Bruce Mannheim is a leading scholar of Native South American language, culture, and history, particularly of Southern Peruvian Quechua.  His works span from a linguistic history of the Quechua language since the 16th century—and its shifting social ecology (The language of the Inka since the European invasion); to narrative; to ritual practices around places;  and to Quechua ontology.  A distinctive methodology he uses is to tack between the early colonial period (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the present time, in the latter case drawing on extensive ethnography. His current research project is a theory of cultural replication—the ways in which cultural forms are stabilized across time and spread across populations, within which spatial orientation--to landscape/built environment--is of primary interest.