9.1553°S, 78.3044°W.
Punkuri is an Initial Period ceremonial mound in the Nepena Valley of Ancash, northern Peru, dated to approximately 1500 BCE. The site is best known for a polychrome clay sculpture of a feline figure flanking the main staircase to the upper platform — among the earliest large-scale figurative sculpture on the Peruvian coast. Beneath the sculpture, excavations directed by Julio C. Tello in 1933 recovered the burial of a young woman accompanied by a strombus shell trumpet and turquoise beads, interpreted as a dedicatory offering at the time of the staircase's construction. The mound is built of stone and adobe in superimposed phases. The feline sculpture, with its inset shell teeth and curved fangs, has been interpreted as an ancestor of the Chavin Tello Obelisk imagery a millennium later. Punkuri sits in association with the larger Cerro Blanco and Huaca Partida complexes farther up the valley.
The clay feline still occupies its original position at the staircase head, protected today by a roofed shelter.