Steve Kosiba is an anthropological archaeologist who specializes in the politics of ancient states, with emphasis on the formation of the Inka polity in the Peruvian Andes. His research investigates how the Inkas first claimed their absolute authority and cast autonomous peoples as political subjects by transforming select places and objects significantly associated with a non-Inka past, such as shrines and local seats of power. He is interested in how imperial projects are manifested through the production of landscapes that both embed and engender a particular vision of social difference, order, and history.