John V. Murra, a professor of anthropology who culled voluminous
Spanish colonial archives for research that reshaped the image
of the Incas and their vast South American empire, died on Oct.
16 at his home in Ithaca, N.Y. He was 90. The death was
confirmed by Blaine Friedlander, a spokesman for Cornell
University, where Professor Murra taught from 1968 until his
retirement in 1982. “Before he came along, the image of the
Incas was one of barbaric splendor,” said Frank Salomon, the
John V. Murra professor of anthropology at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison. But Professor Murra’s work “forged a
radically new image” of that empire, Professor Salomon said —
one based on an intricate and often ceremonial exchange of
produce as gifts among tribal kinfolk. They hiked from the edges
of the rain forest to meet those living at the heights of the
Andes, ensuring each other’s survival by trading key lowland
crops like maize and potatoes for scarce mountain goods like
llama and alpaca wool. That economic system was na