Overview
- An international team reports in Antiquity that Monte Sierpe’s roughly 5,200 aligned holes over 1.5 km likely supported organized barter and record-keeping.
- Sediment samples revealed maize and wild basket-making plants, consistent with goods placed in plant-lined holes and transported in woven containers.
- High-resolution aerial imagery shows numerical patterning across about 60 segmented blocks, prompting comparisons to Inca khipu recording systems.
- The site sits between two Inca administrative centers near intersecting pre-Hispanic roads in a chaupiyunga zone where highland and coastal groups exchanged goods.
- Researchers propose initial Chincha-period marketplace use that later became an Inca tribute accounting locale, while cautioning the interpretation remains provisional.