Peruvian workers unearth centuries-old tombs while laying pipelines

Energy company workers in Peru discovered a dozen centuries-old tombs from pre-Inca cultures during the construction of a gas pipeline, according to the project’s archaeologists, in the latest find from the South American country’s rich ancient past.

The oldest burials date back eight centuries and likely belong to Peru’s Huaura culture, while others probably pertain to the Chancay culture from around 600 years ago, said archaeologist Cecilia Camargo.

She said that beyond the skulls and other bones found in the dry sandy soil in Peru’s Carabayllo district, about 50 miles (80 km) north of Lima, some of the tombs also included pottery as well as small clay figurines, possibly representing goddesses.

The remains of both adults and children were found inside burial bundles, explained archaeologist Roberto Quispe.

Both Camargo and Quispe work for local gas distribution company Calidda, which employs its own archaeologists due to the frequency of ancient discoveries whenever a project involves digging.

While best known for the picturesque mountain-top Inca royal retreat of Machu Picchu, which draws millions of tourists every year, Peru was home to various pre-Hispanic cultures that thrived in the centuries before the Inca empire rose to power, mainly along the country’s central coast and in the Andes.

In the latest discovery which was made earlier this week, along with a large number of bones, clumps of what appear to be human hair could also be seen peaking out from the dirt.

“These people were buried with very interesting offerings,” added Camargo, noting that the goddess figurines may have been meant to accompany the deceased along their journey to the afterworld.

Human spines on sticks found in 500-year-old graves in Peru

Hundreds of years ago, Indigenous people in coastal Peru may have collected the scattered remains of their dead from desecrated graves and threaded reed posts through the spinal bones. Scientists recently counted nearly 200 of these bone-threaded posts in stone tombs in Peru’s Chincha Valley, and they suspect that the practice arose as a means of reassembling remains after the Spanish had looted and desecrated Indigenous graves.  

Archaeologists investigated 664 graves in a 15-square-mile (40 square kilometres) zone that contained 44 mortuary sites. They documented 192 examples of posts threaded with vertebrae.

The researchers then measured the amount of radioactive carbon in the bones and reed posts. Radioactive carbon accumulates when an organism is alive but decays to nitrogen at a constant rate once the organism is dead. So based on the amount of this carbon, the scientists could estimate when the posts were assembled.

Their analysis placed the vertebrae and posts between A.D. 1450 and 1650 — a time when the Inca Empire was crumbling and European colonizers were consolidating power, the researchers wrote in a new study.

This was a period of upheaval and crisis in which Indigenous tombs were frequently desecrated by the Spanish, and Chincha people may have revisited looted tombs and threaded spinal bones on reeds in order to reconstruct disturbed burials, said lead study author Jacob Bongers, a senior research associate of archaeology with the Sainsbury Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom.

“The fact that there’s 192 of these and that they’re widespread — we find these throughout the Chincha Valley — it means on one level that multiple groups of people coordinated and responded in a shared way, that this interesting practice was deemed the appropriate way of dealing with disturbed bodies of the dead,” Bongers told Live Science.

Most of the vertebrae on posts were found in and around large and elaborate stone tombs, called chullpas, that typically held multiple burials; in fact, one chullpa contained remains from hundreds of people, Bongers said.

The people who performed the burials were part of the Chincha Kingdom, “a wealthy, centralized society that dominated Chincha Valley during the Late Intermediate period, which is the period that precedes the Incan Empire,” Bongers explained.

The Chincha Kingdom once had a population numbering around 30,000, and it thrived from around A.D. 1000 to 1400, eventually merging with the Inca Empire toward the end of the 15th century. But after the Europeans arrived and brought famines and epidemics, Chincha numbers plummeted to just 979 heads of household in 1583, according to the study.

Historic documents record accounts of Spaniards frequently looting Chincha graves across the valley, stealing gold and valuable artefacts, and destroying or desecrating remains.

For the new study, the researchers closely examined 79 bone-threaded posts, each of which represented a collection of spinal bones from an adult or from a child.

Most posts held bones belonging to a single individual, but the spines were incomplete, with most of the bones disconnected and out of order. This suggested that the threading was not performed as a part of the original burial. Rather, someone gathered and threaded the spinal vertebrae after the bodies had decomposed — and perhaps after some of the bones were lost to looting, the study authors reported.

And because Andean cultures valued preserving the integrity and completeness of a dead body, the likeliest explanation is that Chincha people revisited looted graves and reconstructed the scattered remains in this way to try and restore some semblance of wholeness to remains that had been dispersed and desecrated.

“When you look at all data we gathered, all of that supports the model that these were made after these tombs had been looted,” Bongers said.

Ancient mortuary practices, such as this bone threading, provide valuable clues about how long-ago communities dealt with their dead, but they also shed light on how people defined their identities and culture through their relationships with the dead, Bongers told Live Science.

“Mortuary practices arguably are what make us human — this is one of the key distinguishing features of our species. So, by documenting mortuary practices, we’re learning diverse ways of how people showcased their humanity.”

The findings were published on Feb. 2 in the journal Antiquity.

Gold and silver treasures were discovered with ‘elite craftspeople’ burials near the powerful Wari queen’s tomb

Archaeologists excavating a necropolis north of Lima have unearthed a 1,300-year-old ornate tomb from the Wari era of Peru. The tomb contains the remains of a high-status man dubbed the “Lord of Huarmey.” 

The remains of six other people were found in the same tomb, some of which were likely reinterred after first being buried elsewhere. The remains include four adults — possibly two males and two females — and three people who may be adolescents, according to the University of Warsaw’s Faculty of Archaeology.

All the remains in the tomb were buried with gold and silver jewellery, bronze tools, knives, axes, baskets, woven textiles, raw materials for basketry, and wood and leather items — an abundance of objects that makes archaeologists think the people buried there were skilled craftspeople, as well as members of the Wari elite.

“We could call this part of the royal necropolis ‘The Gallery of Elite Craftsmen,'” Miłosz Giersz, an archaeologist at the University of Warsaw in Poland who leads the project, told Live Science in an email. “For the first time, we have found the burials of male Wari elite, who were also fine craftsmen and artists.”

Giersz’s team discovered the latest tomb in February at the Wari necropolis near the modern coastal town of Huarmey, in the Ancash region about 155 miles (250 kilometres) north of Lima. It lies just a short distance from a larger tomb, discovered in 2012 by Giersz and his wife Patrycja Prządka-Giersz, an assistant professor at the University of Warsaw. This larger tomb contained the remains of three high-status women deemed to be “Wari queens,” as Live Science previously reported.

The queens were buried alongside the remains of 58 other people. Most of the individuals were noblewomen who may have been interred later, but some were from lower social classes and seem to have been sacrificed. 

Andean empire

The Wari people lived in towns in the mountains and coast of what’s now Peru from about A.D. 500 to 1000. They are famed for their rich tradition of artwork, including gold and silver jewellery, painted pottery(opens in new tab) and vivid woven textiles.

The Wari Empire existed at roughly the same time as the Tiwanaku Empire farther south, and the two Andean states were often rivals, according to a 2003 article by archaeologists at Chicago’s Field Museum(opens in new tab). But both the Wari and the Tiwanaku empires had collapsed by the time the Inca Empire arose in much the same regions after about A.D. 1200.

The site near modern-day Huarmey features a pyramidal structure known as “El Castillo de Huarmey” — meaning the castle of Huarmey. Researchers have known about the structure since at least the 1940s, but many thought it was largely empty due to grave robbers who had already looted its gold and silver.

But the excavations in 2012 and 2013 by Giersz and Prządka-Giersz revealed it was an ancient Wari necropolis with at least one untouched tomb.

The subsequent excavation of the tomb of the Wari queens revealed that Castillo de Huarmey had once been “a large Wari mausoleum and site of ancestor worship on the Peruvian North Coast, an area that lies on the borders of the world controlled by the first Andean empire,” Giersz said.

The team also unearthed more than 1,300 artefacts that had been buried as grave gifts in the tomb of the Wari queens, including rich objects made of gold, silver, bronze, precious gems, wood, bone and shells, he said.

Wari tomb

Giersz thinks the “Lord of Huarmey” and the other people buried in the newly found tomb may have been members of the Wari elite and highly skilled craftspeople.

“The golden and silver artefacts deposited with them support this assumption,” he said. “Both men and women buried in the royal necropolis at Castillo de Huarmey were directly connected with the highest level of craft production and made the finest luxury goods of their era.”

As well as an elite necropolis, the finds show that Castillo de Huarmey was an important administrative centre of the Wari Empire, he said: “A place of production of the finest handicrafts in the domain, especially exclusive clothing… metal ornaments, and jewellery.”

Archaeologist Justin Jennings of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto was not involved in the latest study, but he has excavated other Wari sites in Peru.

He called the latest discoveries “spectacular,” but cautioned that the function of the Castillo de Huarmey site during the Wari era isn’t well understood. It may be that the people buried there were not elite craftspeople, as Giersz has proposed.

“These are wonderful pieces, and it’s so nice to have these associated with the graves,” Jennings said. But “the dead don’t get to choose what goes into their tombs — their grave goods can reflect what they did in life, but they could also very much reflect other types of messages.”

He noted, however, that the upper classes of ancient American societies were often also elite craftspeople, most famously the later Maya in Mesoamerica. “The Maya elite spent a lot of their time making elite goods, so it’s certainly not out of the ordinary,” Jennings said. 

The inclusion in the grave goods of unfinished objects was also notable, he said. “I think that does lend some credence to the idea that some of these individuals were involved in the production of things.”

An archaeological discovery in Peru: 76 graves of sacrificed children found in Huanchaco

A new archaeological find has been reported in the Huanchaco district in the province of Trujillo. An additional 76 graves of sacrificed children were discovered, thus totalling six child sacrificial events in more than 450 years.

The graves were unearthed at Pampa La Cruz archaeological site, located in the Huanchaco district. 

The head of the Huanchaco Archaeological Program (Pahuan), Gabriel Prieto, reported that the results of the 80 radiocarbon dating analyses carried out on the evidence found so far led us to conclude this thesis.

In addition, there were six sacrificial events, dating from between 1050 and 1500 AD, associated with important moments in the beginning, development, and consolidation of the Chimu society.

Prieto, who was born in Huanchaco, told the Andina news agency that 76 new children’s graves were discovered in the last excavation process carried out between July and August this year.

Out of that total, 25 graves were found in Mound I and the other 51 were uncovered in Mound II.

To date, the remains of 302 minors have been unearthed in said area.

The most unusual tomb was found in Mound I: It belonged to five women sitting head to head in a sort of circle. The analysis will determine its meaning.

Time periods and burials

The archaeologist, who is also a researcher at the University of Florida in the United States, pointed out that the earliest sacrificial event occurred between about 1050 and 1100, until 1200 AD, and was found in Mound I.

In this area, the children have something in common: their bodies are placed with their feet towards the east and their heads towards the west; that is, they turn their backs on the sea —a pattern that is repeated in all the bodies dating to that time.

Rock Art Discovered Near Machu Picchu

Archaeologists from the Decentralized Culture Directorate in Cusco (DDC Cusco) have discovered samples of cave art in a sector of the Qhapaq Ñan or Great Inca Trail that crosses the Archaeological Park of Machu Picchu in Peru.

This information was provided by Francisco Huarcaya, the person responsible for the sector of the Inca Trail that crosses the aforementioned park.

Huarcaya reported that said discovery occurred in early September this year at the 87th kilometre of the railway that leads to the Inca citadel, on the left side of the Vilcanota River.

Said samples consist of a set of images painted on different parts of a huge rock and represent figures of camelids and the sun  —the most important deity for the Inca civilization. 

Abstract graphics and other graphics with geometric shapes have been identified as well. 

“There are other images that cannot be identified due to geological problems and rock wear caused by long exposure to sun, wind, rain, and water filtration,” he noted.

The archaeologist explained that this cave art was associated with a funerary context and the cult of the apus (guardian deities in the form of mountains), such as the Huacayhuilca and Casamentuyoc mountains, as well as the Huilcamayo River —considered sacred and located near the area.

In addition to said evidence of cave art, archaeologists found human bones of a skull and a femur, which were exposed to the surface and partially covered by brush.