The Lupaca occupied seven urban centers, all of them present day cities and villages in the Puno region of Peru: Chucuito, Acora, Ilave, Juli, Pomata, Yunguyo and Zepita.

Each of them directly controlled many of the people and much of the land in the kingdom, but other wealthy Lupaca also incited the envy of the Spanish chronicler.

The wealth of the Lupaca was their herds of llamas and alpacas which grazed the barren uplands up to the snowline at about 4,800 metres (15,700 ft).

The Lupaca and other high-altitude Andean people countered the limited potential for agriculture in their homeland by establishing colonies at lower and warmer elevations both westward toward the Pacific Ocean in the Chiribaya cultural area and eastward toward the Amazon River basin.

Anthropologist Mary Van Buren suggests that the vertical archipelago as described by Murra operated only during the late Inca and early Spanish eras and further speculates that the establishment of colonies at lower elevations by the Lupaca and other highland peoples was motivated more by production of luxury goods rather than being a critical source of food for the entire highland population.

[11] The Lupaca kingdom disappeared from Spanish records around the end of the 16th century and its people became submerged in the generalized Aymara population.

The Spanish had increasingly asserted control over the Lupacas and other highland kingdoms, eroded the authority and influence of their traditional leaders, forced Aymaras to work in the silver mines of Potosí, to resettle in "reductions", and appropriated much of the former Lupaca land, especially the lowland agricultural areas of the vertical archipelago.

Adding to these factors were recurrent epidemics of Old World diseases which took a heavy demographic toll of the Andean indigenous people.