An Ancient Mausoleum, Untouched by Looters, Is Found Under Peru’s Sands

Under a ruined citadel on Peru’s arid northern coast, archaeologists have discovered an ancient mausoleum untouched by centuries of conquest and plunder by the Inca, Spanish colonizers, and generations of looters, officials announced this week.

The site, Chan Chan, whose ruins include giant adobe brick ruins, has been excavated for decades. But researchers had never before found an undisturbed tomb at the city, which was the capital of the kingdom that ruled much of Peru’s coast before the Inca.

The tombs contained 38 bodies, archaeologists said, adding that the scale of the mausoleum — nearly 55 feet on each side and 16 feet high — and the scores of artifacts within suggest the people buried there were members of the Chimu elite. The team of Peruvian archaeologists said that the tombs were about 600 years old, which would date them to just before or during the Inca conquest of the region, in the mid-1400s.

“This is the discovery of the decade in terms of it’s the very first time that, as archaeologists, we are able to see an elite Chimu burial,” said Gabriel Prieto, a professor of anthropology at the University of Florida, who was not involved in the research.

The Peruvian archaeologists realized only slowly that they had found something different, as they removed sand, soil and debris from the tomb’s entrance one centimeter at a time.

“It was a feeling of anxiety and urgency, to know if we were really in front of a chamber that had never been looted,” said Jorge Meneses, the archaeologist responsible for excavations.