Huamachuco

Huamachuco is a town in northern Peru and the capital of Sánchez Carrión Province in the La Libertad Region, the seat of the Territorial Prelature of Huamachuco, with Lake Sausacocha to the northeast. The name possibly comes from Quechua waman, falcon, and Culli chuco, land, so land of falcons. Before the Inca the area formed the Señorío de Huamachuco, a Culli-speaking polity whose main deity was the thunder god Catequil, an oracle whose shrine was later taken into the Inca pantheon; his main sanctuary at Namanchugo lies at the foot of Cerro Icchal. About 48 kilometres away in the Huamachuco district is Marcahuamachuco, the remains of a political and religious centre that thrived between 350 and 1100 CE, and the ruins of the Wari city of Viracochapampa lie 3.5 kilometres north of the town. Many other pre-Columbian ruins surround it.