The pyramid-like Castillo de Huarmey burial complex is located in the Ancash Region of Peru and is known as “the Castle on the River Huarmey.”
The Wari culture, a pre-Inca Middle Horizon civilization that thrived in the south-central Andes and coastal region of present-day Peru from roughly AD 500 to AD 1000, was considered to have built the site as a royal cemetery.
One of the tombs discovered contained 60 human remains that were seated in rows and belonged to royal Wari women, together with 1,300 objects composed of gold, silver, bronze, precious stones, wood, bones, and shells. The tomb also contained beautiful ceramics.
However, archaeologists have now discovered four adults and three teenagers’ graves, as well as hundreds of deposited tools, an axe, knives, and supplies for plaiting baskets in the “Gallery of Elite Craftsman.”
The finding disproves the notion that Castillo de Huarmey was dedicated solely to royal burials and instead shows that it was a necropolis used by a wider elite and was used as a site for ancestral devotion and for the creation of prestigious hand-crafted items.
” This discovery confirms what we expected from previous years: both men and women buried in Castillo de Huarmey were devoted to the highest-class craftsmanship and produced elite products of their era.”
Professor Miłosz Giersz, Head of the Department of Archaeology of the Americas at the University of Warsaw
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