Rapayan

Rapayán stands on a ridge above the upper Marañón valley, east of the Cordillera Blanca. Stone buildings and burial structures occupy the slopes and heights, overlooking the river basin and the steep mountain valleys that lead towards it. Excavations have found evidence of a remarkably long occupation, extending from ancient pre-Inca times into the period of Inca rule.

The Inca occupied Rapayán directly during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Its buildings were used as homes, but excavations also revealed that important funerary rites took place within them. Burial towers, or chullpas, appear in this and other highland settlements of Áncash, reflecting the significance of ancestors in the landscape. Rapayán may have continued to be occupied into the early colonial period, after the Spanish conquest.