Peru · Mineral / Architectural Craft
Khili (the buoyant totora root mass used as the island's foundation block, in the Uros' own terminology)
The construction and continuous maintenance of the Uros floating islands, an archipelago of roughly 120 artificial reed islands built entirely from totora (Schoenoplectus californicus) on Lake Titicaca near Puno, Peru, at 3,810 meters elevation — the highest navigable lake in the world. Begun in the pre-Columbian era as a defensive strategy allowing the Uros to relocate their entire settlement when threatened by the competing Colla and Inca peoples, the technique layers buoyant totora root blocks (khili) with successive crisscrossed layers of dried reed to form a living, continuously renewed platform capable of supporting houses, furniture, and boats, requiring perpetual fresh-reed addition since the base layers steadily decompose in the water. In 2025, Peru's national exhibition at the Venice Architecture Biennale specifically honored Uros and Aymara ancestral construction techniques as a living, cyclically self-renewing architectural system.
Risk level: Vulnerable · Not UNESCO-inscribed; Lake Titicaca was declared a National Reserve of Peru in 1987 for its natural biodiversity and cultural heritage, distinct from a craft-specific ICH designation
The making of khipus: cords of spun and plied cotton or camelid (llama, alpaca) fiber, tied together and knotted to record information.
The communal harvesting of table salt from a terraced network of thousands of shallow, hand-built evaporation pools cut into a mountainside in Peru's Sacred Valley, fed by a naturally salt-rich spring.
The hand-carving of alabaster (calcium sulfate), known locally as piedra de Huamanga, into devotional religious sculptures, miniature nativity scenes, and decorative reliefs.
The making of devil masks and full dance costumes for the diablada, the signature dance of Puno's Festividad de la Virgen de la Candelaria — a February festival syncretizing Catholic devotion with Aymara and Quechua Andean cosmology, in…
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