Killke

The Killke were the pre-Inca people of the Cusco basin in the Peruvian highlands, whose archaeological culture flourished from about 900 to 1200 during the Late Intermediate Period, before Inca culture arose in the thirteenth century.

Their most important monument is the great fortified complex of Saksaywaman above Cusco, whose first sections Killke builders raised in the twelfth century and which the Inca later expanded and reused. Killke pottery, first described by the archaeologist John Howland Rowe, consists mainly of globular vessels with vertical strap handles and simple geometric line decoration in black or black-on-red over a white slip.

With the rise of Cusco under the early Inca rulers in the thirteenth century, Killke communities were absorbed into the Inca world, which inherited their stoneworking and ceramic traditions.