The site of Copacabana has been a pilgrimage destination and a place of extraordinary reverence from Formative times to the present. Together with the Islands of the Sun and Moon, Copacabana formed a part of one of the most sacred ceremonial complexes in the Inca Empire. Recent archaeological excavations at the site aimed to investigate the nature of Inca engagement with this powerful locale as evidenced through spatial and material patterns and practices. Findings from our first field season offer significant insights into imperial Inca strategies of appropriation and interaction with sacred landscapes and places.
Tamara L. Bray is Professor of Anthropology at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. She is recognized nationally and internationally for her contributions to the study of Inca imperialism and the archaeology of food. Dr. Bray received her PhD. from SUNY-Binghamton in 1991 and began her professional academic career at Wayne State University in 1995, after four years at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History where she helped to establish the Office of Repatriation. As an anthropological archaeologist, she specializes in the study of the Inca Empire and late pre-Columbian societies of the northern Andes. She has over 25 years of field and research experience in Andean South America where she has conducted significant research into long-distance trade, imperial frontiers, Inca architecture, and comparative studies of Inca ceramics and iconography in Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, Peru and Bolivia, and directed long-term interdisciplinary projects at the sites of Pimampiro, Caranqui, and Copacabana. In 2019, she initiated a new field project in southern Ecuador focused on imperial pottery production and mitmaqkuna relocated to this region by the Inca in the late precolumbian era. Dr. Bray is the author of several books and edited volumes, including most recently The Archaeology of Wak’as: Explorations of the Sacred in the Pre-Columbian Andes, as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters.
