Last Updated January 2007

From Booklist by David Pitt, American Library Association

Although much of Incan society remains a mystery, we know a lot more now than we did a couple of decades ago--thanks, in large part, to the discoveries of Reinhard, a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, high-altitude archaeologist, and expert on the Inca.  Books about monumental scientific discoveries can be tremendously exciting, if told in the right way.  Reinhard, an experienced writer, sure knows how to tell this one.  Presuming that many of his readers will not be well versed in the technical aspects of his story, he approaches his tale as a memoir rather than a scientific treatise.  Expect interest not only from archaeologists but also from armchair explorers and popular-science fans.

 

From The Washington Post

"An Archaeologist's Goose-Bump Moment" by Neil Baldwin 7/28/05

 Johan Reinhard, a high-altitude archaeologist and "Explorer-in-Residence" for National Geographic, has spent his entire professional life accepting the challenge of mountains.  The Ice Maiden is the compelling and often astonishing first-person account of his excavation of three of these sites in the forbidding Andes ranges of Peru .  The Ice Maiden is especially to be appreciated in the context of contemporary popular descriptions of indigenous peoples and their myths and archetypes because it portrays a culture very different from ours with excitement and energy while still maintaining this kind of balanced, informed respect.

 

From The Wall Street Journal 

"Out of Thin Air" by Michael Ybarra 6/15/05                                                    
                         

The Ice Maiden is part adventure story, part detective story and part memoir--an engaging look at a rarefied world.  The most gripping parts of the book deal with Mr. Reinhard's efforts to piece together why the Inca sacrificed children and why they felt compelled to make the hard journey to great heights.  Such a world seems incredibly remote from our own, but Mr. Reinhard manages to bring it a tiny bit closer.

 

From Archaeology May/June 2005 

"Adventures in Andean Archaeology" by Julia M. Klein

 You can almost feel the frigid Andean winds in Johan Reinhard's The Ice Maiden: Inca Mummies, Mountain Gods, and Sacred Sites in the Andes which combines adventure writing and insights into Inca culture with an introduction to the rigors and rewards of high-altitude archaeology.  Reinhard has spent 20 years in the Andes, and his clearly written narrative moves back and forth in time as he searches for "the perfect mummy," one in even better condition than Juanita. 

About the Author
For more than 20 years, Dr. Johan Reinhard has conducted anthropological field research in the Andean countries of Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, and Ecuador. His investigations have led him to present new theories to explain the mystery of prehispanic ceremonial sites on mountain summits as high as 22,109 feet, and ancient ceremonial centers including Machu Picchu. While making more than 200 ascents over 17,000 feet, Dr. Reinhard has discovered more than 40 high-altitude ritual sites.

In addition to being a National Geographic Society Explorer-in-Residence, Reinhard is a Senior Research Fellow at the Mountain Institute (Washington, D.C.); a Visiting Professor at Catholic University (Salta, Argentina); and an Honorary Professor at Catholic University (Arequipa, Peru). He is the author of numerous scholarly books and articles. In 1987 Dr. Reinhard was a recipient of the Rolex Award for Enterprise in the field of exploration. He is noted in the Guinness Book of World Records for the Inca Ice Maiden discovery.  Time magazine selected each of the 1995 and 1999 mummy finds as being one of “the world’s ten most important scientific discoveries” for those respective years—making Dr. Reinhard one of the few scientists to have had his work chosen twice for this distinction. In 2000 he was selected by Outside magazine as one of “today’s 25 most extraordinary adventurers, outdoor athletes, and explorers.” In 2001 the Ford Motor Company chose him as one of twelve Heroes for the Planet, and in 2002 he was awarded the Explorers Medal of the Explorers Club of New York.  He lives in Franklin, West Virginia.

Product Description:
The erupting volcano of Sabancaya spewed out clouds of ash over a mile into the sky, blanketing even its higher neighbor Ampato. After three years the weight of melting snow finally caused a section of Ampato's 20,700' high summit ridge to collapse. As it swept into the crater below, the mix of ice and rock carried with it a cloth-wrapped bundle. Smashing against a boulder, the outer cloth of the bundle was torn open and objects were strewn over the icy landscape. But the most important part of the bundle remained intact-the frozen body of an Inca child. Since Johan Reinhard found the mummy in 1995, news of its discovery has reached more than a billion people. It has been the subject of TV documentaries in several languages, and front-page newspaper stories (e.g. NY Times), major stories in magazines (e.g. Newsweek and Time). But most importantly it was one of the best-preserved mummies ever found and the only body of an Inca female. It provides the proverbial time capsule, a human frozen in time, whose study has yielded results ranging from the best preserved DNA of its age to the first complete clothing of an Inca noble woman. During later expeditions Reinhard led to the mountain, three more Inca human sacrifices and several rare gold and silver statues--clothed in finely woven miniature textiles--and other artifacts added to the discovery's significance. The original mummy, now known by the name of the "Ice Maiden" was chosen by Time magazine as one of the world ten most important scientific discoveries for 1995. Dr. Reinhard's work at Ampato and on subsequent expeditions to other Andean peaks resulted in his finding ten Inca human sacrifices and the richest collection of Inca artifacts ever made. The physical hazards of high-altitude archaeology, the insight his discoveries yield on the lives and culture of the Inca, the intrigues and strange, even cult-like, activities surrounding the mummies once they were displayed around the world, provide a human dimension to his science that Dr. Reinhard recounts in his book. The excavations and the excellent preservation of the mummies and artifacts found with them have meant that scientists from an array of fields--biologists, botanists, chemists, pathologists, ornithologists, nutritionists, and historians--continue to be fascinated by them. Rarely is it possible to have such a combination of adventure and discovery together with important "firsts" in the field of science. Rarer still is to have them be about a topic that cuts across age and cultural boundaries, causing headlines around the world. The discoveries have opened up completely new areas of research about the past and have impacted dramatically on the countries where they occurred, and not least of all on the lives of the people who made them.