Inca Mountaintop Shrines and Glaciers in the high Andes

Abstract

This paper offers a summary of several years of high altitude archaeological investigations that I have undertaken in the South American Andes, focusing on the strategies used by the Inca civilization to choose Andean peaks for the construction of mountaintop shrines that are the highest archaeological sites in the world. Selected mountains were used as places of pilgrimage in the context of sacrifices and offerings performed five centuries ago during state-sponsored ceremonies called capacochas. Diverse attributes could have been involved in the selection of the mountains to be crowned with imperial summit shrines. Archaeological examples are from Andean mountains above 5,000 meters in elevation, where I have been conducting high-altitude explorations on more than one hundred peaks since 1996. The evidence from archaeological surveys is contrasted with ethnographic data and references from ethno-historical sources. Attributes such as the altitude of the mountains and their visibility, as well as the accessibility of the summits, are taken into consideration in the analysis, pondering the strategies used by the Incas to cope with glaciers climbs, active volcanoes and snowcapped peaks.