Vira Vira: A Chachapoyas Site

The Chachapoyas culture dominated the highlands of northeastern Peru for several centuries prior to their conquest by the Incas in the late fifteenth century. The ruins of their cities still litter the jungle-covered headwaters of the western tributaries of the Río Huallaga, a largely unexplored region to this day. Among these was rumored to be a large, previously undocumented mountaintop site called Vira Vira.

The three papers included here, by explorer, Keith Muscutt, architect, Vincent Lee and Dr. Doug Sharon, former director of San Diego’s Museum of Man and the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley, describe the discovery, history and exploration of the site, its architecture and planning and its significance in the larger Andean context.

Also published in “The South American Explorer,” No. 39, December 1994, and a Spanish translation is also found in “Kuelap,” the Boletín of the Peruvian Instituto Nacional de Cultura, Dept. of Amazonas, No. 110, 1996.