The History Blog

Conservators have discovered that three gold, garnet and enamel pieces from the Staffordshire Hoard which bore no immediately obvious relation to each other fit together to form a beautifully perplexing mystery object. The millefiori stud (catalogue number K545), a gold mount with a collar of garnets and a glass enameled checkerboard surface, has a rectangular hole on the under side surrounded by four smaller round holes. A small gold cylinder (K1055) decorated with cloisonné garnets has a rectangular protuberance of silver on one end and four round holes. The cylinder’s tab A fits into the millefiori’s slot B perfectly, and the four holes on both pieces align.

On the bottom end, the cylinder has another set of four matching holes with a torn piece of silver plate in the center. That torn plate in turn matches precisely the torn silver in the center of an elaborate gold cloisonné garnet circular object (K130). The silver plate in the middle was riveted to the gold circle by four rivets, same as the holes on the other two pieces. Those four rivet holes show up on the other side of K130, too, so our mystery object has at least one more part.

(Aesopian interlude: as historian David Starkey noted at the time, this is why it’s so important to keep archaeological discoveries intact in their proper context. If the hoard had been broken up and sold to the highest bidder, those pieces could have been scattered to the four corners of the earth.)

As for what it might have been used for, researchers have proposed several possibilities.

(1) A fitting on a saddle.

(2) The decorative tip to a shield boss, presumably from a very elaborate shield. (In this case the object would have been rivetted to the top / front of a standard iron shield boss. A warrior held his shield by grasping a handgrip that ran across a circular hole cut in the centre of the shield. The domed boss covered the hole while leaving space for the warrior’s hand inside.)

(3) A decorative top to a stopper that fitted into a drinking horn. (Here the object would have been rivetted to a wooden stopper that fitted inside the mouth of the horn.)

(4) A decorative terminal to a parchment roll. (I think the suggestion is that there would be one at each end of the roll, fixed to whatever the roll was attached to.)

(5) A lid to something. But what? (Again this probably requires the object being rivetted to something like a wooden stopper.)

You can see how the first two pieces — the millefiori stud and the cylinder — came together thanks to perspicacious curator Deborah Magnoler in the following video from this summer. The gentleman with her is Dr. David Symons, curator of the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, the museum that shares ownership of the hoard with The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery in Stoke-On-Trent.

Finally, and I’m really surprised at how little this has been advertised, some of the Staffordshire Hoard is coming to America! One hundred of the most important pieces, including gold and garnet sword pommels, the folded gold cross and the strip of gold with the Latin Biblical inscription, will be on display at the National Geographic Museum in Washington, D.C., starting next Saturday, October 29! The exhibit runs until March 4, 2012 so you have five months to claw your way there before all the pretty shiny heads back home.

Archaeologists excavating the peninsula of Ardnamurchan in Scotland have discovered the first fully intact Viking boat burial site ever found in the mainland UK. The grave is five feet wide and almost 17 feet long, the size of boat itself which has long since decayed. The only remnants of it are 200 metal rivets that once held the timbers together and some slivers of wood still attached to rivets. The shape of the boat, however, with its pointed prow and stern, was pressed in the ground over the centuries and is still clearly visible. Experts have given the site a preliminary date of 1000 A.D., but we won’t know the exact date until the remains are radiocarbon dated.

The Viking, of whom only a few bone fragments and teeth remain, was buried in a traditional pagan Norse warrior ritual: laid to rest on his boat with his shield on top of him, then covered in stones. Buried in the grave with him archaeologists found a sword, a battle-axe, a spear, the shield and a number of other artifacts including a bronze drinking horn, a bronze Irish ring-pin and a Norwegian whetstone. The range, variety and quality of grave goods indicate that the warrior was widely traveled and extremely well-off.

Viking boat burials in general were reserved for the most important personages destined for Valhalla. Few of them survive intact because as befits a naval theme, chosen burial sites were often coastal and thus highly susceptible to flooding and erosion. Some of them have been found on Scottish islands — the Norse were settled and living in Orkney and Shetland by the mid-800s — but all the Viking burials found on mainland Britain have been found in traditional Christian cemeteries.

The Ardnamurchan Transitions Project, a collaborative team of archaeologists from Manchester and Leicester universities, plus private archaeology firm CFA Archaeology and volunteer non-profit Archaeology Scotland, has been excavating the Ardnamurchan every summer for six years focusing their research on periods of social transition, for instance the shift from Bronze Age to Iron Age.

Hannah Cobb, an archaeologist from the University of Manchester who is co-director of the excavation, said: “We had spotted this low mound the previous year, but said firmly that it was probably just a pile of field clearance rocks from comparatively recent farming.

“When we uncovered the whole mound, the team digging came back the first night and said it looked quite like a boat.

“The second night they said: ‘It really does look like a boat.’ The third night they said: ‘We think we really do have a boat’. It was so exciting, we could hardly believe it.”

They recovered fragments of an arm bone and several teeth, which should allow analysis of radioactive isotopes and reveal where the man came from.

The fragments of wood clinging to the rivets should reveal what trees were felled for his ship, and possibly where it was built.

The beautiful and rugged coastal Highlands of Ardnamurchan have long since appealed to local populations as burial grounds. There are cairns dating back to the Stone Age 6,000 years ago in the area. Perhaps it was specifically selected as a final resting point for a highly respected Viking figure, or perhaps he died in transit. Its completeness, artifact remains, pagan ritual and location on the British mainland provide a rich field of material that archaeologists expect will illuminate post-raid Viking life in Scotland.

The artifacts are now being studied by team members at the universities of Manchester and Leicester. They will be cleaned and eventually put on display at a museum to be determined. Of course the British Museum is interested, but the locals think this spectacular find should be exhibited in Scotland where it was found.

Archaeologists excavating Mexico City’s Templo Mayo have discovered a circular platform studded with snake heads that they hope might be a clue to finding an Aztec emperor’s tomb. It is 15 yards in diameter and dates to around 1469.

The team has been digging for five years looking for what would be the first tomb of an Aztec ruler ever found. The Spanish priests who accompanied Cortés and his troops to the Aztec capital then known as Tenochtitlan recorded that Aztec kings being cremated at the foot of the Templo Mayor on a structure called the “cuauhxicalco.” This platform could well be the cuauhxicalco, and if it is, then perhaps an imperial tomb is nearby.

There are no other extant sources that describe how the Aztecs buried their royalty, however, so the archaeological team doesn’t have a lot to go on. On the other hand, the Spanish conquistadors did provide themselves with a rare opportunity to see the death of three Aztec kings — Montezuma II, his brother Cuitláhuac, and Cuitláhuac’s nephew, Cuauhtémoc — within six years of their arrival, so an argument could be made they are expert witnesses.

[National Institute of History and Anthropology archaeologist Raul Barrera] said the platform, which is still being unearthed, was gradually uncovered over the preceding months. It is covered with at least 19 serpent heads, each about a half-yard (meter) long.

Barrera said accounts from the 1500s suggested the platform was also used in a colorful ceremony in which an Aztec priest would descend from the nearby pyramid with a snake made of paper and burn it on the platform.

Records indicate there were a total of five such platforms in the temple complex. One was found several years ago, but that platform was farther from the ritually important spot at the foot of the pyramid, where the most recent finding was made.

In 1997 archaeologists found underground chambers using ground penetrating radar very near the spot of the snakehead platform. They thought perhaps those chambers would prove to be the tomb of Emperor Ahuizotl who ruled at the end of the 15th century, but when they excavated all they found was a staircase and some offerings.

A team of archaeologists on their fourth year of excavations at the 12th century Nevern Castle in Pembrokeshire, Wales, have unearthed 12 slates inscribed with a variety of designs. Found at the south entrance to the castle, the scratched symbols were probably made by laborers to keep evil spirits from crossing its threshold.

Inscribed slates from this early on are a rare discovery. There’s a later Welsh tradition of scratching curses or blessings on slate tiles and throwing them down wells, but what you usually see are the initials of a cursee or blessee inscribed, not symbols.

“Scratched images from the medieval world are rare, and we can confidently date these to the period 1170-1190 when the stone phase of Nevern Castle was built,” added [Lead archaeologist Dr. Chris] Caple.

“These drawings connect us with the lives and beliefs of masons or labourers who built the castle. We hardly ever recover evidence about the peasants of the medieval world, and never information about their beliefs and ideas, but these scratched designs are from the imagination of a serf, a farm labourer or a man at arms.”

Welsh slate had been quarried and used as a building material, particularly roof tiles, since the Roman period. The south entrance was made of slate bedded with clay, a local building technique that creates a strong structure as long as you ensure the bedded slate walls are capped with large stones or wide eaves to ensure rain doesn’t wash the clay away.

On top of the clay bedded slate, the doorway was built out of blocks of local sandstone. Finely chiseled, evenly faced square blocks of sandstone were not a local building technique at this point. That style was imported by the Anglo-Norman invaders, and in fact it was Anglo-Norman lord Robert FitzMartin who built Nevern castle as we know it today in the first decade of the 12th century. That makes the doorway an extremely early fusion of native and invader construction.

Control of the castle shifted over the century between FitzMartin and Welsh prince Rhys ap Gruffudd. During the period in which those slates were inscribed, 1170-1190, the castle was in FitzMartin’s hands. Most of the masonry was built onto the timber and earthenworks castle by The Lord Rhys between 1135 and 1170, but FitzMartin is thought to have added some new stone structures after he regained control. By 1195 it was back in Welsh hands, but Rhys died in 1197 and his son Hywel Sais demolished much of it and left it to decay.

Its short lifespan and connection to Rhys ap Gruffudd makes the castle an important site for Welsh history. Not only was Rhys a powerful figure in his time, but if archaeologists can pinpoint buildings that he added on to the castle, that will make Nevern the earliest excavated remains of a stone castle built by the Welsh themselves.

An archaeological team excavating the Tuscan port town of Piombino hoping to find the remains of its patron saint has instead uncovered the skeletal remains of two 13th century women of questionable repute. Approximately 25-30 years old at time of death, they were both buried in the bare earth, without a coffin or even a shroud, very much against custom.

One of women had seven curved, one-and-a-half-inch-long nails placed in her mouth after death and 13 more nails jammed into the ground all around her body. Archaeologists speculate that the ones around her body were used to nail the body to the ground in some kind of exorcism ritual to prevent her using witchcraft to rise from the dead.

The other woman was buried with a leather pouch holding 17 bone dice. Games of chance were against civil and ecclesiastic law during the Middle Ages, and although the laws were constantly flouted, a women associated with dice was a woman associated with immorality. Also, 17 was and remains an extremely unlucky number in Italy. (The story I’ve heard about why it’s unlucky is that the Roman number for 17, XVII, is an anagram of “vixi” which is Latin for “I have lived” which is just like saying you’re dead and is therefore an ill omen. No idea if that’s true.)

L’Aquila University archaeologist Alfonso Forgione, the dig leader, notes that these burials are unique in his experience. Not only are they strangely bare and contain those odd accouterments, but they are also in consecrated ground. There’s a chapel on the grounds purportedly marking the burial spot of Saint Cerbonius, the sixth century A.D. bishop and patron saint of Piombino. The team was looking for the saint’s burial and for the remains of a medieval cathedral that was once dedicated to him when they found the ladies. If the women were social outcasts, one of them demonic, the other degenerate, neither of them worthy of a decent burial, how come they got to go to their eternal rest in a cathedral cemetery next to a saint?

Forgione speculates that they may have had the advantage of powerful friends and families surviving them who arranged for them to have at least a chance at heaven by ensuring their bodies were placed in consecrated ground.

The excavation will continue through the end of the month. They have already found 350 burials in four eight-by-ten meter (26 by 33 feet) sites on each side of the chapel, and there are strong indications that the cemetery goes on for another 65 feet inland and another 33 feet or so towards the sea. Such a large, well-populated cemetery indicates that little Piombino, the only known Etruscan port city, remained a thriving town through the Middle Ages.

Archaeologists are working against the clock, though. The cliff side is eroding faster than they can dig. There are bones visibly jutting out, to the delight of many a tourist taking a romantic walk on the beach, but they can’t be removed for fear that the entire promontory will crumble like a Jenga game.

In 1999, workers restoring a medieval communal fount called the Fountain of Abundance in the Tuscan town of Massa Marittima discovered a curious mural hidden behind a whitewash layer. It depicts a tree heavily laden with heavily laden phalluses under which eight or nine women stand in various poses and large black birds fly. Expert thinks the fresco dates to 1265, the same year inscribed on the fountain itself.

According to George Ferzoco, the director of the Centre for Tuscan Studies at the University of Leicester whose summer program was in Massa that year, the townspeople’s initial reaction to the find was mixed.

“They considered it to be somehow dirty or erotic, one or the other. Those who saw it as erotic looked at it as being a symbol that mirrored the reality of the water and the place. Water gives life; Phalluses give life: Isn’t this a unique and interesting way to portray the life-giving properties of water? The porn camp, if we can call it that, saw it as being somehow deliberately obscene and thus believed that as little attention as possible needed to be drawn to it.”

Over a decade later, that ambivalence has long gone and locals are furiously protective of their Tree of Fertility. In 2008 a program of restoration was undertaken to fully clean the mural which had suffered not just from its whitewashing but also from water damage and concretions. The restoration finally ended in early August and the public were allowed back in to view the mural, only to find to their dismaythat there were parts missing. Male parts.

The experts who carried out the restoration have been accused of sanitising the mural by scrubbing out or altering some of the testicles, which hang from the tree’s branches along with around 25 phalluses.

“Many parts of the work seem to have been arbitrarily repainted,” said Gabriele Galeotti, a town councillor who has called for an investigation after seeing the finished work. “The authenticity of the fresco seems to have been compromised by a restoration effort that did not respect the original character of the work.”

The restorers deny categorically having painted over any phalluses. They claim any paint loss was the result of salt and calcium concretions lifting paint as they were removed during the cleaning. If any repainting gets done, restorers say, it’ll be done to put the lost phalluses back in, not to remove them.

Councilman Galeotti is not at all satisfied with that explanation.

“What the restorers say is absolute nonsense. As far as we are concerned they have compromised the authenticity of the fresco. The work was intended as a symbol of fertility with the penises being crucial to the intention of the art but now these have been removed and the message is therefore no longer there.

“We intend to make a formal complaint to the local prosecutor so that he can open an investigation into this disrespectful slaughter of an artistic work. There was obviously no intention to respect the original artist.”

Unfortunately, I can’t find any before and after images of the tree so we can assess the phallic loss with our own eyes, but judging from some of the old pictures I found (see this one from 2003), the fresco was in truly awful condition when uncovered. Recent pictures show it in far superior condition, figures, phalluses and tree.

It’s probably not actually a fertility symbol, btw. George Ferzoco’s studies suggest that the fresco is a political allegory, negative advertising, if you will, writ large in a highly trafficked location: the public fountain where people drew their water for daily use. Ferzoco notes:

“The fact of the matter is that there is, with regard to the phalluses on display in this painting, nothing whatsoever to do with fertility. It’s one thing to have a symbol of a phallus on its own. That can stand for good luck, fertility, what have you. It’s another to put it in a different context, one in which it’s seen to be quite literally growing on a tree. The Medieval culture, more than ours, was one that was extremely sensitive to what was perceived as the goodness of nature, the goodness of what is natural, and they would have put two and two together in a way which involved seeing this particular tree bearing fruit that is not natural fruit. Those two elements of the equation would have added up to be something which is not natural and hence not good.”

While the phalluses in the tree are, by the context, strange and shocking, there are other phalluses in the painting which add currency to Ferzoco’s hypothesis that this is anything but a mural celebrating fecundity. “We have an image of two women who appear to be locked in serious combat over one of these phalluses, so this supposed fertility symbol that ought to bring life and goodness is in fact bringing strife to the people fighting over it. More importantly, there is a woman on the left side of the mural, standing in what I call her ‘Lady Di’ pose, standing quite demurely, until you realise that she’s being sodomised by one of these phalluses. You can’t get pregnant by sodomy – it’s the ultimate in non-fertility. There’s something going on in the mural that subverts notions of fertility.”

But why would one display such an extravagant, and no doubt expensive, symbol of non-fertility in such a central place? What message is it conveying? “The key to that subversion – according to Ferzoco – is shown with the symbol of one of the two competing political factions of the time, which is displayed prominently in the mural. This is the Eagle, a symbol of the Ghibelline party. The juxtaposition of this party symbol along with another symbol being used unnaturally, in a non-fertile way is meant to create in the viewer a kind of relationship between what is unnatural or not good on the one hand and the Ghibelline party on the other. It makes even more sense when you consider that during almost all of its history as an independent city republic, Massa Marittima was controlled by the anti-Ghibelline Guelph party.”

Stick with us, is the message, or prepare for a society in which perverted trees grow phallus fruit and women tear each other’s hair out trying to have non-reproductive sexual congress with them.

A five bedroom, centrally located town house in charming downtown Visby, capital of the Swedish island of Gotland, has just gone on the market with quite the unique selling point: there’s an exposed skeleton in the cellar, perpetually at slumber in his glass-covered grave.

The house was built in the 1750s over the foundations of a Russian Orthodox church which was abandoned in the Middle Ages. The skeleton, dubbed Valdemar by the locals, was a parishioner, probably a Russian, who was buried in the crypt of the church in the 13th century. There’s also another skull in a glassed-in niche in the cellar. Excavations in the 1970s uncovered the church walls and the human remains, and also found evidence of human habitation on the spot going back 4000 years. How’s that’s for a historical property?

“The man is resting in consecrated, sacred ground so his soul definitely rests at peace,” Leif Bertwig, the real estate agent in charge of the sale, told The Local. Therefore no ghosts are listed in the realtor’s description.

“If any prospective buyers would be worried that he will haunt the house they have nothing to fear,” Bertwig said.

Way to scare off the ghost-loving clientele, Leif. You should be draped in ectoplasm and flitting around at showings.

The cellar is not accessible directly from the town house. Four houses, including this one, share a private central courtyard. Valdemar and the remains of the church can be accessed via a spiral staircase in the courtyard. The patio off the living room, a stone cobbled outdoor space featuring the remains of a medieval well, is right above Valdemar’s resting place. You can sip a beverage in front of your medieval well and remember that thou art mortal.

However historically valuable the silent houseguest may be, Bertwig thinks that his underground presence will not affect the final price of the property, with bidding starting at 4.125 million kronor ($652,000).

“It’s definitely not a negative thing, more like a curious detail. Buyers will more likely be attracted to what the house looks like and how it’s built,” said Bertwig.

It looks great. It was renovated in 2000 and has some contemporary elements that jar a little with the beautiful exposed wooden beams and plaster walls reminiscent of Tudor construction, but it still exudes history from every corner.

As an archaeological and a historical home, the property is protected by law. You can’t alter the foundation in any way. You can, however, Leif assures us, take some folding chairs and a table downstairs and enjoy a picnic with Valdemar.

Here’s the listing with a detailed descriptions of all the features and contact information should you have $652,000 burning a hole in your pocket.

Metal detectorist Michael Greenhorn discovered a gold and sapphire ring in a field six miles south of York in April of 2009. He reported it to the Portable Antiquities Scheme and, as expected, it was declared treasure. The Yorkshire Museum has just raised the £35,000 assessed value to buy the ring so it can be kept where it was discovered, studied thoroughly and put on display.

Sapphire jewelry is rare in medieval England. Sapphires were reserved for royalty, upper nobility or high-ranking clergy and were said to hold magical protective powers, especially against poison. The York ring is the second earliest example of sapphire jewelry known in England. The oldest sapphire jewel is a Roman example from the fifth century Roman. The York ring was made after that, but scholars aren’t sure exactly when. There is literally nothing comparable to help them determine when it was made.

The ring weighs 10.2 grams, is 2.5 centimeters in diameter. A 6 millimeter deep blue sapphire is mounted in the middle, with pieces of red glass inset around it. The edges are adorned with fine gold beading, and all the gold in the piece is of a very high standard, an alloy of 90% gold, 8% silver and 2% copper.

The gold beading is characteristic of the Viking period (10th – 11th centuries), but a combination of red and blue glass set in gold is characteristic of early Anglian jewelry (7th – 9th centuries). The sapphire could have been used to replace the blue glass of the more modest traditional Anglian design to create a ring for fit for an important figure, maybe even a king. The only other known sapphire around this period was in Edward the Confessor’s coronation ring (he was crowned in 1042), and is now in the Imperial State Crown of Great Britain (it’s at the center of the Maltese Cross on the top of the crown). That sapphire is the oldest gemstone in the Crown Jewels.

The museum will launch a multi-disciplinary investigation to find out more about the ring. They will try to narrow down the date, comparing it stylistically to other medieval jewelry. They’re also going to focus on the high quality of the gold alloy, hoping the composition might shed some light on what historians think may have been a high level jewelry-making industry in medieval York.

The museum, in York, also plans to track down the ultimate origin of the sapphire itself. It’s possible that it came originally from India or Sri Lanka and a special scanning electron microscopy examination of the gem will almost certainly be carried out to identify trace elements and ascertain its geological background.

This may also help to reconstruct its pre-Anglo-Saxon history. Is it likely to have been imported into England or Europe from thousands of miles away in Anglo-Saxon times, or is it more likely that it was imported in Roman times and re-used in various different high status roles for hundreds of years before it was lost south of York a millennium or more ago.

Microscopic examination of ware marks on the ring may also shed light on its history – as might a detailed historical examination of the area around where it was found

The ring is scheduled to go on display at the Yorkshire Museum in the next few weeks.

The dramatic coastal clifftop setting of the 13th century Tintagel Castle in Cornwall was the setting for one of the most legendary acts of debauchery: Uther Pendragon’s sneak seduction of Ygerna (aka Igraine) while magically disguised as her husband Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall. That heated night of rape-by-fraud at Tintagel resulted nine months later in the birth of the Once and Future King, Arthur. What would you do if you got to spend an evening at Tintagel with five of your closest friends?

Think about it carefully and then post your answer on English Heritage’s Tintagel Castle Facebook wall. If your idea has a mass appeal, you get to make it happen. The entrant who gets the most ‘likes’ by August 1st (subject to English Heritage’s discretion, so, like, peeing your name on the ramparts probably won’t cut it even though you’d get plenty of likes) will win private access to the ruins on an evening of your choice between August 6th and August 20th.

Matt Ward, site supervisor at the castle explains: “Tintagel is such a beautiful and atmospheric place, as well as being steeped in history and folklore it has some of the most spectacular views along the English coastline. Never before have we been able to hand over the castle for someone to enjoy exclusively so we’re really excited to see what ideas people will come up with to make the most of it.”

I’m afraid if I were honest in my entry, I’d be sure not to win since I’d just spend the evening nerding out over the ruins and the view and that’s not really a crowd-pleasing concept. Just as well I can’t make it to Cornwall next month. Still, if one of y’all submits an entry please link to it in the comments and you’ll at least get yourself a like or two from other readers.

Although the Tintagel peninsula was in use from Roman Times through the early Middle Ages as an easily defensible location for the peripatetic courts of local kings and chieftains, Tintagel Castle as we know it today began as a Norman stronghold built by Reginald, Earl of Cornwall, in 1145. That was six years after Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote his account of Arthur’s conception in his Historia Regum Britanniae but there’s no evidence of an earlier structure on the spot that Geoffrey could have known as Tintagel Castle. Most of the ruins we see today date from 1233 when Richard, Earl of Cornwall and Henry III’s younger brother, built the main part of the castle. He could well have picked the spot to associate himself with Arthurian legend.

The Castle fell into disuse after the death of Edward, the Black Prince, son of King Edward III and Duke of Cornwall, in 1376. The county sheriffs took it over, using the building as a prison and letting the land to shepherds for pasture. With the revival of interest in Arthurian legend during the mid-19th century, the romantic windswept outcroppings of Tintagel became a tourist attraction.

As Monmouth describes it:

A whole week was now past, when, retaining in mind his love to Igerna, [King Uther] said to one of his confidants, named Ulfin de Ricaradoch: “My passion for Igerna is such, that I can neither have ease of mind, nor health of body, till I obtain her: and if you cannot assist me with your advice how to accomplish my desire, the inward torments I endure will kill me.”– “Who can advise you in this matter,” said Ulfin, “when no force will enable us to have access to her in the town of Tintagel? For it is situated upon the sea, and on every side surrounded by it; and there is but one entrance into it, and that through a straight rock, which three men shall be able to defend against the whole power of the kingdom.

Archaeologists excavating the thousand-year-old temple complex of Chotuna Chornancap in Lambayeque, northern Peru, have discovered the tomb of an important lord thought to have been an executioner. The tomb was found two weeks ago and contained human remains, ceremonial knives, ceramic pots, a dress made from native cotton and a series of rolled copper discs. It’s the grave goods that mark the burial as belonging to someone with a key ceremonial role in Lambayeque human sacrifice rituals.

Carlos Wester, director of the Bruning Museum in Lambayeque and one of the tomb’s discoverers. Wester told AFP the person buried there was most likely in charge of human sacrifice.

“We found the perfectly preserved tomb of a sacrificer of the Lambayeque culture, with copper machetes and human offerings laid around them,” Wester told the news agency. [...]

The 20 to 30 year old resident of the tomb “played an important role in the ceremonies of human sacrifice” for the ancient culture, which flourished from 700 to 1375 AD. Sicán or Lambayeque culture emerged around the eighth century, lasted until 1375 and peaked between 900 and 1100.

The adobe pyramids, temples and tombs were built by the Lambayeque culture around 900 A.D., but they remained in use by later cultures until the arrival of the Spanish. The temple complex was discovered in January of 2010, but even before that the Chotuna Chornancap archaeological site produced copious evidence of extensive Lambayeque and Inca human sacrifice.

In September of 2008, archaeologists discovered two Lambayeque tombs that contained the remains of seven sacrificed women between the ages of 15 and 25, as well as several sacrificed llamas. All of the skeletons showed signs of having been cut at the throat, and one of the women was pregnant. Sacrificing pregnant women was not a common occurence. It’s an extremely rare find, in fact, and indicates that an important religious ritual took place, perhaps the death of an important personage or the sanctification of a newly built temple.

Just a few months later archaeologists found a large Inca sacrificial pit containing 33 bodies, this time dating to approximately 600 years ago, just before the Spanish conquest.