Before Cocaine, Coca for the Spirits: Why Was Coca Stuck in Three Llamas' Wool at Tambo Viejo?

Coca, you know what that is, or you may think you know, but you do not, or you are like me and accidentally thought cacao, aka chocolate. Well, don’t mix up coca and cacao; it probably won’t end well.

So what is coca? Most people today may know it as a leaf which contains the various natural compounds needed to make cocaine. See why I said don’t confuse coca and cacao?

Well, long before it became notorious for its association with cocaine and the drug war, it was one of the most sacred plants in the Inka world. It was used to pay taxes and offered up in ceremonial rituals.

But because coca, like so many organic materials, does not survive well in archaeology, and the Inka left no written language for us to glean insights into the plant’s use, much of what we know comes from the conquering Spanish chroniclers. They, in turn, usually did not record in much detail the various ways coca was used, especially in ritual settings.

This is how the stories of so many ancient civilisations and conquered peoples survive: in fragments, or through the eyes of those who conquered them. Which begs the question: if this is all that reaches us, how much has been lost, and can we ever get some of it back?

The great thing about archaeology is that sometimes, it allows us to do just that. That’s why the study by Lidio Valdez and his colleagues is so striking. Having dug at Tambo Viejo for years, the site has revealed a myriad of astonishing finds, including elaborate ritual sacrifices, once typically associated almost exclusively with the Inka capital of Cuzco; freeze-dried potatoes, a staple food of the Inka, almost never recovered in archaeological contexts; and now, evidence of how coca was used in ritual ceremonies. And unlike what the Spanish chroniclers said, the leaves were not always burned. But how were they used then, and why were they offered in the first place?

The Inka and Coca

The Inka built one of the most powerful empires in the Americas, one that extended across large swaths of South America. Many people know them for their great cities such as Cuzco and Machu Picchu; others may know them for their child sacrifices, and others still for their quipus, a knotted recording system still not fully deciphered.

The Inka, like so many civilisations before them, worshipped various heavenly deities, including the Sun (Tayta Inti), the Moon (Mama Killa), Thunder (Illapa), the Mother Sea (Qochamama), and the Mother Earth (Pachamama).

The Inka were convinced that these deities held power everywhere and shaped all aspects of human life. As such, they regularly held ceremonies at Cuzco, presenting offerings so the deities may, in turn, offer them good fortune.

Among the other sacred things of the Inka was coca, also called Cocamama (Mother Coca).

The coca plant belongs to the genus Erythroxylum, of which there are around 250 species. E. coca was first domesticated in the eastern Andean slopes before it spread, eventually reaching the drier Pacific coast to the west. By the time of the Inka, it was one of their most sacred plants. The state worked various coca plantations and stored the plant in warehouses across the empire.

Spanish chroniclers quickly noticed the importance of this plant to the Inka people. Pedro de Cieza de León, for instance, chronicled how people would hold the leaves in their mouths, and when he asked them why, they replied that it staved off hunger and gave them energy, much like coffee.

The sacred plant was used in various aspects of life, including being placed with the dead or left as offerings at shrines and sacred landmarks the chroniclers say.

Many people are familiar with the Inka child sacrifices, reserved for the most solemn occasions, and perhaps you know of the much more common animal sacrifices, typically including llamas and guinea pigs, and fine textiles. But coca leaves were also an important ritual item.

When the Inka took over the central Peruvian coast, they also took control of the various coca plantations already being grown at the Chillón, Rímac, Lurín and Cañete valleys. Coca was grown further south too, in the Acari valley.

That is the valley with which we concern ourselves today.

Sacrifices of Tasselled Llamas and Scattered Coca

Within the Acari valley lies the provincial centre of Tambo Viejo, founded in the early 1400s on the vacant parts of a long-abandoned settlement; the main installation overlooked the vast valley and included a large plaza with an ushnu platform, cobblestone-walled buildings and a second plaza to the south.

These provincial centres are often thought to follow a certain plan, a blueprint that is copy-pasted with minimal changes, basically. But excavations at Tambo Viejo have shown that it was repeatedly rebuilt, with various structures razed to make way for new structures, making its original layout difficult to discern.

It was a place not just of administration but also of ritual, with earlier archaeological digs at the site having revealed sacrificed llamas and guinea pigs, as well as coca seeds suggesting local cultivation. Some coca leaves were discovered in Structure 4 in a culluna (a type of storage structure), while coca bags turned up over in Structure 1, relatively close to a llama offering made before the building was even erected, suggesting coca may have been linked to Inka ritual practice.

All in all, Structure 4 had 14 sacrificial llamas, nearly all only a few months old. Since llamas are born between January and March, that points to a sacrifice around the June solstice. They were adorned with colourful ear tassels and necklaces, with faces painted with red lines and dots.

Guinea pigs were also sacrificed, with 100 found in structures 1 and 2 and 120 in structure 4. Some were adorned with colourful strings and necklaces, and many died very young. Strikingly, the lack of cuts or trauma combined with upright heads suggests they were buried alive, much like some child sacrifices were.

But there’s the thing that caught the researchers’ eye, something that maybe would go unnoticed to you or me: coca leaves stuck in the woolly necks of some of the llamas.

It suggested the Spanish chroniclers may not have had the full picture; coca was not just burned but also scattered across the llama sacrifices.

But what exactly happened here, and why practice such an elaborate and costly ritual ceremony in the first place?

A Valuable Offering To the Spirits

Based on radiocarbon dates, the Inka use of Structure 4 falls between AD 1450 and 1500, though the llama offerings beneath it were laid down earlier, before the building existed at all.

Governing an empire as vast as that of the Inka was no easy task, and it likely does not surprise you that conquered locals sometimes did not care much for the new rulers, often seeking to regain independence. Thus, these provincial centres were not just administrative; they ruled through indirect means such as marriage alliances and by hosting generous feasts, and reinforcing their power and magnificence through elaborate rituals, as states still do.

For locals, these elaborate ritual displays of Inka ideology likely left lasting marks on their local memory. It is possible Tambo Viejo was one such ritual landscape where impressive rituals were meant to legitimise Inka rule but also appease and negotiate with the spirits.

The coca leaves at Tambo Viejo provide a rare glimpse at how such a ceremony may have unfolded. First, the llamas were decorated with ear tassels and necklaces, and their faces were painted with red dots and lines. Then their legs were bound up and folded beneath their bodies before being laid down facing east.

Then small pieces of Spondylus shell and the valuable coca leaves were scattered across their bodies before they were covered with a fresh layer of sand brought from a nearby river. The guinea pigs were buried alive above them and covered in more sand before everything was topped off with a fire lit on top of two of the llamas (perhaps coca was burned in this fire too, but it is impossible to say).

As one of the earliest deposits at Tambo Viejo, before it had become a provincial centre, the study authors propose the ritual was meant as an offering to the spirits. The Inka coming and claiming this new land may have been believed to have disturbed the local spirits and ancestors; thus, this was their way of appeasing them before building any further, with the timing around the June solstice possibly also coinciding with the return of the Pleiades and the start of the harvest.

Meanwhile, coca was added as it was known for its energy and strength-giving properties, something the deities and spirits would value too and such a prized offering would surely sit well with the heavenly powers.

And finally, the ritual helped turn an old abandoned settlement into a place imbued with Inka ideology, legitimising and cementing the Inka’s new place within it.

Ritual was a key tool in Inka expansion; after all, what’s the point of conquering if you cannot hold on to what you gained? Sacrifices like these made Tambo Viejo a place of control and negotiation, not just another administrative outpost. The Inka left no written sources of their own, and the sources written by Spanish chroniclers place sacrifices like these far away in the plaza of Cuzco.

But archaeology reveals that major sacrifices did occur far from the capital at places like Tambo Viejo, offering a glimpse into an ancient world that shaped South America and showing how a leaf most of us now know only through cocaine was once a sacred gift for the gods.

It’s a reminder that for many ancient civilisations and conquered people, their history is far more elaborate and deeper than any of the surviving written accounts could ever hope to tell.

Many surviving stories are told through fragments or through the eyes of those who conquered them, but at places like Tambo Viejo, archaeology can reveal a far more nuanced and detailed picture otherwise lost to time.

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Reference

Valdez, L. M., Bettcher, K. J., & Gutiérrez, M. S. (2026). Coca Leaves in Inka Rituals in Tambo Viejo, Acarí Valley, Peru. Ñawpa Pacha, 46(2), 203–223. https://doi.org/10.1080/00776297.2026.2719320