The prehistoric city of Tiwanaku is located on the southern shore of the famous Lake Titicaca along the border between Bolivia and Peru. During the heyday of this city was between A.D. 500 and 950, religious artifacts from the city spread across the southern Andes, but when the conquering Inka arrived in the mid-fifteenth century, the site had been mysteriously abandoned for half a millennium. Even after its abandonment, Tiwanaku continued to be an important religious site for the local people. It later became incorporated into Inka mythology as the birthplace of mankind as the Inka built their own structures alongside the ruins. Tiwanaku remains an integral locale in the religious lives of Andean people in the turbulent present of modern Bolivia. Although dozens of national and international projects began to unlock Tiwanaku's secrets during the last century, we are only recently beginning to piece together the puzzle behind the origin of this architectural marvel and the people who built it.
The University of Pennsylvania project started collaborating with the Department
of Archaeology of Bolivia (DINAR, directed by Javier Escalante) in 1995 on the
monumental temple of Pumapunku, one of the finest examples of Precolumbian
architecture. In the last few years, our project has grown to include the
entire site (four square kilometers) with participation from the University of
Wisconsin, Madison; University of Denver; MIT; and students from the UMSA, the
Bolivian university in the capital of La Paz. Our project has not only focused on
the impressive monumental remains; we have also been investigating the everyday lives of
the site's inhabitants.
In the summer of 2004, the archaeology field school from Harvard University excavated the location known as La Karaña, an area north of the site's monumental core. They also continued to examine the layout of the city through geophysical investigation and excavation.
Click here for the conclusion to the 2004 season.
Update: Jan. 2005 - Penn Museum Begins Ground-breaking Project to Create Underground Image of Pre-Inca City
| Tiwanaku: History & Context|
This complex society existed high in the Andes hundreds of years before the Inka, and its remains are still important to Bolivia today. Read about the site's background.
| Field Notes 2004|
Excavations at La Karaña amnd west of the Akapana pyramid
| The 2002 Season|
During the summer of 2002, we focused on the Akapana pyramid and the Pumapunku temple.
What is it like to dig at Tiwanaku? Field school students tell all.
| Photo Gallery|
Take a virtual tour of Tiwanaku (24 photographs). See the map to get the lay of the land.
Our visitors get answers from archaeologists working at the site.
People of the Tiwanaku Project
| Experimental Archaeology|
How did the builders of Tiwanaku's pyramids get the stone to the site? We tested one theory using only traditional techniques and locally available materials.