Cerro Sombrero Geoglyphs
Sombrero Hill Geoglyphs · Tamarugal Sombrero Figures
Late Intermediate (Tarapacá / Pica)·Tarapacá / Atacameño caravan·🇨🇱 Tarapacá Region, Pampa del Tamarugal, Chile
About
About Cerro Sombrero Geoglyphs
An isolated hilltop ensemble on Cerro Sombrero, a flat-topped mesa 18 km northwest of the Pintados Archaeological Park. The crest bears 16 geoglyphs: 22–40 m additively-built stone rhomboids, biomorphic camelids and 8-m anthropomorphs with rayed heads executed by piling dark trachyte blocks to form positive figures on pale salitre crust, plus cleared negative lines on the lower slope. Briones & Núñez 2011–2015 recorded dark-stone vs cleared techniques in a single site, with associated Tarapacá (900–1400 CE) caravan ceramics linking it to the Pica–Tarapacá caravan network. Unlike Pintados' extraction-pile ramps, Sombrero uses hill-crest concentration and year-round visibility.
Why it mattersDemonstrates dual technique on one hill within the greater Tamarugal caravan geoglyph province.
Open questions
Mysteries & theories
Mysteries
- 01Hilltop shrine vs wayfinding
Theories
- 01Caravan apachita marking
Theories are interpretations, not findings. The seal above tells you how much scholarly weight the place carries.
History
How it came to be
- Built
- c.900 – 1400 CE
- Period
- Late Intermediate (Tarapacá / Pica)
- Culture
- Tarapacá / Atacameño caravan
- Builders
- Tarapacá caravan communities
- Purpose
- Caravan landmark and ritual hill shrine
- Abandoned
- c.1450 CE Inca conquest
- Rediscovered
- 1965 Lautaro Núñez reconnaissance; 2011 Briones mapping
- Excavation
- Partially excavated
900 CE
Initial positive-stone rhomboids
2011
Briones UAV documentation of 16 figures
On the ground
Structures & features
19.9800° S · 69.7800° W · 1050 m · 2 mapped features
Crest Camelid Pile
geoglyph40-m additive camelid in dark stone
19.9790° S · 69.7810° WRayed Anthropomorph
geoglyph8-m pile anthropomorph with rayed head
19.9820° S · 69.7790° W