A new study has narrowed down when, and likely why, an Inca teenage girl known as the “Llullaillaco Maiden” was sacrificed more than 500 years ago and buried on a volcano in Argentina. Her mummified body, along with those of two other children, was found in 1999 near the summit of Llullaillaco, close to the Chilean border.
Earlier research showed the children, a teenage girl and two roughly 7-year-olds, had been fed fine foods and given alcohol and coca before being taken to an underground shrine and left to die in the Capacocha ritual, which the Inca used to appease the gods and prevent disasters through child sacrifice. Radiocarbon tests in 2007 dated their deaths broadly to between 1430 and 1520, but the exact timing remained uncertain.
The new work, published in Archaeometry, analyzed plant remains from the burial site, including corn, cassava and coca leaves. According to archaeologist Dominika Sieczkowska-Jacyna of the Silesian University of Technology, the goal was to place the sacrifice within the wider rise of the Inca Empire and better understand its political strategy. The plant evidence narrowed the likely death window to 1462 to 1507, with the most probable date around 1499, during the reign of Huayna Capac.
Researchers say the most likely explanation is political. In their view, the ritual may have helped anchor Inca power in the region, mark an important political event, or strengthen imperial control as Huayna Capac expanded the empire. The study also suggests the sacrifice may have been tied to an imperial campaign in the south and to alliances with local groups in the Titicaca basin. Sieczkowska-Jacyna said similar analyses should be done on other child sacrifice victims to better understand wider patterns of ritual and power across the empire.
