Historical-Linguistic Considerations About the Toponym Kuelap

Abstract

The toponym of Kuelap, the name of the largest archaeological complex associated with the Chachapoyas area, has been the subject of much speculation and interpretation from the rediscovery of the archaeological site down to the present day. In the first part of this article, we review the history of the toponym and identify the original referent of Kuelap as well as its earliest form, concluding that the archaeological site was indeed called Kuelap from the beginning. In the second part, we identify the elements that make up the toponym, the form kue and the ending -lap, as belonging to the naming system of the pre-Inca Chacha language, before presenting the results of fieldwork on both elements, where we find that the toponymic ending -lap seems to be equivalent to the Aymara and Quechua term pukara, while the data obtained for the element kue do not, at present, allow for substantiated hypotheses about its possible meaning.