Bill Sillar interviewed on BBC Radio 4 on The Inca

Bill joined host Greg Jenner and other comedian Sue Perkins to discuss the Inca who controlled a vast territory from their base in Peru, stretching down the mountainous west coast of the continent, from Ecuador all the way to Argentina. However the empire barely lasted for a century and fell in the 1530s with the arrival of Spanish conquistadores, led by Pizarro. 

This episode goes beyond famous sites like Machu Picchu and explores all aspects of Inca life, death – and taxes! Along the way, it takes in social and family structures, food and drink, religious practices, art and architecture.

Much of Bill’s research on the social context of technology has been located in the Andean highlands, where he combines ethnographic and archaeological fieldwork with artefact analysis to gain a better understanding of indigenous society before, during and after the Inca Empire. 

Listen again

• BBC R4 You're Dead to Me - The Inca Empire

Further details

• Bill Sillar staff profile

Note: Bill would like to correct his description of the large andesite building blocks that the Inca carried from Cuzco (Peru) to Saraguro (Ecuador) ,a distance of 1600km: the largest of these blocks so far recorded weighed over 700kg (0.7-0.8 tons). Ogburn, D., 2004. Evidence for long-distance transport of andesite building blocks in the Inca Empire. Latin American Antiquity 15 (4), 419-439.