Tastil

Tastil was the largest pre-Columbian town in what is now Argentina, built in the Quebrada del Toro in the mountains of Salta, at the meeting point of the Atacama puna and the Calchaquí valleys. Scholarship attributes it to Atacameño, or Likan Antai, communities on the edge of the Diaguita world.

At its height in the fifteenth century it held more than 2,000 people in some 440 mortarless stone houses, laid out around plazas and a wanka, or sacred stone, with llama corrals and grinding places for quinoa and maize. The Inca invasion of the late fifteenth century ended it: Tastil was besieged and abandoned before the Spaniards arrived, and its people were resettled as mitimaes.