Understanding Andean Concepts of Death and Renewal

Chavín de Huántar

Credit: Sharon odb / Wikimedia Commons

In the Prehispanic Andes the landscape was innately animated, and Kipia is positioned at the center of its particular physical environment. In this sense, Kipia was not just a repository for the dead, but more widely a place of communion between the living and the departed, associated to the central huaca-huanca, and the other carved rock-faces.

The importance of Kipia lies in its role as a local huaca dedicated to the lightening deity in which overt manifestations of life and death cohabited. In turn, Kipia linked into a network of other larger potentially sacred sites, such as the lakes.

Excavated, comparative highland Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000-1450) tombs are limited, especially ones linked to important sacred sites. In synthesis, this study makes a valuable contribution to the very limited literature on the use of communal burial structures in the Andes that is based on excavation, detailed osteological analysis and is in direct connection with a particular sacred landscape.

Dr. Alexis Mantha, an expert on Andean Archeology from Université Montréal, outlines: “This article provides a very interesting and rare case study of a complex animated ritual landscape in the highlands of Ancash, Peru, during late Andean prehistory. The authors convincingly examine the intricate ritual relationships among the skeletal content of a subterranean tomb (pukullo) and other features of the surrounding landscape such as a stone monolith (huanca), peaks and highland lakes.”

Contacts and sources:
Eric Merkel-Sobotta
De Gruyter 

Citation: Carved Rocks and Subterranean Burials at Kipia, Ancash, AD 1000 – 1532 published in De Gruyter’s journal Open Archaeology, authors Kevin Lane, Emma Pomeroy and Milton Reynaldo Lújan Davila