Oroncota or Huruncuta was an Inca provincial center or capital on the border of Chuquisaca and Potosí Departments of Bolivia.
Thus, to protect the highlands and the mines, the control of the Oroncota region was of defensive importance for both the Inca and their Spanish successors.
[1] Based on the land suitable for agriculture, archaeologist Sonia Alconini has calculated that the population of Oroncota was between 1,442 and 4,122 during its existence as a settlement.
Oroncota was near the southern edge of Yampara territory and other lesser-known ethnic groups such as the Chui and Chicha may have been mixed in with them.
Although probably speakers of Pukina, an extinct language, in prehistoric times, by the 16th century they spoke Aymara in common with the peoples living on the high altiplano of present-day Bolivia.
During Inca, and possibly earlier times, and in common with other Andean peoples, the Yampara were organized into an upper and lower moiety.
The Spanish chronicler, Bernabé Cobo, said that during the reign of emperor Tupac Yupanqui (1471-1493) the Inca attempted to incorporate the Aymara kingdoms and the eastern Andes into their empire.
A second site on the plateau, El Pedregal, about 4 kilometres (2.5 miles) south, was a defensive outpost in an unpopulated area covering .8 hectares (2.0 acres).
The third Inca complex, Inkarry Moqo, was located near the Inkapampa River about 5 kilometres (3.1 miles) north of Oroncota, covered 2 hectares (4.9 acres), and was apparently dedicated to collecting and storing agricultural products.
Oroncota also had the function of frontier defense, protecting the empire from the raids of the Guarani people derisively called Chiriguanaes by the Incas and Chiriguanos by the Spanish.
After their conquest of the Inca Empire in the 1530s, the Spanish continued to face a military challenge from the Chiriguanos in the eastern Andes.
Viceroy Francisco de Toledo visited Oroncota or passed nearby in 1574 during a failed Spanish military operation against the Chiriguanos.