50 ARCHAEOLOGY • July/August 2019

until the twelfth century, extending its influence across much

of the southern and central Andes. The Tiwanaku, who are

named for their capital city 50 miles south of the Island of Sun,

left no written records, and their settlements were in ruins by

the time the Spanish arrived in the sixteenth century. Thus, it

has been challenging for scholars to fully appreciate the intri-

cacies of their cultural practices and beliefs. But the recent

discovery of a cache of objects at the bottom of the lake has

permitted archaeologists to learn more about the role played

by ceremonies such as the one conducted off the Island of the

O

nacrispwinterday some 1 , 100 years

ago, several boats circled the Island of the

Sun in the middle of Lake Titicaca, in what

is now Bolivia. Fragrant smoke curled up

from incense burners sculpted in the shape

of pumas, and llamas wearing gold leaf orna-

ments were sacrificed, their bodies released to the freezing

depths below. These sacraments were all part of a ritual con-

ducted by priests of the Tiwanaku culture, which emerged in

the Titicaca Basin around the sixth century a.d. and endured

A trove of offerings discovered in Lake Titicaca shows how the Tiwanaku used r

Clockwise from top left: A carved Spondylus shell

depicting a llama, a gold ornament decorated with

a deity surrounded by solar rays, and a lapis lazuli

figurine in the shape of either a llama or a puma

were all found at Khoa Reef, a Tiwanaku sacred

site off Lake Titicaca’s Island of the Sun.

SACRED RITES OF AN EARLY ANDEAN E