Sillustani is a pre-Incan cemetery on the shores of Lake Umayo near Puno in Peru. The tombs, which are built above ground in tower-like structures called chullpas, are the vestiges of the Qulla people, who are Aymara conquered by the Inca Empire in the 15th century.
Veneration of the dead and kinship were integral parts of Aymara culture, and the huge chullpas or “chupa” at Sillustani were built to house the Aymara elite of the immediate pre-Inca and Inca period. The word was used in the 19th century and comes from the Dictionary of Ludovico Bertonio (1612). Bertonio referred to the basket burials of the semi-nomadic pastoralists as “chulpas” and actually referred to stone towers as uta amaya “houses of the soul”. However, the term “chullpa” remains used today for the towers.
