Reiner Tom Zuidema is professor emeritus of Anthropology

Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...

 and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...

. He is well-known for his seminal contributions on Inca

Inca civilization

The Andean civilizations made up a loose patchwork of different cultures that developed from the highlands of Colombia to the Atacama Desert. The Andean civilizations are mainly based on the cultures of Ancient Peru and some others such as Tiahuanaco. The Inca Empire was the last sovereign...

 social and political organization. His early work consisted of a structural analysis of the ceque system. He later extended this approach, based on French and Dutch structuralism

Structuralism

Structuralism originated in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague and Moscow schools of linguistics. Just as structural linguistics was facing serious challenges from the likes of Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance in linguistics, structuralism...

, to other aspects of Andean civilization, notably kinship

Kinship

Kinship is a relationship between any entities that share a genealogical origin, through either biological, cultural, or historical descent. And descent groups, lineages, etc. are treated in their own subsections....

, the Inca calendar and Incaic understanding of astronomy

Astronomy

Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...

.

Publications (selection)

• 1964. The ceque system of Cuzco: the social organization of the capital of the Inca. Trans. Eva M. Hooykaas. Archives Internationales d’Ethnographie 50. Leiden: Brill.
• 1977. The Inca Calendar. In Native American Astronomy, 1:221-259. Austin: University of Texas Press.
• 1981. Inca Observations of the Solar and Lunar Passages Through Zenith and Anti- Zenith at Cuzco. In Archaeoastronomy in the Americas, ed. Ray A. Williamson, 319-342. Los Altos: Ballena Press.
• 1983. “Hierarchy and Space in Incaic Social Organization.” Ethnohistory 30 (2): 49-75.
• 1990. Inca Civilization in Cuzco. Trans. Jean-Jacques Decoster. Austin: University of Texas Press.

External links

• http://www.anthro.illinois.edu/people/rtzuidem