Overview

• Workers installing gas pipelines in Puente Piedra uncovered two Chancay-era tombs about two meters deep, one empty and one containing a seated male skeleton with associated grave goods.
• The grave goods include four clay vessels and three gourd cups decorated in black, white and red motifs characteristic of the pre-Inca Chancay culture.
• Protective construction materials of cane, logs and adobe, combined with Lima’s arid coastal climate, have preserved organic remains for roughly a millennium.
• Under Cálidda’s archaeological monitoring plan, experts from the gas distributor and the Ministry of Culture have paused pipeline works to document, clean and map the new tomb.
• The clustering of multiple tombs in recent weeks supports the theory of an extensive prehispanic cemetery beneath Puente Piedra, part of over 2,200 discoveries made during gas-network expansions in Lima since 2004.