Revash

High on a limestone cliff above the Utcubamba valley in northern Peru, a row of small painted houses clings to a ledge as if a village had been shrunk and tucked into the rock. They are tombs. The funerary complex of Revash was built by the Chachapoya, the people of the cloud forests of the eastern Andes, and archaeologists Henry and Paule Reichlen, who studied it in the mid-20th century, dated it to around the 14th century. The ledge sits at roughly 2,800 metres above sea level on the cliff known as Cerro Carbón.

The mausoleums were built of stones set in mud mortar on rectangular plans, some with one storey and some with two, each sharing walls with its neighbours and backing directly onto the rock. They have no front doors, only side openings, and windows shaped like a T, a cross or a square. Their pitched roofs are pure symbolism: sheltered by the overhang, they never had to shed rain, but the builders shaped them anyway from mud over a frame of sticks and reeds. The facades are painted in red and cream, and friezes near the top of the walls carry felines, llama-like camelids, human figures and two-coloured circles, while other symbols are cut directly into the masonry. The Peruvian archaeologist Federico Kauffmann Doig argued that the tombs are replicas of the houses the living occupied.

The bones found inside show that these were collective burials, probably for prestigious lineages rather than individuals. The mummies themselves did not survive — rodents and looters destroyed them long ago — but the buildings are nearly intact. Between 1983 and 1986 the Antisuyo expeditions documented further groups of similar mausoleums in the surrounding cliffs. The architecture shows no Inca influence, a reminder that the Chachapoya world flourished before the Inca conquest reached these mountains.

Getting there

Revash lies in Santo Tomás District, Luya Province, in the Amazonas region. The nearest city is Chachapoyas, about 34 km away in a straight line; Revash is usually described as lying some 60 km south of it. From the village of Hierba Buena a short drive leads to the start of a footpath that climbs to the tombs in about an hour and a half. The nearest airport is Chachapoyas Airport (CHH), about 37 km away.