Nasca Mummies Found Beside a Wari Temple in Peru

Peru’s archaeological record has been looted for centuries, by conquistadors, then by black-market grave robbers known as huaqueros. So it means something when researchers find a sacred burial site that nobody ever disturbed, sitting exactly where textbooks say it shouldn’t be.

A Burial in the Wrong Place

Corina Kellner, a professor of biological anthropology at Northern Arizona University, found the burial in 2022 while excavating Huaca del Loro, a major site on Peru’s southern coast tied to the Nasca civilization, which occupied the region from roughly 1 to 750 CE. Kellner and her colleagues uncovered the mummified remains of four individuals, wrapped in cloth, posed seated upright with their knees drawn to their chests and their hands near their faces. The bodies had sat completely undisturbed for more than 1,000 years. What struck Kellner most wasn’t the mummies themselves, but where they were: buried beside a Wari temple rather than in the cemetery nearby, where the rest of the site’s burials are typically found.

An Empire With a Violent Reputation

The Wari Empire expanded out from the Ayacucho Basin into Peru’s coast and highlands between roughly 600 and 1100 CE, a period of growth that historically involved violent military campaigns. Fortified complexes like Pikillaqta, covering roughly one square mile, and Wari artwork depicting armed soldiers both point to an empire comfortable projecting military force. Huaca del Loro itself appears to have functioned as a seat of Wari administrative power in the Nasca region, complete with the empire’s characteristic D-shaped temples, according to a presentation Kellner and colleagues gave to the 66th meeting of the Institute of Andean Studies.

Gifts, Not Just Conquest

Despite that history of conquest, what the team found inside the mummies’ tomb complicated the simple picture of a violently imposed empire. The plaster-encased burial contained posthumous offerings: important local foods, a mix of local and imperial Wari ceramics together, and camelid sacrifices, meaning alpacas or similar animals. Kellner and her colleagues suggested these individuals may have represented a consecration of ties between the Wari and the Nasca, marking a place of real ideological importance rather than simply commemorating a conquered population.

Rethinking Who Supported Whom

Kellner, working alongside Melissa Lund, a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, and graduate student Alexandra Oshiro, both part of the Research Group in Bioarchaeology and Forensic Anthropology in Lima, has spent years trying to determine whether the Nasca and the Wari had direct contact, and if so, what kind of relationship that was. The mix of cultural practices at this burial suggests to Kellner that the two groups may have had a prior relationship, one in which, as she put it, the Nasca civilization might have supported the Wari Empire. That reading partly comes down to geography: the Wari settled in Ayacucho, a high-elevation region poorly suited to growing cotton, while the Nasca occupied lower elevations ideal for cotton, coca leaves, and other crops the Wari may have needed.

Testing the Theory With Science

The team’s initial assessment relied on X-rays of the mummies, reviewed alongside a radiologist and a physician. With permission from Peru’s Ministry of Culture, researchers have since removed the mummies from the Museo Nacional de Ica, where they’re currently held, for more detailed scientific study. Peruvian archaeologists working with the Museo Nacional de Lima have already taken DNA samples and performed CT scans. Once those results come back, Kellner’s team at Northern Arizona University’s Anthropology Isotope Paleodiet lab plans to run isotope analyses on the remains, measuring ratios of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen isotopes preserved in organic tissue. Those ratios can reveal diet, geographic origin, and migration patterns, information Kellner hopes will clarify exactly how far this particular Wari outpost’s influence actually reached.

Cooperation Doesn’t Mean the Conquest Myth Is Wrong

Kellner is careful not to overstate what this single burial proves. Her team’s broader research goal is to look for actual colonization techniques, searching for evidence of local resistance and trying to determine just how complex the Wari-Nasca relationship really was across the wider region, not only at this one temple. Still, she said the find pushes back against a simplistic narrative. “We usually think of colonization as this rough and tumble violent thing, but that is not always the case,” Kellner said. “Humans are social animals, and we do cooperate and take advantage of the different strengths of each society.”

Sources

This report draws on Northern Arizona University’s own announcement and original coverage by Gizmodo and Ancient Pages.