Chauchilla cemetery
Coordinates: 14 ° 58 ′ 59.9 ″ S , 74 ° 55 ′ 34.7 ″ W.
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The cemetery Chauchilla is a burial site 30 km south of the city of Nazca in Peru .
history
The Nazca Culture Cemetery was discovered in the 1920s. The graves date to a period of about 700 years from about the year 200 to the 9th century AD, well before the rule of the Inca .
The several 100 graves were largely destroyed by grave robbers. The scattered bones and ceramic shards were brought into the open graves during the excavations. The archaeological site has been protected by law since 1997.
The cemetery is located near the Poroma River and can be reached from the Panamericana via a seven-kilometer unpaved road . It can be viewed for a fee.
Several open single and family graves can be visited. In the graves, which are only protected by light roofs, there are mummies, human bones and remains of grave goods that are not archaeologically significant. All valuable finds were stolen or taken to museums.
The dead were seated wrapped in cotton ropes and treated with resin. They were then buried in pits lined with adobe bricks . The extremely arid climate of the Peruvian coastal desert made it possible to preserve the mummies. In the case of the mummies on display, the tomb robbers tore off the cotton wrapping around the upper body to gain access to clothing and jewelry, and the head was also cut off. The heads could often no longer be clearly assigned to the bodies. Some mummies have heads made from cotton. There are theories according to which the heads were cut off in a sacrifice and stored elsewhere. During the mummification, the bodies would have been given replacement heads to complete them.
Movie
The cemetery is featured in the movie Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull . Although a name is not mentioned in the film itself, the location can be clearly identified in the film story and promotional material. In the film, the cemetery was decorated with masked Nazca guards and an underground burial chamber. In the film, the cemetery is on a ledge above the Nazca Valley and offers a view over the Nazca Lines .
There is a building with sanitary facilities and an exhibition room on the site.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Tim McGuinness: The Chauchilla Tombs . Archived from the original on December 10, 2008.
- ↑ Ben Box, Alan Murph: Peru handbook , 4th. Edition, Footprint Travel Guides, 2003, ISBN 978-1-903471-51-7 , p. 309.
- ↑ Pam Barrett: Peru . Langenscheidt Publishing Group, 2002, ISBN 978-981-234-808-1 , p. 178 (accessed October 19, 2009).