Sillustani Chullpas: Stone Tombs, Ancestors and the Altiplano

On a windswept peninsula above Lake Umayo, about 34 kilometres from Puno, stone towers stand against the sky like a silent gathering. These are the chullpas of Sillustani, burial towers built by the people of the Altiplano over several centuries to house their dead. The tallest rises about twelve metres; others are low, rough and partly collapsed. Together they are among the most striking monuments of the high plateau, and they reveal a way of thinking about death, family and land quite different from our own. On Day 14 of our South American Small Group History and Culture Tour, the group visits Sillustani in the afternoon, after a morning on Lake Titicaca.

What is a chullpa?

A chullpa is an above-ground funerary tower, built to hold the remains of a noble person or, more often, a whole family. The word is Aymara and appears in one of the earliest dictionaries of that language, compiled by the Jesuit Ludovico Bertonio in 1612. Chullpas are found across the Altiplano of Peru and Bolivia. In the northern part of the plateau, around Lake Titicaca, they are mostly round and built of stone; further south, many are rectangular and made of adobe.

Burying the dead above ground, in structures that stayed visible in the landscape, was an old tradition in the region, going back at least to the time of Tiwanaku. But building chullpas spread rapidly in the fourteenth century, and research in Bolivia by Riikka Kesseli and Martti Pärssinen has shown that their styles often matched the territories of particular ethnic groups. A chullpa was a tomb, but it was also a statement of who owned the land around it.

Sillustani in its highland landscape

Sillustani lies at about 3,900 metres on a peninsula jutting into Lake Umayo, a separate lake a short distance from Titicaca. The site covers around 60 hectares, and about 90 towers have been recorded there. The setting is dramatic: open, treeless grassland, a deep blue lake on almost every side and huge skies above. The towers stand on high ground where they could be seen from a distance, and where the living could see them in turn.

Most of the towers were built by the Colla, one of the two dominant kingdoms of the Titicaca basin in the centuries before the Inca conquest, between roughly the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. Their capital, Hatuncolla, lay nearby; the road to the site still passes through the village of Atuncolla.

Stone form, burial and ancestor memory

The largest chullpas are carefully engineered. Each has an outer skin of finely cut, closely fitted stone blocks laid over a core of smaller stones, and some were once plastered. Several of the finest towers are described as widening slightly towards the top. Each tower has a single small entrance, usually facing east, towards the rising sun, which some interpret as a symbol of rebirth. The tallest, known as the Chullpa del Lagarto, the Lizard Tower, is named for a lizard carved on one of its blocks. Lizards, which regrow their tails, are often read as a symbol of life renewing itself, though, like the meaning of the east-facing doors, this is interpretation.

Inside, the dead of a family group were placed in a crouched position, with food, offerings and personal belongings, and the entrance was sealed. The dry, sealed interiors preserved the bodies naturally. Some towers were never completed, and one still has the remains of a large earthen ramp beside it, showing how heavy blocks were raised as the walls grew. Unused blocks and a small quarry also survive at the site.

To understand why such effort went into tombs, it helps to understand the Andean relationship with ancestors. The archaeologist William Isbell has argued that the kin groups at the heart of Andean society, the ayllus, were organised around the honouring of their dead. Rather than burying ancestors out of sight, families kept them in open tombs like the chullpas, where descendants could visit them, consult them and ask for their favour. A chullpa was a place where the dead remained part of the community and where a lineage’s claim to its land was made visible to all. Spanish missionaries understood how powerful these practices were. In 1621 the Jesuit José de Arriaga urged priests to make communities hand over their ancestors’ remains so that they could be burned.

Pre-Inca and Inca contexts

The Colla were rivals of the Lupaca, the other great kingdom on the shores of Lake Titicaca. When the Colla attacked the Lupaca and were defeated, the expanding Inca state allied itself with the victors. The Inca ruler Pachacuti later conquered the Colla, around the 1460s, and his successor Topa Inca put down a Colla revolt some twenty years afterwards.

Under Inca rule, the region became part of the province of Collasuyu, and local burial customs continued. Some of Sillustani’s most refined stonework is associated with the Inca period, and many earlier towers appear to have been refaced with Inca-style blocks. The Lizard Tower itself is thought to date from that time. The site museum displays objects from the Colla, Tiwanaku and Inca periods. In 1971 a hoard of objects in gold, silver and other precious materials was found near the Lizard Tower. Over the centuries, though, grave robbers and earthquakes have damaged many of the towers; some were even blasted open by treasure-hunters.

How much walking does a visit to Sillustani involve?

A moderate amount. From the parking area, a path of about 500 metres leads up to the towers, with several stretches of stairs and uneven stone paving. At about 3,900 metres the air is thin, so walk slowly and take rests; by this point the group has spent several days at altitude. The site is exposed, with little shelter from sun or wind, so a hat, sunscreen and a warm layer are worth bringing.

Linking funerary architecture to the Lake Titicaca route

Sillustani completes a day that begins on the water, with a morning visit to the Uros floating islands, built from totora reed. After Sillustani, the group visits a Quechua farm on the Altiplano to see adobe and straw buildings, traditional medicine and the herds of llamas and alpacas that still underpin highland life. Two days later, in Bolivia, Tiwanaku and Puma Punku show the much older civilisation whose burial traditions the chullpas continued.

Our overview of the South America cultural tour route shows how Lake Titicaca fits into the wider journey. On the South American Small Group History and Culture Tour, a Program Leader and local guides help a small group of up to 16 travellers read the stones of the Altiplano.