Sacred Landscape and Cultural Astronomy on the Marcahuasi Plateau, Peru

The dramatic landscapes of the highland Andes were and continue to be sacralised in the worldviews and ritual practices of Andean peoples. Some landscapes are rendered sacred by virtue of stone, in the form of towering mountain peaks or particular rock outcroppings, whether in their natural states or modified by humans; others provide settings for charting calendrical and mythical time through the passage of celestial bodies; and some sit at the interface of the two, in the celestial alignments of stone buildings or monuments that materialize the cultural astronomies of various groups [1-11].