9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Discovering Culture Above the Clouds, July 9, 2005
"The Ice Maiden" is a riveting personal account of three decades of arduous high altitude archeological exploration by the author and his teams of Peruvian and Argentine archeologists, scientists, students and campesinos that culminated in their discovery, excavation and recovery of over a dozen Inca sacrificial mummies from Andean mountaintops (I lost count.) Even more hair-raising than the story of the initial discovery of the "Juanita" on Ampato near Arequipa, Peru are Reinhard's descriptions of later expeditions to the 22,000-foot summit of Llullaillaco in north-western Argentina, where his team found several Inca mummies in almost perfect condition. Though the progress of each expedition, from planning, ascent, through discovery, excavation to recovery descent are told in a simple, chronological style, these stories grab your full attention, similar to Jon Krakauer's "Into Thin Air," because the expeditions were so difficult, dangerous, and obscure. The teams faced lightening, blizzards, and drought many times, but also acidic drinking water near the top of the volcano Misti, near Cuzco, transport breakdowns, from army trucks to burros, and quarrels among local police, military, civilian authority and university staff about where the mummies should be kept, to say nothing of running out of food and funds. The facts of this odyssey are far stranger than fiction.
Having tried amateur mountaineering while I lived in Bolivia in the early nineties, I know how hard it is to try to walk, eat, sleep and think at 18,000 feet and above, much less conduct excavations for weeks at a time at these altitudes (sometimes including scuba diving to underwater sites), painstakingly recording and filming findings, making life and death decisions about team members' health, and carefully carrying mummies and artifacts down to the villages and towns below.
For the scientifically inclined Dr. Reinhard includes explanations of Inca culture, compared to other mountain cultures, archeological excavation and recovery techniques, modern medical procedures such as CAT scans and DNA testing, textile recovery, and high-altitude medicine. For political scientists, sociologists and the general reader he describes the sometimes noble, sometimes petty, always byzantine squabbles among international and local scholars, scientists, politicians, civilian and military authorities, and local ethnic groups for control of the mummies and their artifacts, research rights, and rights to publish popular or scientific articles about them. For the most part, these kinds of disagreements seem to have been amicably resolved. Dr. Reinhard does an excellent job of explaining why archeological excavation, recovery and safe-keeping of the Inca mummies is not desecration of them or their culture, but rather historical and cultural preservation and celebration: the many sites that his team found wasted by looters, sometimes by dynamite, including destruction of the bodies of mummies themselves (as well as by lightening) demonstrates what the practical alternatives to archeology are.
This book is by its nature intensively auto-biographical, describing each expedition in considerable detail, with the author's theories, hopes, and fears at each step, because he was the driving force in conceiving and undertaking these arduous expeditions to the tops of obscure South American volcanoes to uncover the secrets of the Inca mummies. The Ice Maiden is testimony to the courage and determination of the author and his teammates (especially Arcadio!) to undertake such field work, on shoe-string budgets over decades, to prove or disprove their and others' theories about mountain worship and human sacrifice in the Andes.
Five stars.
Stephen C. Allen, Kyiv, Ukraine, July 9, 2005
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Mountaintop Mummies, March 5, 2006
Johan Reinhard led the archeological expeditions that discovered incredibly well-preserved Inca mummies in the Andes Mountains, including the world-famous Juanita in Peru and even more exciting finds in Argentina. This book offers details on several of Reinhard's expeditions, along with some new knowledge about Inca culture. We learn here that Inca nobles often traveled with great hardship to the summits of the most imposing mountains in the Andes, centuries before the advent of technical mountaineering. In fact, the mountains themselves were revered as deities, and human sacrifices were offered at their very summits, resulting in mummies that were remarkably preserved in the frigid environment. This book features outstanding photos of these mummies and the other valuable Inca artifacts that were found on the expeditions, while Reinhard reveals all the possibilities of the brand new science of high-altitude archeology, which have already contributed to expanding our knowledge of the Incas. The only problem with this book is that Reinhard spends far more time discussing the logistical and interpersonal issues behind his expeditions. This is still readable info for those interested in mountaineering, but Reinhard lapses into unnecessary details about personal disputes and bureaucratic red tape. This is all at the expense of more knowledge about the details of Inca culture that were unveiled, especially concerning their mountain climbing practices and their customs of human sacrifice in some of the most inhospitable locations on Earth. [~doomsdayer520~]
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An extraordinary accomplishment, July 4, 2005
Johan Reinhard is one of the true explorers of our time and his achievements in the high Andes will be remembered as among the greatest scientific discoveries in the field of archaeology. Having worked for years in Nepal as an ethnographer, and having participated in several major mountaineering expeditions, Reinhard came to Peru with a rare combination of skills and intuitions that allowed him to transform his academic discipline. Recognizing that the Inca and other pre-Columbian civilizations revered mountain deities as the origin of life and symbols of fertility and made human sacrifices as a means of rendering sacred the bond between humans and the land, Reinhard began the arduous task of surveying the summits of some 250 Andean peaks. A highly accomplished mountaineer and veteran of Everest expeditions, he possessed the unique combination of physical ability and intellectual precision and creativity that allowed him to do what many had deemed to be impossible-complete and systematic archaeological excavations in frozen ground at heights of well over 6000 meters. The Ice Maiden is an amazing account of both these impossible expeditions and the astonishing discoveries that continue to this day to yield insights into the nature of life in the Andes before the arrival of the Spanish and the beginning of the deluge that swept away the greatest empire ever to have been brought into being in the Americas. This book is a must read for anyone interesting in the challenge of exploration and the triumph of scientific discovery.
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