LIMA (Reuters) -Human remains pointing to a 1,000-year-old pre-Hispanic cemetery were unearthed in northern Lima by workers digging under the Peruvian capital to install a gas pipeline, an archaeologist told Reuters on Thursday.
The tomb was found on a residential street just two meters (6.6 feet) from the front gate of a house.
Jose Pablo Aliaga, an archaeologist for gas distribution firm Calidda, said the remains of a man wrapped in burial cloths alongside pottery likely pointed to a burial complex, after another body was found nearby last month.
“The material evidence suggests that it could be a burial of the Chancay culture, from approximately 1,000 to 1,200 years ago,” said Aliaga, pointing to a coastal fishing-based civilization known for its textiles and ceramics.
“We are probably over a pre-Hispanic cemetery, as we found another burial just around the corner from here,” he added.
It is common for companies excavating under Lima to hire archaeologists due to the number of sites scattered in the city.
Last month, Calidda gas workers working in the same district of Puente Piedra discovered the remains of a mummified woman, which researchers estimate are over 900 years old.
Peru’s 10 million-strong capital hosts over 400 archaeological sites dotted around the city. Calidda has itself reported over 2,200 archaeological discoveries in the last two decades, most of them traced back to the Chancay culture.
The South American nation is home to hundreds of archaeological sites, including the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu in the Andean region of Cusco, and the ancient Nazca lines carved into the coastal desert of its Ica region.
(Reporting by Carlos Valdez and Marco Aquino in Lima and Camille Ayral in Mexico City; Editing by Sandra Maler)
