Murra, John V. (1916–2006)

Anthropologist John Victor Murra pioneered the study of the historical anthropology of the Inca empire and its subject peoples. His influential early insights into the "redistributive" nature of Inca power were stimulated by wide study of other pre-capitalist states, especially those of Africa. In 1972 he published an equally influential model of the adaptive bases of Andean society, rooted in discontinuous "vertical archipelagos" of resource bases up and down rugged mountain landscapes.

Born in Odessa on August 24, 1916, Murra took his Ph.D. at Chicago in 1956, after a turbulent period as a Republican soldier in the Spanish Civil War. All modern study of high-Andean adaptation and statecraft draws on his works: his articles in the Handbook of South American Indians, his dissertation (The Economic Organization of the Inka State, an unpublished classic until 1978), his archival discoveries and ecologically oriented analyses of sixteenth-century Inca sources, and his critical edition of the works of indigenous chronicler Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala. Murra pioneered the use of early colonial visitas (house-by-house inspections) of Andean communities, initially as a complement to his 1963–1965 fieldwork (with Craig Morris and Donald Thompson) at the giant Inca site of Huánuco Pampa.

Committed to building research infrastructure in the Andean countries, Murra published largely with Peruvian institutions. His teaching, however, was mainly done in the United States: at Vassar (1950–1961), Yale (1961–1963, 1970–1971), and Cornell (1968–1982). Murra served as President of the American Ethnological Society (1972–1973) and of the Institute of Andean Research (1977–1978). As emeritus he held honors from the University of Barcelona and from the University of San Marcos in Lima. In 2000 the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos published a conversational autobiography under the Quechua-Spanish title Nispa ninchis/Decimos diciendo (Speaking We Say). He died on October 16, 2006.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Works by Murra

Survey and Excavations in Southern Ecuador (with Donald Collier). Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History Anthropological Series, vol. 35, 1943.

"The Historic Tribes of Ecuador." In Handbook of South American Indians, Vol. 2: The Andean Civilizations, ed. Julian H. Steward. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946–1959.

"The Cayapa and the Colorado." In Handbook of South American Indians, Vol. 4: The Circum-Caribbean Tribes, ed. Julian H. Steward. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946–1959.

Visita hecha a la provincia de Chucuito por Garci Diez de San Miguel en el año 1567. Lima: Casa de la Cultura del Perú, 1964.

Visita de la Provincia de León de Huánuco en 1562. Huánuco, Perú: Universidad Nacional Hermilio Valdizán, 1967, 1972.

Formaciones económicas y políticas del mundo andino. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1975.

La organización económica y política del estado inca. México, D.F.: Siglo XXI, 1978. Republished in English as The Economic Organization of the Inka State. Greenwich, CN: JAI Press, 1980.

Guamán Poma de Ayala, Felipe. [1615] El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno. Edited by John V. Murra and Rolena Adorno, trans. Jorge L. Urioste. 3 vols. México, D.F.: Siglo XXI, 1980.

Works about Murra

Castro, Victoria, Carlos Aldunate, and Jorge Hidalgo, eds. Nispa ninchis/decimos diciendo: Conversaciones con John Murra. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos; New York: Institute of Andean Research, 2000.

                                        Frank Salomon