who, when I presented myself,
immediately told me, “Ah. John Murra has
spoken to me very favorably of you!” I always
had the feeling that he had been the promoter
of my professional career, but, above all, that he
had made a substantial change in my life. I
recognize that I embraced ethnohistory with
much greater passion than archaeology, perhaps
because my original education in history allowed
me to involve myself in a more humanistic
manner with Andean society which, even
though modified by the long colonial process,
still retains the cultural pattern which Murra
identified as the essence of “lo andino”or
Andean-ness.
In personal terms I can say that in ethno-
history I found my place in the world, not only
with the subjects I researched, but also through
the chance to educate students, and to develop
the discipline in my country. Without John
Victor Murra my life would have been different.
It was my good fortune that we met on life’s
75 -
road when I was just 31 years old and could re-
orientate myself thanks to this great teacher of
teachers.
Translated from the Spanish by Monica Barnes
REFERENCES CITED
Cardich, Augusto
1975 Agricultores y pastores en Lauricocha y límites
superiores del cultivo. Revista del Museo Nacional
41:11-36 (Lima).
Duviols, Pierre
1973 Huari y Llacuaz: Agricultores y pastores: Un
dualismo prehispánico de oposición y comple-
mentariedad. Revista de Museo Nacional 39: 95-
117 (Lima).
Lorandi, Ana María
1977 Arqueología y etnohistoria: Hacia una visión
totalizadora del Mundo Andino. In Obra del
centenario del Museo de La Plata, Volume 2, pp.
27-50. La Plata, Argentina: Facultad de Ciencias
Naturales y Museo.
1978 Les horizons andines: Critique d’un modèle.
Annales: Economie, Societé, Civilization 33(5-
6):921-926. Special issue edited by Jacques
Revel, John Victor Murra, and Nathan Wachtel.
1986 Horizons in Andean Archaeology. In Anthro-
pological History of Andean Polities, edited by John
Victor Murra, Nathan Wachtel, and Jacques
Revel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
and Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de
l’Homme.
Murra, John Victor
1972 El Control vertical de un máximo de pisos ecoló-
gicos en la economía de las sociedades andinas.
In Visita de la provincia de León de Huánuco en
1562 by Iñigo Ortiz de Zúñiga, edited by John V.
Murra, Volume 2, Visita de los Yacha y mitmaq-
kuna cuzqueños encomendados en Juan Sanchez
Falcon, transcribed by Felipe Márquez Abanto,
pp. 427-476. Huánuco, Perú: Universidad Na-
cional Hermilio Valdizán, Facultad de Letras y
Educación, Series Documentos para la Historia
y Etnología de Huánuco y la Selva Central.
Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, María
1974 Pescadores, artesanos y mercaderes costeños en
el Perú prehispánico. Revista del Museo Nacional
41:311-349.
John V. Murra: A Mentor to Women
THE ABILITY TO BESTOW CONFIDENCE AND
STIMULATE NEW IDEAS
VICTORIA CASTRO
Santiago de Chile
No one can doubt John Murra’s ability to
bestow confidence and stimulate new ideas
among his students. The notable thing about
this surprising relationship is that he never
discriminated in this form of instruction
between men and women. He simply
appreciated the modesty, talent, and honesty of
people.
I first met John Murra in 1971 when I was
an anthropology student. On the occasion of
the Congress of Archaeology we received
visitors at the University of Chile and I was
dazzled by two teachers, John Victor Murra and
Luis Guillermo Lumbreras.1 Both embodied a
dynamic notion of history, and of the Andean
world, for sure. Their commitment to work left
an indelible imprint on me, and also significantly
marked my path in life, as a graduate student, as
a teacher, and as a researcher, up to the present.
The summer school course which John
taught at the University of Chile in January
1984 included an analysis of the possibilities of
the comparative method, the topic of exchange,
the new work of Nathan Wachtel2 in Cocha-
bamba, Bolivia on the collca or storehouses of
the Inca, along with criticism of Murra’s own
work, and the inculcation of the necessity to
study and republish documents continuously.
Among the themes to which he called our
attention was the miracle of the potato,
ethnological advances, and work in native
languages up to and including recent Andean
1
Editors’ note: for Lumbreras, see Barnes, this volume,
note 90.
2
Editors’ note: for Wachtel see Lorandi, note 1.
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
ethno-astronomy, to say nothing of his closest
specialities such as changes in, and the
expansion of, Tawantinsuyu; weavers and
potters; coca fields; and mullu or Spondylus shell.
When I presented him with the proposal for
my master’s thesis, directed by Rolando Mellafe
at the University of Chile he commented to me:
“. . . The thesis project. I will tell you that
the plan of study seems to me to be only a
first approximation . . . But, you also have
to tell yourself that I have never studied
religious phenomena, and I don’t feel
prepared, on one hand, but on the other
hand, the fact is that these themes attract
me. I have had many debates with [Pierre]
Duviols3 on the theme to the point that he
believes that I must occupy myself with it,
an area in which I know very well that I
don’t have any sensibilities and I don’t
touch such themes. I was reared in an
atmosphere in which the anti-clerical
struggle was a fundamental element, and
this has left psychological roots, although
not intellectual ones.
Now I know through the reading of so
many old papers that there was always an
important struggle involving the priests
and friars of the first century and a half of
the colonial occupation . . . I believe that
this isn’t reflected in your project. Even
though we don’t have direct data on the
Andean population, we can focus on the
reflection of what happens in the
ecclesiastical literature” (Murra, personal
communication, 25 February 1986).4
3
Editors’ note: for Duviols see Barnes, this volume, note
54.
4
“. . . el proyecto de tesis. Te diré que el programa me
parece sólo un primer bosquejo. . . Pero también tienes
que darte cuenta que yo nunca he estudiado fenómenos
religiosos, ya que no me siento preparado, por un lado,
- 76
During the course of my research, on a visit
to Santiago, I gave him the work to read, and so
that he could comment upon the first chapter of
this thesis, in which, to some extent, I had
considered his suggestions. Eleven years later he
wrote from Madrid, “Congratulations on having
finished the thesis! And it’s 530 pages!” Who
else could have shared the joy, although I had
delayed eleven years in finishing Huacca
muchay: Evangelización y religión andina en Char-
cas, Atacama colonial (Huaca Worship: Evangeli-
zation and Andean Religion in Charcas, Colonial
Atacama).
At some point I sent him a work on terraces,
a small article in a scientific journal, and he
wrote to me that,
This is a theme which merits a great deal
of attention . . . One of the agreeable
things about Creces is seeing your name as
an author identified with the Universidad
de Chile” (personal communication, 12
May 1988).5
At this time we were still under military
government and any kind of stability was
difficult.
pero por otro el hecho es que me atraen estos temas. Con
Duviols he tenido muchos debates sobre el tema ya que el
cree que yo tengo que ocuparme, donde yo se muy bien
donde no tengo sensibilidad y no toco tales temas. He sido
criado dentro de un ambiente donde la lucha anti-clerical
era elemento fundamental y esto ha dejado raíces
psicológicas aunque no intelectuales.
Ahora sé que la lectura de tantos papeles viejos que
siempre hubo una lucha importante involucrando los
sacerdotes y frailes del primer siglo y medio de la ocupa-
ción colonial–creo que esto no está reflejado en tu proyec-
to. Ya que no tenemos datos directos de la población
andina, tenemos que fijarnos en el reflejo de lo que pasaba
en la literatura eclesiástica.”
5
Es un tema que merece mucha atención. . . una de las
reflexiones agradables de Creces es ver tu nombre como
autora identificado con la Universidad de Chile.
77 -
He never stopped thanking me for so much
care and effort expended on the transcription of
the audio tapes of the interviews which later
gave form to Nispa Ninchis. My fellow editors
Carlos Aldunate and Jorge Hidalgo and I
overwhelmed him with our questions during a
stay which we shared with John for this purpose
in Zapallar, on the Chilean coast. During the
long process of correcting these transcriptions
John demonstrated infinite patience and I, after
a while, learned many things. John’s replies
never ceased surprising us. In personal terms,
like so many of us, in some way he made you a
participant in his decisions and sought your
opinions while relating various situations.
His correspondence provided, at the same
time, lessons on the world and, especially, on
people. He stimulated and pleased with his very
special manner of teaching. However, without
doubt the strongest aspect was the
demonstration that he believed in you and your
work, something which was not merely
intellectual, but also involved you completely as
a human being. Ever since 1983, when he
listened to, and commented on, our work on the
altiplano origins of the Toconce Phase (1300-
1450 A.D.; Castro et al.1984), he showed us his
interest and approval. His opinions created in
me a solid confidence in the work we were
doing, as well as in my intuitions, and, along
with that, a very powerful tie of friendship and
trust.
I will never forget how he spoke about
women he admired. For example he said that
Heather Lechtman was “an extraordinary
person with much imagination” (personal
communication, 1977). This was praise I heard
him deliver in many forms– towards his
extraordinary friend and doctor Lola Hoffman,6
6
Editors’ note: Lola Hoffman (d. 1988) was a psychoana-
lyst who treated both Murra and his friend the Peruvian
novelist, essayist, poet and anthropologist, José María
John V. Murra: A Mentor to Women
and about the affection and loyalty of Freda
Wolf and AnaMaría Soldi.7
Murra solidified my holistic comprehension
of the Andean world, and of history, and gave
me the certainty that by combining the separate
tactics of anthropology, archaeology, ethno-
history, and ethnography one could increase the
enormous complexity of its unique cultural
history.
Translated from the Spanish by Monica Barnes
REFERENCE CITED
Castro, Victoria, Carlos Aldunate, and José Berenguer
1984 Origenes altiplanicos de la fase Toconce. Estudios
Atacameños 7:209-235.
THE GREEN PATCHWORK PAPER
ROLENA ADORNO
New Haven, Connecticut
As I reflect on the role that John Murra
played in the development of my intellectual
and professional academic life, I focus on the
lessons I learned from him as a teacher. Murra
was perhaps the most exciting professor I had in
graduate school, but we got off to a rocky start.
Having decided in 1972 that I wanted to
concentrate on colonial Spanish American
literature as my field of specialization in the
doctoral program in Romance Studies, Spanish,
at Cornell University, I was advised by faculty in
my department to take a course or two on
Andean ethnohistory and civilization from
Professor Murra. So I went to his office at
advising time, taking my turn among the
students lined up to see him. When I introduced
myself and told him that I was interested in
Arguedas.
7
Editors’ note: for AnaMaría Soldi, see Barnes, this
volume, note 67.
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
studying El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, he
glowered down at me and, scowling, asked:
“Why not Guaman Poma?” I shrank back,
shaken, and I did not gather the courage to
return until a semester later. That was the
beginning of a long and productive professional
and personal relationship.
As a teacher, I found John’s passion for the
Andean world to be both daunting and
inspiring. No dilettanti welcomed in his
classroom! When an undergraduate student
(this was a mixed, graduate-undergraduate
seminar that met in the ethereal realms of
McGraw Hall) explained that he would very
much like to go to the Andes for research the
following summer but had no money to do so,
John (glowering again) said, “Well, ask your
parents to refinance their home!” He’d made his
point, and no further whining or shedding of
crocodile tears was tolerated. Typically, John
would storm into the classroom, write the names
and concepts he wanted to discuss on the
blackboard, and dive in. While, according to
today’s demands for mentoring and the like,
John seemed indifferent to students, he was, in
fact, carefully cultivating them, placing before
each one what he thought might reach or direct
his or her interests. It was sheer mastery, and
this practice bespoke the seriousness with which
he engaged his students as well as his subject
matter. Writing papers for his courses always
resulted in his careful, thoughtful readings and
pertinent written comments. When, in the
course of that seminar, I told John about Sebas-
tián de Covarrubias Horozco’s 1611 Tesoro de la
lengua castellana, o española, he immediately and
enthusiastically ordered several photocopies of
the entire out-of-print 1943 edition to make
them available for purchase by his students,
complementing his active use of the Quechua-
Spanish dictionaries of that era. New sources,
new research tools, new questions were greatly
welcomed by him. In all these ways, and many
more, John Murra provided a pedagogical model
- 78
that I still strive to live up to in and outside the
classroom after thirty-plus years of university
teaching.
In Murra’s encouragement of students’ work,
I was one of those on whom he focused, despite
the fact that I was not an anthropologist-in-
training. It was, of course, my literary-studies
work with texts and literary history that he saw
as promising. To stimulate my interest he placed
before me his two-part article in Natural History,
published in 1961, “Guaman Poma de Ayala: A
Seventeenth-Century Indian’s Account of
Andean Civilization” and “The Post-Conquest
Chronicle of the Inca State’s Rise and Fall”, not
to mention the 1936 Paris facsimile edition of
the Nueva corónica y buen gobierno. He showed
me the sheaf of typewritten notes that he had
taken on that work over the years, and this
became the basis for the ethnological index in
our print (1980, 1987) and online (2001, 2004)
editions of Guaman Poma’s manuscript. John
encouraged my reading of the Nueva corónica,
which resulted in my doctoral dissertation, the
title of which described the Nueva corónica as a
“lost chapter in the history of Latin American
letters”. Because I asked other questions than
John did about Guaman Poma’s writing (I was
always interested in what the Andean chronicler
had read, his “library”), John found my thesis
only mildly interesting. Yet, after I completed
my Cornell Ph.D. and was on the faculty of the
Department of Foreign Languages and
Literatures at Syracuse University, John
suggested that I take two particular chapters of
it and make it into an article for publication. It
resulted in “Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala: An
Andean View of the Peruvian Viceroyalty,
1565-1615” published in the Journal de la Société
des Américanistes (1978) which, at least in my
own view, has withstood the test of time.
Its writing was another story, and it is the
last one I will tell here. John and I met
periodically at his McGraw Hall office in Ithaca
79 -
that autumn semester, 1977 (during his famous
Otoño Andino, see Barnes, this volume, p. 39),
as I worked through draft after draft of the
article. It was a difficult essay to write, not only
because I was a novice at academic writing (it
would be my second article), but also, primarily,
because the article had many goals. The
discrete, manageable objective was to set forth
Guaman Poma’s readings of the works of others,
as evidenced in his chronicle, documenting
them as carefully as possible. My breakthrough
was having just discovered, two years post-
dissertation, that Guaman Poma, without
attribution, had quoted and paraphrased Fray
Bartolomé de las Casas’s unpublished “Tratado
de las doce dudas” (1564), which was integral to
the Andean chronicler’s arguments about the
need for Spaniards to obey Andean law (instead
of vice versa) and his formulation of a proposal
to restore Andean sovereignty. My discovery of
Guaman Poma’s unnamed source showed,
among other things, that his nomination of his
son as sovereign prince of “the Indies of Peru”
was not sheer nonsense. It merely updated Las
Casas’s proposal of a half century earlier in
which the Dominican had recommended the
restoration of Inca sovereignty in the person of
Huayna Capac’s grandson, Titu Cussi Yupanqui,
who in 1560, had been the reigning Inca at
Vilcabamba, but whose rule, and that of his last
successor, Thupaq Amaru, had ended decades
before Guaman Poma wrote the Nueva corónica.
He no doubt nominated his son precisely
because the main Inca line had died out and a
restoration candidate would have to be found.
Another challenge of my study was to
highlight the personalities and set forth the
workings of Spanish missionary culture with
which Guaman Poma was directly or indirectly
engaged. Historical investigation and textual
analysis came together uneasily. The difficulty
was to create a coherently unfolding narrative
exposition. John had the solution. In reference
to my antepenultimate draft and with slight
John V. Murra: A Mentor to Women
exasperation, he said, “Give it to me. I’ll see
what I can do.” I discovered when he returned
the paper to me a week later that he had
carefully cut it apart (those were the days of
literally cutting and pasting), composed and
typed up new transitional passages and internal
conclusions, and pasted the whole back together
with its new patches. “Here,” he said, handing it
back to me, “see if this works.” And he placed in
my hand my paper, sticky with glue and
highlighted by his typewritten
patches—highlighted because he had done this
editorial work using a very clever pedagogical
strategy of typing his sentences on scraps of pale
green paper! The green-paper draft resulted in
the finest writing lesson I have ever received.
How I let this patchwork paper slip out of
my files at some point over the years I do not
know, and I am sorry that it is gone. But no
matter. It exists in my memory as vividly as if I
had it in front of me now. To my way of
thinking, it represents John Murra’s pedagogical
personality in its toughness and its extraordinary
generosity. My acknowledgment to John’s
memory in my The Polemics of Possession in
Spanish American Narrative (2007) states it best.
John was breathing his last as I wrote, in
October, 2006, that he was “the greatest of
teachers, for the example of his single-minded
devotion to the pursuit of knowledge about the
ancient Andes, his intellectual generosity, and
his help in teaching me to write.” Here, just
now, I have unlocked the secret of the last
clause of that sentence. I went on to conclude,
“Our collaboration in studying and editing the
chronicle of Guaman Poma, which lasted from
the typewriter age to the era of the Internet,
stands as a testament to what I owe him.” That,
of course, is another story, which I have
attempted to tell in the special issue of Chungará
to be published by the University of Arica, Tara-
paca, Chile, which, like this section of Andean
Past, will be devoted to John Murra’s memory
and his multiple legacies.
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
DO ANTHROPOLOGY THE WAY THAT
POETS WRITE POETRY
INGE MARIA HARMAN
North Potomac, Maryland
I remember with remarkable clarity my first
encounter with John Murra. I was
contemplating a graduate degree in
anthropology with a special emphasis on the
Andes and had traveled to Ithaca, New York
specifically to meet Professor Murra and to
determine what he was like, and if he was the
teacher whom I and my husband, Roger
Rasnake, were looking for. We thought that we
would get some of our questions answered about
anthropology at Cornell and learn some
particulars about Professor Murra. We had been
warned that he might not be interested in
working with us and that we could expect him
to be tough, demanding, and difficult.
Now, after nearly thirty-five years of having
known him–having studied with him and
worked with him, having been mentored and
supervised, and edited by him, having traveled
together, attended meetings together, even
cooked meals together–after thirty-five years of
correspondence and visits and conversation, I
can say, yes, indeed, John Murra was tough and
demanding and sometimes difficult. But that
was only a small fraction of what he was! He was
also immensely knowledgeable. He was
intellectually curious and extremely politically
aware. He was adventuresome, entertaining,
worldly-wise, and charming! In addition to all
this, he was a committed teacher who believed
that it was important to maintain a real and
honest relationship with his students, who were
expected to be as devoted to Andean research
as he was. He did not hesitate to let you know
when your efforts were inadequate. However, he
also was open to his students’ ideas and readily
recognized their contributions. He impressed
upon us the great importance of studying
- 80
indigenous Andean languages and encouraged
his students to devote themselves to lengthy
field- work and in-depth historical investigation.
John was unlike any other teacher or college
professor I ever encountered. It was not easy to
convince him to take you on as a serious
student. Once he did, he accepted you, not just
as a student, but as a human being. He was
committed to you and concerned about you as
a person with a particular psychological,
cultural, and social make-up. He also ex-
pected–insisted, really–that you deal with him as
the complex person he was. He had a cultural
heritage, a mother, a father, an intellectual
formation, a political background, personal
commitments, and an anthropological vision
that made him the person he was, and he
trusted that you would be cognizant of these
things in your interactions with him.
In studying a topic in a seminar, or in
preparing for field research, John expected his
students to develop a depth and breadth of
understanding based on historical literacy that
was, for anthropologists at least, of a
breathtaking scale. For John, a time frame of
five hundred or even a thousand years was
scarcely adequate to answer the kinds of
questions he posed about Andean society,
polity, and ecology. Nonetheless, even when
working and thinking in very broad historical
and geographical terms, John never lost sight of
the individual and the idiosyncrasies that shape
human behavior and decision-making. All these
characteristics combined to make John Murra
an exciting and inspiring teacher and colleague.
John believed that Andean cultural history
was relevant for contemporary life. He felt
strongly that the Andean history that he, and
other like-minded scholars, were deciphering
was of great relevance to social and political life
in the modern Andean republics, and he
communicated this understanding and this
81 -
excitement to his students and to scholars
throughout the world of Andean studies. For
John, every historical or archaeological
revelation, every linguistic discovery, every
investigation of Andean social and cultural
practices contributed to the larger effort of
accurately describing the Andean achievement,
and each student’s contributions were
recognized and appreciated as part of a larger
effort.
John was, undeniably, a charismatic speaker
and lecturer who attracted scholars and
activists–both men and women–to the cause of
understanding the Andean accomplishment. It
is worth pointing out that John liked women and
enjoyed working with them. He had strong and
positive relationships with many women, both
students and colleagues. It never seemed to
occur to him that women might be lacking in
any of the physical, social, or intellectual skills
that an anthropologist or historian might need
to carry out her investigations. For someone of
his generation, an awareness and appreciation of
women as intellectual equals was not a given
and was unusual even in university settings.
The stream of visitors and correspondence
that found its way to John’s door in his latter
years is testimony to the fact that he had strong
emotional ties to many women the world over.
(Here I am not even considering his marriages
or romantic liaisons.) It is important to note
that, in my experience, John related to women,
not in some sort of stereotypical, gender-driven
way, but as individuals. Regardless of gender, he
was challenging to work with and expected real
commitment from his students, whether male or
female. He was truly dedicated to the cause of
Andean studies and worked best with those who
shared that dedication.
As a female grad student beginning my
studies with him, I observed John working in a
collegial fashion with women researchers and
John V. Murra: A Mentor to Women
academics from all parts of Latin America and
Europe. Of course he also dealt with male
scholars, publishers, university administrators,
and others, cultivating a wide circle of influence
and support. As a woman in an anthropology
department with an almost exclusively male
faculty, I took special notice of the scholarly
exchanges and collaborative relationships he
maintained with women around the world. I
also noticed the strong personal relationships he
had with current and former students and the
loyalty they felt towards him. All these things
motivated me, and my husband as well, to
persevere in our efforts to convince Professor
Murra to chair our doctoral committees and
allow us to do doctoral research under his
guidance and tutelage.
After my years of class work, field-work
preparations, and proposal writing at Cornell
were over, John continued to maintain contact
with me and my husband. During years of field
research in the Andes, during dissertation
writing and defense, during my first experiences
of college teaching, during applied work in
Bolivia, during my pregnancies and the early
childhood years of my girls, John was a regular
correspondent, an occasional guest in my home,
and an ongoing part of my life. Remarkably, he
was supportive of my decision to give up
research and teaching and spend undivided time
with my children. He was interested in my
daughters as unique human beings and curious
about the process of child rearing and
socialization.
John never ceased to expect that I would
eventually find time to rededicate myself to the
scholarly work that I had begun with my initial
research on Andean reciprocities. He told me,
not too long before his death, that he had begun
the work of translating Collective Labor and
Rituals of Reciprocity, my dissertation, into
Spanish. His hope was to see it made available
to an Andean audience. Of course, that hope
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
and the obligation to share that knowledge with
an Andean public are mine as well. I recognize
them, however, for what they are. They are his
creation–his work in me, which I acknowledge
and appreciate and intend to see to completion.
One more interesting thing about John
Murra is that I keep learning from him, even
now after his death. Early in my sojourn at
Cornell, I became aware that John had little
patience with those who viewed anthropology as
a “career”, a job, or a path up the academic
ladder. John said more than once that we really
shouldn’t expect to make a living from our
anthropological inclinations. Because I was
young and just starting my “career”, I found this
stance a bit confusing. John made his vision a
little clearer when he explained that we should
do anthropology the way that poets write poetry.
What he meant, of course, was that we should
do it for the sheer love of it, and because we are
compelled to do it. I may finally have reached a
point in my life where I can truly comprehend
his meaning.
EIGHT THOUSAND SOLUTIONS
TO THE SAME PROBLEM
SILVIA RAQUEL PALOMEQUE
Cordoba, Argentina
I first met John Murra in 1984, soon after his
retirement. He was 68 years old and I was 37.
He was a professor at FLACSO, Quito (Facul-
tad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales in
Quito) in its first master’s degree program in
Andean History. This was a pioneering
educational experiment in the history of the
Andean region, not just of individual Andean
countries, in which basic principles could be re-
established. Apart from one person from Spain,
all of us students came from Andean countries
or had lived in one of them for almost a decade.
We arrived as graduates in different disciplines,
and as was customary at FLACSO at that time,
- 82
we had full fellowships so that we could devote
ourselves to working towards a master’s degree
which was the result of an academic “Andean”
project, not of institutional financial interests.
We didn’t know if John would come or not.
He had only accepted us as students towards the
end of the course, after we had taken classes
with Luis Lumbreras,1 Carlos Sempat Assa-
dourian, César Fonseca Martel, Tristan Platt,
Frank Salomon, Magnus Mörner,2 and Segundo
Moreno Yañez,3 among others. Professor Murra
arrived just at the moment when the majority of
students had broken not only with disciplinary
boundaries, but also with our original academic
areas, and, with a little awe, had begun to
perceive something of the complex diversity of
Andean culture, and of the specifics of the
system of colonial domination, as well as the
persistence and transformations of societies
prior to the rupture of the colonial bond. In the
1
Editors’ note: for Lumbreras see Barnes, this volume,
note 90; For Sempat Assadourian see Barnes, note 49; for
Fonseca Martel see Barnes, note 97; for Platt see Barnes,
note 64; and for Salomon see Barnes, note 48, and Salo-
mon, this volume, pp. 87-102.
2
Editors’ note: Historian Magnus Mörner (b. 1924) is a
prolific and multi-lingual author who has specialized in
Latin America. Among his best known works are The
Expulsion of the Jesuits from Latin America (1965), Race and
Class in Latin America(1970), The Andean Past: Land,
Societies, and Conflict (1985), and The Transformation of
Rural Society in the Third World (1991).
3
Editors’ note: Ecuadorian Segundo Moreno Yañez (b.
1939) became an anthropologically oriented historian
after a thorough grounding in philosophy, theology, and
ancient languages. He studied at Bonn under the late Udo
Oberem and wrote his dissertation on rebellions in the
Audiencia de Quito. He is one of the founders of the
Department of Anthropology of the Universidad Católica
(Quito). He has been Director of the Sección de Antro-
pología de la Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana and the
founder of the Revista de Antropología Ecuatoriana. He has
also held posts in the Instituto Otovaleño de Antropología
and in the Banco Central del Ecuador, among other
institutions.
83 -
meantime, nobody knew very clearly what to do
with all this. John once told me that he had
never had a dialogue with such eager students.
As the years passed I realized that he appeared
before us just at the point when we were ready
for him.
A large proportion of us students who chose
to take John’s seminar had participated in the
Latin American leftist militancy of the 1960s
and 70s which had just been militarily defeated
by right wing forces, and we were in the middle
of the process of reviewing our intense and
difficult prior experiences. As in the past, the
study of social sciences had gone hand-in-hand
with political activism. In addition, we faced
serious problems with our work, and, perhaps,
these had prompted us to become master’s
degree students. The analytic tools we knew
segmented society on the basis of concepts from
political economics where economic structures
dominated the whole social complex and led to
the classic division of society into social classes.
During the 1970s, in the midst of the maelstrom
of social movements, advances had been made
in the critique of evolutionism and the
inevitable succession of modes of production.
However, in terms of analytical instruments,
we had come only to the point of accepting the
existence of a political superstructure separate
from an economic structure, and the idea that
both could have had independent movements.
That is to say, a complex of advances which did
not modify the initial homogeneity put in place
by economic factors only partially complicated
the panorama. These instruments were not only
insufficient, but also reductionist for people with
militant backgrounds who did field-work or
archival studies with an analysis centered on
“popular” sectors or Andean campesinos. What
was worse, the instruments were questionable in
terms of what must be done with the knowledge
attained.
John V. Murra: A Mentor to Women
When, in 2000, Victoria Castro, Carlos
Aldunate, and Jorge Hidalgo published Nispa
ninchis/decimos diciendo . . ., their 1993
interviews of John Murra, even if they reduced
John’s catalytic role by saying that his struggle
consisted in “ . . . demonstrating cultural
achievements where others only saw poverty . .
.”,4 the type of battle through which John helped
us to liberate ourselves in 1984 was
underscored. John Murra, in the interviews, told
them that in order to “show” one first had to
“see”, but for him “the vision” was rather
obvious. “A goose has two legs. It isn’t necessary
to be a philosopher [to see that]. One has to see
geese”,5 he said. However, that which appeared
obvious to John, his capacity to “see” and
“show”, two words key to his operation, were
not easy for us to decipher then. I still
understand that “seeing” is far from simple, and
I also realize that even for him it wasn’t easy to
find the path towards “showing”.
By 1984 we had already seen geese, but
“poor geese”, because that was what we leftist
militants knew how to see, and because of this
we felt very comfortable with John. Like him we
saw geese and, without ignoring the existence of
peacocks, we fixed on geese, as he did when he
chose to see potatoes instead of continuing to
fixate on maize. Both were political options–one
tries to center oneself on something and leave
the rest in the background, but without
removing it from consideration. This also
related to Murra’s very well-known struggle with
Communism. I would like to make it clear that,
according to my understanding, this only had to
do with the leadership of a Stalinist Communist
party, or with a certain type of leader, but which
absolutely had nothing to do with his former
4
“. . . mostrar los logros culturales donde otros sólo ven
pobreza . . .” (p. 12)
5
“Que el ganso tiene dos patas. No hay que ser filósofo.
Hay que ver gansos” (p. 24).
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
comrades or fellow-combatants who continued
to be his friends, and were part of the network
in which he lived.
However, even if we saw geese, the truth is
that we hadn’t seen the same geese as John, in
so far as we centered ourselves on dividing the
geese into the rich and the poor and according
to their internal logic. We couldn’t see their
non-economic differences. Even when
confronted with difficulties in facing the time
depth of processes, the only people who could
see better than us were the few anthropologists
in the group. Yes, they could see, even if later
they didn’t know what to do with their vision.
That which we non-anthropologists couldn’t see
was Andean societies in their diversity, with
their ayllus or kin groups, with their important
cultural achievements interrupted or disrupted
by the Spanish invasion which submitted them
to a regime of colonial domination that
maintained their ethnic authorities because the
Spaniards didn’t find any other way to exploit
them. For centuries the domestic units of the
ayllus only obeyed the authorities of their own
leaders, whom they elected or accepted through
an internal selection process which we still don’t
know, and with consequences that continued
after the rupture of the colonial pact, and which
still have a bearing on the configuration of their
dominant elites.
The power to perceive these cultural
differences intertwined with colonial
domination which treated indigenous ayllus
quite differently from European peasants who
were classified on the basis of the economic and
social class criteria on which we based our
analysis. All this was only possible thanks to the
work of John Murra and his followers or close
colleagues. In order to achieve this, it was
necessary to go through a long year of courses
and effort and destructuring reflection which
later affected our whole relationship with the
world. From a historiographic perspective it was
- 84
a more than important advance which, for many
of us, opened another world, the possibility of
thinking about history from a perspective not
only distinct from that of power (which we
already had), but to begin to penetrate the
logics–not the logic–of Andean societies and try
to reconstruct their specifics, keeping in mind
the existence of their own thinking, alternate
propositions to those of the elites, and imagine
what they would be. That is, to include the
doubts of anthropology within historical
thinking, and work together with archaeologists
and ethnographers, or train ourselves to
accomplish the work of recovering the best
traditions of these disciplines, not all of them.
The course of Murra’s critical trajectory,
including his break with the leadership of the
Communist Party and its politics, and his de-
commissioning as a Party militant, we
understood very well. Our relocation in a well-
known and common territory was what let John
explain to us his political life choice, to become
an anthropologist in order to take a position in
the militant life, in as much as there existed a
form of the anthropological discipline (that
which is practiced by those who learn the
language of the people they study) which allows
knowledge of the 8000 solutions to the same
problem, from which each society chooses one.6
During that course, in a conversation which
we had after he returned our final exams, we
showed the confusion with which our future
presented itself to us, perhaps looking for advice
without saying so explicitly. It was a very
difficult dialogue on our part due to his usual
ability to leave us in the end analyzing the
naturalized elements which included our own
questions, before giving us a partial response
which, in the end, laid out the paths to take in
order to build our own reply.
6
"Creo que hay 8.000 soluciones al mismo problema y que
cada sociedad escoge alguna” (p. 75).
85 - John V. Murra: A Mentor to Women

I don’t remember well how much he said, or
how he managed to get us to make our own
conclusions about the necessity of “the act of
seeing” and later “the act of showing” in place of
our usual “transform in the name of . . .”, a
problem that was not easy for him to resolve,
either, according to my understanding. From
that arose the necessity that in the future we
would take our places, that we would reflect on
the fact that we had some small power over the
word which gave us a certain authority, and,
perhaps, that would lead us to a sort of social
listening; that after seeing and respecting, we
would see how to use our power over the word
to show society as a whole the cultural
achievements of the diverse Andean groups, but
only during the lapse of time when these groups
could still not express themselves.
things and commercial success. It will be a
society of solidarity where talent and the dignity
of work are valued, without discrimination. I
believe it will also be a world with a
predominance of woman workers, creative,
intelligent, living in fellowship, and with the
capacity to found institutions which permit
transformation to continue beyond the life of
one person, by providing for the education of
young people who will guarantee and make
possible the re-creation and continuity of the
life choice and work of unequaled value which
John Murra left us as a legacy.
Translation from the Spanish
by Monica Barnes

There, as well, we perceived that John’s

social utopia, his eagerly awaited goal, was a
world of diverse people, accepted as such, who
had the means of directly expressing their
situation and their interests, and struggling for
them. These are the political conclusions which
I remember that we took away from this first
and intense relationship with him, and it was at
that point we began a personal relationship
which was strong, lasting, and very significant
for me in that he became a dear friend with John Victor Murra in Chicago,
whom I shared the same basic language in Spring, 1945
relation to the world. (Photograph courtesy of Heather Lechtman).

In conclusion, it is important to underscore

that his commitment was to the world, both as
a combatant in the International Brigades of the
Spanish Civil War, and in his struggle against
discrimination, which he developed everywhere
he lived, in support of Afro-Americans, and in
solidarity with Spaniards, Africans, women, and,
mainly, with Andean societies and their
achievements. A central part of his life was his
commitment to humanity in the search for a
different future, for alternatives to build upon, a
future separate from the domination by material
 “KINSMEN RESURRECTED”: JOHN VICTOR MURRA AND THE HISTORY OF ANTHROPOLOGY
INTRODUCTION1
After my doctoral advisor, John V. Murra,
died, I rummaged in my basement for papers to
help me remember him. I found, under a stack
of punch-card-era computer work, a manila
folder of yellow legal-size pages that I had
completely forgotten. They were my notes from
Murra’s 1971 Cornell University course “History
of U.S. Anthropology”.
In 1971, as I began graduate school, Murra
gathered a few students, mostly his own
advisees, twice weekly in a garret tucked under
the slate mansard of Cornell’s McGraw Hall.
Our group was a small one and unrepresentative
of Cornell anthropology as a whole, for at that
time Murra’s students seemed to the rest of the
department to be a personalistic sect. His
lectures gave unique pleasure. I loved to hear
the names of our North American ancestors
spoken in his Rumanian burr. His huge eyes
opened wide to deal out penetrating, respect-
compelling glances when he mentioned the
names of the honored ones: Henry Rowe
1
Editors’ note: this article is a revised and expanded
English-language version of the second part of a larger
article accompanying the French translation of Forma-
ciones económicas y políticas del mundo andino (1975), a
collection of major early essays by John V. Murra, edited
by Jacques Poloni-Simard, and to be published by École
des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales with the Maison
des Sciences de l’Homme. It was submitted to Poloni-
Simard in August 2008 and to Andean Past in September
2008.
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009): 87-102.
FRANK SALOMON
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Schoolcraft,2 Lewis Henry Morgan,3 John
Wesley Powell,4 Franz Boas,5 Paul Radin6. . . His
2
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1793-1864) was a pioneering
geographer, geologist, and ethnologist,who is credited with
the identification of the source of the Mississippi River.
He studied at Union College and Middlebury College. His
first wife, Ojibway-speaker Jane Johnson Schoolcraft,
greatly aided his research. He is the author of numerous
works on American Indians. A biography of Schoolcraft,
Indian Agent and Wilderness Scholar: The Life of Henry
Rowe Schoolcraft was published in 1987 by Richard E.
Bremer.
3
For Morgan see Barnes, this volume, note 139.
4
John Wesley Powell (1834-1902) was a noted geogra-
pher, linguist, and explorer of the American West. He was
educated at Illinois College, Wheaton College, and
Oberlin College but did not graduate from any of those
institutions. He was a director of the U.S. Geological
Survey, the founding director of the Bureau of Ethnology
at the Smithsonian Institution, and the founder of Wash-
ington, D.C.’s Cosmos Club. Among his best known works
are Canyons of the Colorado (1875) and Introduction to the
Study of American Indian Languages . . . (1877). Several
book length biographies of Powell have been published.
5
The German-American Franz Boas (1858-1942) created
in the U.S.A. the role of the anthropologist as a Ph.D.-
trained specialist. He, himself, held a doctorate in physics
from the University of Kiel (1881). Many of his students
at Columbia University went on to become prominent
researchers. Boas fought tirelessly against racism and
criticized evolutionary frameworks as lacking cultural
depth. From the 1880s Boas conducted fieldwork among
Arctic peoples and tribes of the Canadian Pacific coast.
He stressed the importance of cultural context and
history. He propounded the four-field concept of anthro-
pology, and was an early advocate of the participant-
observer method in fieldwork. He formulated cultural
relativism as a central theme of American anthropology.
His numerous published works include The Central
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
lectures were often elliptical and indirect, with
important points left between the lines. A
semester was not enough for most of us to
understand fully, but thirty-eight years might be.
The side of Murra that these lectures
expressed has not been evoked in any of his
many tributes and obituaries. Anthropologists
know a lot about Murra’s life as an Andeanist.
However one should also know something about
his life as an American immigrant intellectual.
By the time Murra hit Andeanist print he
had given a lot of work and thought to the
U.S.A. It was not the stereotyped Rumanian
anti-Franco combatiente of 1937 who wrote his
works; it was an adoptive Chicagoan, a young
man acquainted with the likes of anthropologist
Robert Redfield7 (who taught him about Lewis
Henry Morgan, for Murra the totemic U.S.
intellectual) and Philleo Nash (later President
Kennedy’s Commissioner of Indian Affairs).
Saul Bellow, the novelist par excellence of savvy
young Chicagoans on the make, knew him in
the 1940s when both were financially strapped
University of Chicago students. Bellow later
mischievously gave his name to an accountant:
Eskimo (1888), Kwakiutl Culture as Reflected in Mythology
(1935), Race, Language, and Culture (1940), the Mind of
Primitive Man (1944), Primitive Art (1951), and many
articles on the Indians of North America’s Northwest
Coast, among other topics.
6
Paul Radin (1883-1959) was a student of Franz Boas
and an ethnographer of the Siouan Winnebago or Ho-
Chunk tribe in Wisconsin. He also contributed to an
understanding of African art and folktales. His work is
characterized by emphasis on biography and attention to
intellectuality in Native American cultures. Among his
works are The Method and Theory of Ethnography (1933),
The Italians of San Francisco (1935), Primitive Religion: Its
Nature and Origin (1937), Indians of South America (1942),
The Culture of the Winnebago as Described by Themselves
(1949). He was the editor of African Folktales and Sculpture
(1952).
7
For Redfield see Barnes, this volume, note 11.
- 88
“Murra, that well-dressed marvelous smooth
expert” (Bellow 1975:36). When I asked Murra
about this, he said Bellow was alluding satirically
to Murra’s cleverness in talking his way out of a
debt to the University bursar.
THE ANTHROPOLOGIST AS IMMIGRANT/
THE IMMIGRANT AS ANTHROPOLOGIST
Murra’s inclination to delve into the
colonial and early-republican roots of U.S. and
Canadian ethnology had something to do with
an immigrant’s curious comparing of the old
country and the new, but more to do with his
insistence on knowing who one is, both
historically and psychoanalytically. His resulting
singular view of American anthropology’s past is
worth a second look, now that some quarters of
U.S. anthropology have once more become
receptive to humanism and historicism.
The 1971 course represented an early
moment in the development of inquiry into the
history of the field, and an incomplete one by
today’s standard. Thanks to George Stocking’s
and Richard Handler’s University of Wisconsin
Press publications (c.f. Stocking 1992), to Regna
Darnell’s from the University of Nebraska Press
(starting 2005)8 and to many other researchers
published in the History of Anthropology
Newsletter (formerly edited by Henrietta
Kuklick), the history of North American
anthropology today flourishes far beyond what
Murra had to offer. Nonetheless his early
perspective on how anthropology sat within
American intellectual history was well-
researched and original, and remains a durably
provocative one.
When Murra spoke to Latin American
audiences, and when he talked to us about his
efforts to build research institutions in the
Andean countries, he sometimes said that the
8
Darnell’s Histories of Anthropology Annual is in its fourth
volume as of 2008.
89 -
Sputnik-era U.S.A. was a good “platform” for
launching various disciplinary “tactics”.
However it would be completely wrong to think
this meant his interest in the North American
growth of the discipline–by 1971, explosive
growth in terms of sheer graduate enrollment
numbers–was merely instrumental. In 1974, as
President of the American Ethnological Society,
he had the option of dedicating a number of the
AES Publications to any theme he chose. He
decided on American Anthropology: The Early
Years. In its preface he wrote:
I am not a historian of our craft. When I
receive my copy of the History of
Anthropology Newsletter, I nod my head in
recognition or amazement. All those
kinsmen resurrected, reevaluated,
scrutinized. Events, influences,
skullduggery, and alternative readings of
the evidence are us because they are part
of our past. . . I pretend that it
[anthropology] is my only ethnic, religious,
and ideologic [sic] affiliation. This stance
may not be a scientific one, and may be
the reason why I do not conduct research
in the history of anthropology. But I am a
committed, critical, patriotic consumer of
the work of those who do (Murra 1976:3-
4).
North American anthropology is not really
a discipline in the usual sense, but a
consortium–one can still hope, a symbiosis–of
very different studies that were brought together
by a common motive: inquiry into the original
peoples of the Americas. The alliance among
archaeologists, biologists, cultural
anthropologists, and linguists seemed to Murra
a great achievement, and a deep-rooted one. He
showed us how it took shape in the middle
nineteenth century, long before the
professionalization of the discipline crystallized
these as “fields” or “quadrants”. Schisms among
the “quadrants” were already occurring in 1971,
Salomon: John V. Murra
as each field developed vested interests and
ideological fetishes. Murra saw his course as one
way to oppose a breakup. He was not exactly a
conciliator; he upheld a distinctive minoritarian
humanism and historicism against all comers.
But he didn’t think conciliators or unifiers were
really needed. In fact he commented that North
Americans’ “mania to reconcile” sometimes
made mush of inquiry. Rather he thought
ethnographic commitment, the bond with the
peoples we study, should suffice as common
ground, indeed a social contract, even among
scholars who disagree about everything else.
Murra’s course could be taken as a history of
that pact, and it was chronologically organized.
Nevertheless, time and again he circled back
toward a few pervasive themes. These themes
reveal something about his intellectual
peculiarity as well as about anthropology, and it
is these which I will sketch in the following
pages.
CATHEXIS
Cathexis was always central. To this
Freudian, nothing but love was strong enough to
cement the ethnographic pact–though his ways
of expressing love could be peculiar. The power
of passions in shaping intellectual history formed
a leitmotif. As Murra stated in one of his course
lectures:
There is no Boas school of thought but
there is a Boas emotional group and an
institutional tie. Boas as a historicist is a
mistake; as Kroeber9 says he had no
9
Alfred L. Kroeber (1876-1960) was an influential
American anthropologist who studied under Franz Boas
(Ph.D. 1901). As an archaeologist he excavated in New
Mexico, Mexico, and Peru. He developed the concept of
the “culture area”, a region in which societies shared
certain basic traits and operated in similar natural envi-
ronments. As founder of the Anthropology Department of
the University of California at Berkeley, he did much to
record the languages and cultures of the Indians of the
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
historical sense–he just got stuck in
that category by not being an
evolutionist. The emotional storm
wasn’t about his ideas, but his
personality, and other personalities
stirred up by the fact that his seminars,
unlike others of the time, had female
members.
In discussing the Columbia University
graduate department he remarked that
“[Intellectual history] is often the effect of Joe
on Nelly.” Murra had an Old World sense of
the honor of achievement and seniority, and he
chastised those of us who, as he thought, callow-
ly gossiped about major scholars. But at the
same time he also had a comedic sense of the
way things work. Stories of particular
anthropological Joes and Nellies seemed to him
both important and amusing. In class he limited
himself to some dry semi-Freudian kidding
about intellect’s enslavement to Eros: “The unit
[of Boasian academic organization] is the
foreign-born Jew and the WASP woman.”
Such kidding was the visible outcrop of a
larger rumination, born of psychoanalytic
struggles, that Murra clearly carried on
constantly yet never shared with us. It
concerned relations between the passions of the
subconscious and the work of intellect,
including such themes as solitude and insomnia,
dreaming and phobia, as well as desire. In class
Murra expressed admiration for Alfred L. Kroe-
ber’s recognition of dream work in his early field
research:
American West. Among his many published works are
Animal Tales of the Eskimo (1899), The Arapaho (1902-07),
The Chumash and Costanoan Languages (1910), Anthropol-
ogy (1936), Cultural and Natural Areas of Native North
America (1938), and The Archaeology and Pottery of Nazca,
Peru . . . (edited by Patrick H. Carmichael, 1998). Kroe-
ber’s wife Theodora published a biogaphy of Alfred L.
Koreber in 1970 and Julian H. Stewart published one in
1973.
- 90
[Mohave] . . . raided far away, largely
from curiosity. . . They had high regard for
dreams and for reasoning from dreams. All
this was done before 1917: that is, before
Malinowski,10 and before Kroeber’s own
[psycho]analysis; most of it was done by
1912.”
Murra noticed something anthropologists
Robert Lowie,11 Radin, and Kroeber had in
common:
They spent large parts of their lives alone,
widowed, or divorced. It wasn’t their
‘isms’, but their marginality in civilized life,
that made the field and the museum
central in their personal lives and their life
callings.
Despite his theoretical insistence that vocations
are unitary, fusing the scholarly with the
personal, a stoic or soldierly impatience with
weakness made Murra a “tough love” advisor
rather than a fatherly one. Students could not
count on him for much comfort amid the
loneliness of fieldwork.
PROFESSIONALISM
Another axis of the course concerned
democratic science and professional science.
Our classroom sat barely 45 km from the lovely
Cayuga Lake village of Aurora, where Lewis
10
For Malinowski see Barnes, this volume, note 36.
11
Robert H. Lowie (1883-1957), educated in German
humanism, took his A.B. from the College of the City of
New York (1901) and his Ph.D. from Columbia University
(1908) under Franz Boas. He was an expert on North
American Indians and, as a theorist, helped to formulate
the doctrine of cultural relativism which holds cultural
constructs to be interpretable only within the contexts of
individual societies. Among his books are Primitive Society
(1920), Primitive Religion (1924), History of Ethnological
Theory (1937), and The Crow Indians (1935). An obituary
of Lowie was published by Paul Radin in the American
Anthropologist in 1958.
91 -
Henry Morgan lived and propounded ethnology
long before it became a profession. More
orthodox Cornell anthropologists never
mentioned Morgan. I think they were
embarrassed for their long-dead neighbor, then
so utterly out of fashion. But like it or not,
Morgan was our genius loci, and he was in many
ways the fulcrum of Murra’s thinking about U.S.
anthropology.
It interested Murra a great deal that
Morgan’s career was a life lived in pre-academic
science. Morgan grew up on 600 formerly Iro-
quoisan acres granted to his father after the
1779 massacre of the Cayuga. His career as a
railroad lawyer and Republican state senator was
to serve the transformation of upstate New York
into the continent’s first industrial boom area.
Murra made no bones about the fact that
Morgan’s study of the Iroquois peoples grew
directly from a “Rhodesian situation” of land
theft that followed U.S. independence. (He was
alluding to Ian Smith. The comparison between
historic and current political situations was
characteristic.)
Upstate New York’s post-revolutionary
culture included a citizen-scholar ethos which
academic growth would later displace. College
or seminary educated townsfolk expected “that
people would teach themselves and each other.”
Secret societies became the free universities of
the time, offering a course upward for the
humble. Morgan invited an educated Seneca
man, Ely Parker12, and Parker’s wife, to join his
own secret lodge: the Society of the Gordian
Knot, later called Grand Order of the Iroquois.
This was to be the start of important careers for
both men.
At the end of Morgan’s era, when the
citizen-scientist ethos was under attack from
12
Ely Samuel Parker (1825-1895) was a Seneca sachem,
civil engineer, and Civil War general on General U.S.
Grant’s staff.
Salomon: John V. Murra
university elites loyal to the German graduate
school model, the self-trained anthropologist
Otis Mason13 spoke up for the older citizen-
scholar tradition which had produced the likes
of Schoolcraft and Morgan. Mason praised
a science in which there is no priesthood
and no laity, no sacred language; but one
in which you [the general educated public]
are all both the investigator and the
investigated (Mason quoted in Hinsley
1976: 41).
Murra thought Mason’s party, though
politically doomed, scientifically inadequate,
and compromised by racism, still deserved
respect. He taught us to esteem people for what
was possible within their times; Morgan and the
other “primitive ethnographers” were “no more
and no less racist than their contemporaries–but
they were more than that; they went beyond
their racism.” He likewise had sympathy for the
proto-anthropologies that “Latin countries”
(including Rumania) had been developing
contemporaneously via non-academic self-
studies in folklore and vernacular-language
philology.
Looking back, one wonders if part of Murra’s
enjoyment of the Andean countries did not
come from the circumstance that when he
arrived, scholarly life in the Andes still had
some of the same malleable, historically open-
ended character. “When in 1886 Andrew
Dickson White14 invited Lewis Henry Morgan
13
Otis Tufton Mason (1838-1908) graduated from
Columbian College (now George Washington University)
in 1861. He was an advocate of evolutionary theories of
social development. He was a curator at the Smithsonian
Institution, a founder of the Anthropological Society of
Washington, and an editor of the American Naturalist. His
books include Summaries of Progress in Anthropology:
Woman’s Share in Primitive Culture (1894) and The Origins
of Invention . . . (1895).
14
Andrew Dickson White (1832-1918) was the founder,
with Ezra Cornell, of Cornell University.
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
to Cornell”, Murra remarked, “the task of
creating national intellectual models was nearly
finished; [it] is now the difficult task of the
Andes.”
As I was getting ready for my first Cornell-
guided trip to Ecuador, Murra counseled me
that I would find in Quito a situation something
like Morgan’s. I never wrote down exactly what
he said, but I remember the gist: since
commanding research institutions and
professional associations did not exist in
Ecuador, I would find the most interesting
talents in citizen-scholars grouped only by their
own affinities.
That advice led to wonderful encounters.
Olaf Holm, a Dane who had come to Ecuador to
manage a cacao plantation, became a self-
trained archaeologist after finding precolumbian
figurines among his seedlings. Osvaldo Viteri, a
painter, built a truck-mounted mobile studio
whose jolting journeys brought him to
undocumented prehispanic sites. Padre José
María Vargas guarded in his Dominican
monastic cell a huge collection of early colonial
papers, a treasure trove of ethnohistory,
originally compiled to defend Ecuador’s disputed
borders. Costanza and Alberto di Capua, refugee
Italians who built Ecuador’s first toothpaste
factory, were in their off hours applying to South
American papers the exacting humanist
methods learned in the old country (see Bruhns,
this volume, pp. 103-107). The dapper
provincial aristocrat Hernán Crespo Toral made
it his vocation to transform gold held by the
Banco Central–precolumbian gold jewelry–into
the core of a great museum. In the solarium of
his mock castle, the aged oligarch Carlos
Manuel Larrea pored over the papers of a
vanquished seigneurial order. Meanwhile, a few
blocks down the avenue at the Casa de la Cul-
tura, the nationalist ethnohistorians Piedad and
Alfredo Costales pounded out number after
number of the journal Llacta, glorifying Quichua
- 92
groups’ struggles with the latifundist world
Larrea’s peers had made.
Murra and Curtis Hinsley were right, too, to
emphasize the limitations of the pre-academic,
citizen-scholar scene. With no canonical way to
organize debate, disagreements among scholars
became feuds. Without powerful institutions,
there was no way to fund gifted researchers who
happened to be poor, like the tireless autodidact
ethnohistorian Aquiles Pérez, whom I found
hunched at a tiny desk over a cobbler’s shop.
For such reasons, Murra regarded the transition
to professional scholarship and university
leadership as a costly, but inevitable and useful
one.
Murra’s extensive teaching about Franz
Boas, the “locomotive” of North American
professionalization, had, then, a covert as well as
an overt purpose. It was a monument to great
scholarship, but also a how-to lesson in scholarly
politics. Murra began by pointing out that Boas’
first festschrift (Laufer 1906) was bestowed on
him for reasons that had everything to do with
academic politics. It happened “before he did all
the things that Leslie White15 hated,” meaning
before he had created a great corpus of
ethnography. What Boas had done was
transform a vocation to a profession, and find
for it a place in the constellations of power and
money. “He was sponsored by many influential
15
Leslie Alvin White (1900-1975) was an American
anthropologist who formulated a technology-oriented
model of cultural evolution. He earned a B.A. (1923) and
M.A. (1924) from Colombia University, and a Ph.D. from
the University of Chicago (1927) under Fay-Cooper Cole.
He engaged in bitter academic disputes with the followers
of Franz Boas. His major works are The Science of Culture
and The Evolution of Culture and several monographs on
American Indian cultures. A biography by Harry Elmer
Barnes comprises the Forward to his festschrift Essays in
the Science of Culture (edited by Gertrude E. Dole nad
Robert L. Carneiro, 1960. An obituary of White by Elman
Service, Richard K. Beardsley, and Beth Dillingham was
published in the American Anthropologist in 1976.
93 -
non-academics including Carl Schurz,16 who
saw Boas as the embodiment of the liberal
aspirations of his own 1848 revolutionary
generation.” In one of his lectures Murra stated:
Boas [in his contention with the old
powers of the American Ethnological
Society] was a meticulous scholar, but also
a power wielder, an organizer. He
attracted and favored New York City
people, immigrants, and their children,
especially women. A wheeler-dealer,
spinner of nets, an anthropological tank.
Boas’ struggle to academicize anthropology
via graduate schools goes on now in
countries that don’t have a professional
guild, like Chile and Peru. There, the self-
made anthropologists want the prestige of
having grad schools, but not the elitist
consequences.
The past he was talking about seemed to him
parallel to his present. In the Chicago 1902 fight
with W. J. McGee17 and George Dorsey18 over
16
Carl Schurz (1829-1906) was a German-American
politician and journalist, who served as a U.S. army
general during the Civil War.
17
William John McGee (1853-1912) was a self-taught
geologist and ethnologist associated with John Wesley
Powell. He served as president of the American Anthro-
pological Association, the National Geographical Society,
and the American Association for the Advancement of
Science. Among his works are Palaeolithie Man in America:
His Antiquity and Environment (1888), Geological Atlas of
U.S. (1894), Maya Year (1894), The Seri Indians (1898), as
well as articles on the Sioux, primitive mathematics, and
trepanation in Peru.
18
George Amos Dorsey (1868-1931) was Curator of
Anthropology at Chicago’s Field Museum from 1896 to
1915. He held an A.B. from Dennison College (1888), an
A.B. (1890) and Ph.D. (1894) from Harvard. He con-
ducted excavations at Peru’s ancient Ancón cemetery and
other important South American sites. Among his more
than seventy-five publications on American Indians and
physical anthropology are Archaeological Investigations on
the Island of La Plata (1901), The Arapaho Sun Dance
Salomon: John V. Murra
writing the AAA’s charter, the latter two
favored a “mass membership, no-credentialing”
policy. (George Stocking 1988). According to
Murra:
McGee pointed out that a “generous”
policy will bring generous finances; how
did Boas propose to finance? . . . McGee
was really arguing for himself. McGee,
John Wesley Powell, or Lewis Henry
Morgan couldn’t have joined the AAA
under Boas’ rules!
On my yellow legal pad I capitalized what
Murra said loudly: “NOT THE DOCTRINES
BUT THE STRUCTURE OF THE
PROFESSION”.
EXPERIENCE
As Murra saw the 1902 AAA fight, it was
one outbreak of a permanent tension in U.S.
academe. American scholars inherit at the same
time European esteem for intellectual
credentials and American dislike of
“intellectuals” as a privileged class. It seems
significant that Murra’s struggle for citizenship
occurred at a time when the latter sentiment
was quite strong. He could take it in stride
because he felt that anti-academic sentiment
was one part of an American mind-set that also
entailed positive historic values.
At the time Murra gave his lecture about
McGee, New York was convulsed with racialized
anger over what was called the Ocean Hill-
Brownsville school affair. Black parents in these
Brooklyn neighborhoods had seized on new
school regulations to take control, expelling an
entrenched and white-dominated teachers’
union. As Murra interpreted it:
(1903), and The Cheyenne (1905). Dorsey’s obituary was
published by Fay-Cooper Cole in the American Anthropolo-
gist (1931).
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
The revolt of black parents against paper
credentials and teachers’ reliance on
[standardized achievement] tests is a
continuation of American resistance to
European cumulative and bookish
credentials. Only the blacks and a few
others haven’t been bought out by Europe.
In natural science, there’s no resisting it.
But in social studies, in human things, we
can still hold experience as the credential.
To make experience the prerequisite for
the institution–that’s the contribution of
the U.S.
This mind-set left a mark on anthropology.
Long-lasting emphasis on personal and local
experience stood in tension with historical
perspective and with disciplinary rigor.
Maybe . . . blindness to history is a product
of . . . avidity for direct experience and
dislike of vicariousness. L.H.M. didn’t care
for anything he couldn’t observe. . . The
intellectual character of U.S.
anthropology, and other sciences, is self-
starting and immediate.
Murra sympathized with this mentality,
which made Americans into field-workers
(though not participant observers) long before
Boas or Malinowski. In his role as an advisor of
young anthropologists, Murra tried to promote
Boasian professionalism without suffocating the
“self-starting” habit of mind, which he liked.
Unlike his deans, he made practiced ethno-
graphers welcome regardless of diplomas.
McGee was right about the necessity for
practical field experience, the dispen-
sability of Ph.D.’s. You must be immersed
at some point.
He contrasted deep fieldwork involving
personal cathexis with the skimpy, narrowly
programmed field excursions Cornell
- 94
administrators were used to accommodating. He
scolded the social scientists for sponsoring
merely “ritual fieldwork”, which is forced “to fit
. . . in interstices of the academic calendar. You
can’t see the whole culture in summer . . . Like
Hawaiian pineapples, our experience is grown
‘can size.’”
American museums–the Peabody at Harvard
and its homonym at Yale, the American
Museum of Natural History in New York,
Pennsylvania’s University Museum, and the
Field Museum in Chicago–were often hostile to
professionalization, but they did one great thing:
they were able to sponsor long fieldwork
unconstrained by semesters. In Murra’s eyes,
Kroeber, who was Berkeley’s “museum man”
among other things, was right to speak of:
submerging oneself in other ways of life as
an act of personal liberation and self-
understanding, the only “ecstasy” we will
ever have from our given past and path.
Because Murra saw long, open-ended
expeditions as the heart of the anthropological
task, he taught respectfully about “museum
men”. We were expected to take their bigotry
and even their entanglements in military
intelligence in perspective, the better to
appreciate their impact in enlarging and
internationalizing field research.
The Peabody anthropologists were the first
[U.S. anthropologists] to go abroad, before
World War I, to Maya lands (where the
spying was done), and to Africa.
Murra also credited the museums’ ability to
publish long works on anthropology. “Until well
into the twentieth century the Smithsonian was
still the only place to publish large studies; in
fact the beginning of other [academic press]
outlets was the beginning of its deterioration.”
Despite his disappointment in Julian H.
95 -
Steward’s19 evolutionist manhandling of South
American ethnography, Murra admired his
adroit manipulation of the federal funding
system to publish the Handbook of South
American Indians as Smithsonian Bureau of
American Ethnology reports (Steward 1946-
1959). In the 1960s museums had lost ground
“due to their not getting any Sputnik sauce”,20
and Murra took on a consultancy seeking to
prevent the collapse of the Smithsonian’s
unique anthropological establishment.
STATECRAFT
Although Murra valued much of the North
American intellectual past, he also felt that it
showed some durably wrong inclinations. One of
these was the search for an overarching
evolutionary natural science of society. Murra
remarked that although much of Morgan’s
evolutionary model was wrong and refuted, we
would never get rid of his evolutionism.
This was not a matter of denying the validity
of an evolutionary frame for understanding
complexity. As a materialist, Murra
acknowledged that if evolution is true of some
of nature, then it is true of all nature, including
socio-cultural human nature. But that only
helped to define the constraints on humanity in
each of its techno-environmental conditions.
The neo-evolutionist Stewardian venture of
ranking societies in a schema of determinately
emerging adaptive complexity seemed to him
the most drab, least creative program for
anthropology. In a book review which caused
hard feelings, he referred to Timothy Earle’s21
19
For Steward see Barnes, this volume, note 37.
20
Murra meant National Defense Education Act funds
available after the space technology panic of 1957. These
funds fueled a vast expansion of U.S. universities.
21
Timothy K. Earle (b. 1946) is known for his contribu-
tions to an understanding of the chiefdom form of political
organization. He has used Hawaii as an important case
Salomon: John V. Murra
post-Stewardian approach as an “evolutionary
chore” (Murra 1988:586).
The interesting thing for him–and for all his
students–was how humans make changes within
their evolutionary moments. If societies alter
from one form to another, they do so
historically, through what would later be called
agency. This was what diachronic anthropology
should study. Murra detested coarser
materialists such as Leslie White and Marvin
Harris22– the latter then the predominant public
voice of anthropology in the U.S.–for laying “a
heavy thumb” on the scale of historical
interpretation.
Just as wrong, Murra thought, was
evolutionists’ tendency to see the politicization
and centralization of society as an inevitable and
uniform process. The justification for studying
the evolution of states, he thought, was not to
multiply purported laws of complexity. It was on
the contrary to skeptically probe “the clout of
kings” and the varieties of political experience.
Thinking of peoples buffeted by states, Murra
asked for answers about states and answers to
states. “How different it [kinship-based state
society] was! What anthropology has to offer is
study. Among his major works are Economic and Social
Organization of a Complex Chiefdom . . . (1978), Archaeo-
logical Field Research in the Upper Mantaro, Peru, 1982-
1983 (1987), and How Chiefs Come to Power . . . (1997).
22
Marvin Harris (1927-2001) was an American anthro-
pologist who formulated theories of cultural materialism
combining Karl Marx’s emphasis on the means of produc-
tion with the impact of demographic factors on other parts
of socio-cultural systems. He studied as both an under-
graduate and a graduate student at Columbia University,
obtaining a Ph.D. there in 1953. He taught at Columbia
from 1953 until 1980, then at the University of Florida,
Gainesville from 1980 until 2000. Among his 17 books
are The Rise of Anthropological Theory (1968), Cultural
Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture (1979),
and Theories of Culture in Post-Modern Times. An obituary
of Marvin Harris by Maxine L. Margolis and Conrad
Phillip Kottak was published in the American Anthropolo-
gist in 2003.
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
the proof that there was an alternative.” States,
particularly precapitalist states in Africa and the
Americas, were his ethnological center of
gravity. In teaching about Burundi, Cameroon,
or Zulu politics, however, his point was not at
all to show regularities of state formation but, on
the contrary, to show how surprisingly the
sources and uses of political power can vary.
Long after the utopian in him had perished, he
argued by example and indirectly, for the
unsuspected political alternative.
ETHNICITY
In the 1970s a substantial number of
American sociologists and anthropologists were
trying to reinvent or reabsorb the Marxian
legacy, among them Murra’s great friends Eric
Wolf23 and Sidney Mintz24. He had nothing but
admiration for their inventive historicism, even
as he hung back from their larger Marxian
program. But he disliked cruder versions of
Marxian social science. In his view, insistence
on class as the sovereign analysis had prevented
scholars, both North and South American, from
writing history in cultural depth–just as
frameworks of nationality and race had done
earlier. The Rumanian in him insisted forever
on ethnicity: more than race, more than
nationality, more than stratification.
His interest in it was not limited to sweet-
tempered multiculturalism, either. He regarded
23
Eric Robert Wolf (1923-1999) was an anthropologist
well-known for his studies of peasant societies, especially
in Latin America. He obtained his Ph.D. from Columbia
University after World War II. An early exponent of
peasant (as opposed to “primitive”) studies, he later
emphasized linkages between worldwide economic systems
and local ethnographic facts. Among his many influential
works are Sons of the Shaking Earth (1959), Peasants
(1966), and Europe and the People Without History (1982).
An interview of Wolf by Ashraf Ghani was published in
the American Anthropologist in 1987 and an obituary by
Jane C. Schneider in the same journal in 1999.
24
For Mintz see Barnes, this volume, note 60.
- 96
ethnic friction as a normal and basic part of the
human condition for better or worse. In one
guise or another inter-ethnic situations provoke
“primitive anthropology”, raw but fertile
situations of encounter and reflection. Boas’ or
Malinowski’s foreignness in his academic
country seemed to Murra to be a central fact.
Boas, the foreign agitator . . . like Malinow-
ski [advanced by] coagulating refugees and
colonials into a group; Boas swiftly pulled
together a tight but heterogeneous group
. . . He was their rescuer and their patron.
He insisted that the battle between the
“academic machine” Boas was creating around
1900 and the informal lineages of the Harvard,
Pennsylvania, and New York museum sets was
an ethnic battle. When the AAA in 1919
expelled Boas for dissenting against
anthropological involvement in spying on
Central America, of twenty who voted against
Boas, fifteen were at Harvard and many were
former U.S. government employees. Murra
identified them as WASP upper crust.
Murra was likely speaking indirectly of
himself when he agreed with Claude Lévi-
Strauss25 that “anthropology is a way of living
with an unresolved ethnic identity.” He
particularly felt empathy for anthropologists
who grew this way, for example Morris
25
Claude Lévi-Straus (b. 1908) is a French ethnologist
and anthropological theorist famous for developing
anthropological “structuralism”, a system that analyses a
complex field in terms of formally interrelated and oppos-
ing parts. He received his doctorate from the Sorbonne
(1948). He lived in Brazil in the 1930s and 40s, teaching
and conducting ethnographic field-work there. He
presented two theses, one on the family and social life of
the Nambikwara Indians and the other The Elementary
Structures of Kinship (published in 1949). Among his other
famous books are Tristes Tropiques (1955), Structural
Anthropology (1958), The Savage Mind (1962), and the
four volumes of Mythologiques(1969-1981). A good guide
to the work if Lévi-Strauss was published by Edmund
Leach in 1970.
97 -
Swadesh,26 in self-exile from the then-unfriendly
United States “driving the only Moskvitch car
in Mexico City, alienated at home, successful
abroad.”
As Boas turned to anti-racism, Sapir27
turned to Jewish consciousness. . . He took
his Nootka skills to Yiddish and
Jewishness.
On the Peruvian side, Murra’s friendship
with Peruvian anthropologist, novelist, and poet
José María Arguedas rested in part on empathy
with Arguedas’ lonely, out-of-the-zeitgeist
ethnic loyalties (Murra and López Baralt 1996).
Murra was, however, notoriously touchy
about his own “unresolved ethnic identity”. He
felt that the persona he had forged in his
Spanish soldiering and his profession was his
only real identity and deserved to be accepted
beyond questioning. He hated to hear his Jewish
childhood name mentioned. As it happened I
was the only overtly Jewish student in his group.
When I proposed to write a seminar paper on
Guaman Poma’s allusions to Hebrew scriptures,
some fellow students told me it was a bad idea
because religious discussions–even ethnological
26
The Americanist linguist Morris Swadesh (1909-1967)
originated glottochronology, a method for estimating
chronologies of language divergence based on lexical
comparison. He held a B.A. and an M.A. from the
University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from Yale with a
dissertation on the Nootka language. He published 130
articles and 17 books and monographs. An obituary by
Norman A. McQuown was published in the American
Anthropologist in 1968.
27
Edward Sapir (1884-1939), a published poet and “Boas-
ian” linguist who concentrated on North American Indian
languages, is most famous as the co-creator of the Sapir-
Whorf hypothesis which postulates relationship between
grammar and thought patterns. He graduated from
Columbia College in 1904. He continued at Columbia to
study linguistics and anthropology. Ruth Benedict pub-
lished an obituary of Sapir in a 1939 issue of the American
Anthropologist. Included is a complete bibliography of
Sapir’s published work prepared by Leslie Spier.
Salomon: John V. Murra
ones– always got on Murra’s nerves. But Murra
liked the idea. After the paper was done, he
commented in private that an outspoken Jewish
identity is a good thing, but the waffling, evasive
relation to Judaism he thought he saw in others
(and I asked myself, only in others?) was “an
ethnic neurosis”.
INDIVIDUALITY
Murra’s notion of the anthropological calling
as a way to bring forth something grand
–ethnography—out of something inwardly pain-
ful–alienation–has much to do with his respect
for individuality. He adhered strongly, though
not orthodoxly, to Freudianism because he
thought it an unbudgeable fact that at every
level from intimacy to nationality one lives
against one’s people, as well as with them.
Whether at the inner level of the psyche or the
outer level of professional action, he saw the
agonistic creation of the self as a basic human
process. He admired “good self-documenters”
like Lowie, Kroeber, Sapir, and Swadesh whose
writings help us follow theirs. Murra valued
Sapir, too, for being a dissenter himself and
finding dissent within culture. Others might
credit tribes with unanimity; Sapir said things
like, “The Burucubucu say so-&-so; Two Crows
denies it” (referring to Dorsey 1885:211-371).28
Above all, Murra brought forward as
exemplar of the anthropologist self-realized in
cryptic uniqueness an earlier expatriate, Paul
Radin (Radzyn), “the most historical and most
European of his generation”. He returned to
Radin over and over, out of proportion to the
dimensions of the course. Murra pointed out
that Radin, the originally Polish author of
remarkable ethnographies about the Winnebago
(now self-denominated Ho-Chunk) of
Wisconsin:
28
This phrase was later amplified as the title of a mono-
graph on the famous Omaha kinship problem, by Robert
Harrison Barnes (1984).
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
taught at Kenyon [College], Fisk
University [a Negro campus], and at 75,
Brandeis, and Black Mountain [a short-
lived but profoundly influential
experimental avant-garde campus]. He
lived to see his books republished and
popular after years on remainder tables.
Radin, Murra remarked, “had no disciples in any
grand school; was he a part of history, having no
impact?”29
Murra sympathized with Radin’s ethno-
graphic emphasis on Winnebago (etc.)
biography and autobiography (c.f. Radin 1949)
because they foregrounded “the non-solidity,
the non-rigidity of culture” and the self-creative
powers of every person as cultural being. He
liked Radin’s lack of nomothetic ambition.
The Winnebago Tribe (1990 [1923]) ends
nowhere after a mountain of description,
but it’s his best work. It’s more like
anthology than analysis, full of big but
mutually relevant quotes. Uniqueness is
not reduced but put center-stage.
When Murra remarked that the obituary
Radin wrote about Lowie (1958) reflected a lot
of Radin’s self, we wondered if Murra were not
hinting that in remembering Radin he was in
turn reflecting his own sense of self. Like his
fellow Cornellian the expatriate novelist
Vladimir Nabokov, whom he read with
admiration, though not affection, Murra
sometimes tried his audience’s wit with plays of
mirroring. One suspected indirect self-comment
when he said of Boas, “His lack of praise to
students disturbed people–he was a stern
taskmaster whom everybody both loved and
hated.” His comment that “[Radin] didn’t mind
29
But this statement referred only to the United States,
the scope of the course. Murra also thought that Radin
had productive dialogue with some anthropologists in
other countries.
- 98
being disliked but subtly demanded to be loved”
had the same flavor.
“Now,” Murra said, “we are swept into the
dimmer atmosphere of social science.” He
despised the new, quantitativist-dominated
establishments into which “midwestern deans”
were forcibly relocating anthropology. He
quoted with approval’s Kroeber’s famous article
about anthropologists as “changelings” in the
house of social science (Kroeber 1959). And
Murra went on:
Do sociologists call us “bird-watchers,
antiquarians?” It does not matter. We
dislike the facelessness of sociological
method more than we value its
methodological virtues. [Anthropology] is
the daughter of natural science by esthetic
humanism. It started with a glowing sense
of discovery in studying culture. It is truly
called intellectualizing romanticism. But it
is never called sterile or toneless.
In 1982, Murra ran unsuccessfully for
President of the American Anthropological
Association. His platform was partly a protest on
the above lines, going on to speak against
Sputnik-subsidized inflation in the number
of U.S. anthropologists, the vested interest
of departments in “growth” without
spelled-out priorities, be they regional or
intellectual, the lavish federal grants . . .
shoe-horning research into “mental
health” and other administratively selected
categories.
His candidacy was not just a protest. It was
also an appeal to remember what had been vital
and central in the United States’ ethnological
experience. Having just finished preparing, with
Nathan Wachtel and Jacques Revel, the special
Andean number of Annales, (Murra et al. 1986
Revel et al. 1978), he reflected on the special
99 -
orienting role that “the epic of Native American
achievement” played in New World intellectual
history. He hoped the A.A.A. would expand the
tradition of the same classic ethnographers his
course expounded. American anthropologists
should orient themselves around
documentation and comparison of the
cultural history of all human societies, with
a special, though not exclusive,
commitment to those civilizations
vanquished in the expansion of Europe
and the United States . . . the “historical
anthropology” approach, so new and
experimental in France, is our pride and
heritage–it could give a focus and a new
urgency to the A.A. [American
Anthropologist] (Murra 1982).
COSMOPOLITANISM
Murra’s interest in the United States had
nothing to do with nationalism and everything
to do with cosmopolitan curiosity. Had the
disasters of the 1930s landed him someplace else
he would surely have delved into the place and
the history around him no less piercingly. In his
lectures, tantalizing digressive threads pointed
to other inquiries about other continents and
other anthropologies, which never became full
scale courses, at least not at Cornell.
Murra complained that his colleagues
pushed him into “average anthropology” instead
of letting him teach what he alone could teach.
By this he apparently meant a cosmopolitan
curriculum in ethnology. He took a strong
interest in views of American ethnology from
other intellectual traditions. Indeed in the first
week of the course I have been evoking he had
us read and debate critiques against “American
anthropology” by the Swede Åke Hultkranz
(1968) and the Hungarian Tamás Hofer (1968),
both of whom argued against the “export” of the
programs that United States foundations were
Salomon: John V. Murra
supporting. Murra could, and sometimes did,
teach marvelously on the British
anthropological tradition (he was an admiring
friend of Raymond Firth who taught at Cornell
in 1970)30 and on French ethnology, especially
French African researches. France, too, he often
reminded us, also had nationally rooted ethno-
graphic inquiries and anthropological societies
long before it had anthropology departments.
The most original of his cosmopolitan
lessons was his lecture segment (in a different
course) about the ethnohistory of the Russian
empire. One thing that made it compelling was
comparison of imperial Russia to the United
States as a particular kind of expansive
formation: an early-industrial state trampling
vast temperate and subarctic “tribal”
hinterlands. Murra began with Stephan
Krasheninnikov, who pushed Russian
exploration south from Alaska to the
Californian confines of the Spanish empire in
1735-1737, and ended with the fortunes of
contemporary ethnographic inquiry in the
Soviet Union. In connection with Boas’ Jesup
Northwest expedition of 1897-1902 he talked
with admiration of the Russian exile ethno-
graphers Lev Shternberg31 and Vladimir
Bogoraz32 (then all but forgotten in the United
30
For Firth see Barnes, this volume, note 35.
31
Lev Yakovlevitch Shternberg (1861-1927) was a
Ukranian ethnographer who studied the peoples of the
Russian northern Pacific islands and of Siberia. With
Boas’s patronage he worked for the American Museum of
Natural History. He was politically active in Marxist and
Jewish social movements. He accomplished some of his
ethnographic work while a political prisoner in Siberia.
32
Vladimir Germanovich Bogoraz (1865-1936), who was
an associate of Lev Shternberg, and who used the pseud-
onym N.A. Tan, was a Russian revolutionary, essayist,
novelist, poet, folklorist, and linguist who studied the
Chukchi people of Siberia while in political exile. Like
Shternberg he participated in the American Museum of
Natural History’s Jessup Pacific Expedition (1900-1901).
A bibliography of Bogoraz’s work was published by Katha-
rina Gernet in 1999.
ANDEAN PAST 9 (2009)
States). Murra’s brief lessons about Chukchee or
Gilyak (Nivkh) seemed outcrops of greater
study. He always kept an eye out for meritorious
ethnographers on the other side, urging us to
have a look at Sovietskaya Etnografiya; “The
good ones write sandwiches, you know, a slice of
anthropology between two slices of Lenin.”
He seemed to regret that little research had
come of his strong east-European interests.
After all, in the Cold War era, just about
anything concerning “the Soviets” was fundable,
and with his deep Russian knowledge Murra
could surely have made a career of it. Indeed in
1950 Columbia had offered him paid work on
Soviet ethnology. In 1951 Murra published a
piece explaining to Americans the importance
of “The Soviet Linguistic Controversy”, the
moment when Stalin seemed about to open a
space for cultural research by reassigning
language from “superstructure” to “base” (Murra
et al. 1951). But the cold war burden of politics
and, above all, the impossibility of unfettered
fieldwork in the Soviet sphere, put Russian-
language ethnohistory permanently on Murra’s
back burner.
Murra had a prescient sympathy for another
kind of cosmopolitans, not fashionable at that
time, but now widely appreciated. These were
the “native” intellectuals of the empires
everywhere, then sometimes called “organic
intellectuals” or “evolués.” Alongside Peru’s
“Indian chronicler” Felipe Guaman Poma de
Ayala, or Francis La Flesche, the magnificent
native ethnographer of the Omaha and Osage,
he liked to put Samuel Johnson, the pioneer
Yoruba-Anglican historian of Nigeria, or Jomo
Kenyatta, first prime minister and president of
Kenya, or the Akan intellectual J.B. Danquah,
whom he knew slightly. Danquah’s aristocratic
hauteur seemed to Murra an amusing
counterpoint to the populist tone of “de-
colonizing” anthropology. North American
Indian interlocutors, people such as School-
- 100
craft’s educated Ojibwe wife Jane Johnston,
Morgan’s Seneca friend and co-author Ely S.
Parker, and Boas’ great Amerindian collaborator
George Hunt33 never failed to loom large. There
was, of course, something personal about his
affection for intellectual lives lived among rather
than within cultures.
TO LIVE AS AN ANTHROPOLOGIST
Awed by Murra’s knack for getting along
with so many kinds of people, by his charm and
his polyglot savoir-faire, some of us wondered
why he bound himself so tightly to the archival
life of ethnohistory (c.f. Ortiz de Zúñiga 1967-
72). He never became much of a face-to-face
ethnographer. His patience for the discomforts
of Andean village life had limits. It seems,
looking back, that his life among South
American intellectuals mattered more to him
than did his outings on the puna (which is not
to deny that such trips in the company of
cultural and archaeological field-workers had
revelatory effects on him; c.f. Collier and Murra
1943). The emerging institutional research life
of Andean countries, not the Quechua or Ay-
mara rural scene, was the scene in which he
achieved great participant-observer insight.
He demanded his doctoral candidates build
collegial and ethnographic connections as major
personal commitments, not mere “contacts”.
He mentioned that:
German and Japanese anthropologists
when they arrive [in their countries of
research] usually attend local universities
and develop emotional and social ties.
This corresponds to humanism in
anthropology. Whereas, we from the U.S.
33
Tlingit George Hunt (1854-1933) was a friend and
collaborator of Franz Boas. Through marriage he also
became expert in Kwakiutl or Kwakwaka’wakw language
and culture.
101 -
come for short noncommittal visits and
objectivist purposes.
At Cornell his great institutional energies were
directed not so much toward institution-
building, as toward opening spaces for collegial,
non-bureaucratic affinity. Murra fought
continual campaigns in the graduate school for
better recognition of international credentials,
better funding of outgoing travelers and
especially, fellowships for incoming foreign
students. He invariably demanded that graduate
students take part in the institutions of their
host countries.
Students of other anthropological masters in
Murra’s generation sometimes find it hard to
understand what was so compelling about him.
Compared to some, Murra wrote little (and
often published in relatively obscure outlets).
He preferred regional, middle-level modeling to
grand theory, at a time when a grand theory
wave was cresting. He could be maddeningly
inconclusive: invited to give the Lewis Henry
Morgan lectures at Rochester University in
1969, he could not be bothered to write them
up for publication.
Yet those who worked with him never cease
to hear his echo in their minds. Having lived
into an age when humanism, skepticism,
tolerance for uncertainty, and love of the ethno-
graphic particular are again becoming welcome
in our discipline, one feels that in the end his
teaching of unfashionable anthropology did
make its mark. We are much the richer for it.
Murra’s life was not only a remarkable career in
Andean research; it also demonstrated one very
special way to live as an anthropologist.
REFERENCES CITED
Barnes, Robert Harrison
1984 Two Crows Denies It: A History of Controversy in
Omaha Sociology. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press.
Salomon: John V. Murra
Bellow, Saul
1975 Humboldt’s Gift. New York: Viking Press.
Collier, Donald and John V. Murra
1943 Survey and Excavations in Southern Ecuador.
Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History,
Publication 528, Anthropological Series, volume
35.
Dorsey, J. Owen
1885 Omaha Sociology. In Third Annual Report of the
Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, pp.
211-371.
Hinsley, Curtis
1976 Amateurs and Professionals in Washington
Anthropology, 1879 to 1903. In American
Anthropology: The Early Years, edited by John V.
Murra, pp. 36-68. St. Paul, Minnesota: West
Publishing.
Hofer, Tamás
1968 Anthropologists and Native Ethnographers in
Central European Villages: Comparative Notes
on the Professional Personality of Two
Disciplines. Current Anthropology 9(4):311-315.
Hultkranz, Åke
1968 The Aims of Anthropology: A Scandinavian
Point of View. Current Anthropology 9(4):289-
310.
Kroeber, Alfred L.
1959 The Personality of Anthropology. Kroeber
Anthropology Society Papers 19:1-5.
L[aufer], B[erthold]
1906 Boas Anniversary Volume: Anthropological Papers
Written in Honor of Franz Boas . . . Presented to
Him on the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of his
Doctorate, Ninth of August, Nineteen Hundred and
Six.New York: G. E. Stechert & Company.
Murra, John Victor
1982 Platform Submitted to Support Candidacy for
President, American Anthropological
Association. Circulated by the American
Anthropological Association and by John Victor
Murra. Photocopy. On file in the archives of
Andean Past.
1988 Review of The Evolution of Human Societies: From
Foraging Group to Agrarian State by Allen W.
Johnson and Timothy Earle. Man n.s. 23(3):586-
587.
Murra, John Victor, editor
1976 American Anthropology: The Early Years. St Paul,
Minnesota: West Publishing Company.
Murra, John Victor, Robert M. Hankin, and Fred Holling
1951 The Soviet Linguistic Controversy. Columbia
Slavic Studies. New York: King's Crown Press for
the Columbia University Slavic Languages
Department.
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