Chachapoya Architecture

Chachapoya architecture is the building tradition of the Chachapoya people of the cloud forests of northern Peru, whose constructions may date to the 9th or 10th century and continued to be built until the tradition reached the latter part of the sixteenth century, well after the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. Its best known monument is Kuelap, sometimes called the Machu Picchu of the north, a fortress enclosed by massive exterior stone walls that reach up to sixty feet in height and that contains more than four hundred interior buildings. The architectural style is characterized by circular stone constructions and by raised platforms built into hillside slopes, with walls sometimes carrying symbolic decorative elements; the fortified site of Gran Pajaten may have served a defensive purpose against the rival Wari culture around 800 AD. Chachapoya funerary architecture took two distinct forms found worked into cliff faces and caves, standing sarcophagi placed vertically and clusters of small mausoleums built to resemble tiny houses.