The Cultural Landscapes of Pre-Inka and Inka Copacabana

This chapter reconstructs the cultural landscape of Copacabana from roughly 500 B.C. to 1400 A.D. Small and dispersed human settlements have been documented in the Copacabana cultural landscape, going back several thousand years before Christ. It was not until the Upper Formative (Late Titinhuayani on the Island of the Sun, 500 B.C.–A.D. 400) that populations began to concentrate on the northern end of the Island of the Sun where the Sacred Rock is situated. This chapter also reconstructs the Inka period of Copacabana through the lens of the state-directed pilgrimage. This pilgrimage route is reconstructed from the point it enters the Copacabana peninsula to the rock sanctuary on the Island of the Sun. The physical archaeological evidence is presented and correlated with ethnohistoric accounts.