A new tomb has been discovered at the El Caño Archaeological Site abundantly furnished with offerings of ceramics and gold. The tomb dates between 800 and 1000 A.D. and because of the rich array of grave goods, according to the Culture Ministry of Panama, the find is “of great importance for Panamanian archaeology and the study of pre-Hispanic societies of the Central American isthmus.”

The existence of Tomb 3 was first identified in 2009 when an survey detected a large number of ceramic and metal fragments. It wasn’t excavated until this year, however, and is now revealing its full structure and rich furnishings. It contains numerous funerary offerings of fine ceramics and decorated gold ornaments including earrings, bracelets and large pectorals decorated with bats and crocodiles which were typical motifs in the art and iconography of El Caño.

It is a multiple burial featuring a central figure accompanied by several other individuals. The grave is an area reserved for the elites of the Coclé culture, and the central burial is someone of high status from one of the families of leaders or chiefs. Coclé leaders accumulated items of great prestige, but the gold in the tombs was not valued as specie or currency. It held religious symbolism as an eternal material because of its beauty is not subject to corrosion or decomposition.

The archaeological site of El Caño, 124 miles southwest of Panama City, was a ceremonial complex of the Coclé people. Previous discoveries of opulent burials have led to the area being dubbed “Panama’s Valley of the Kings,” and the vast majority of the necropolis has yet to be excavated.

The evidence accumulated in Tomb 3 allows for a revision of models regarding the emergence of complex chiefdoms in the isthmus, suggesting the existence of centralized societies that operated between the 8th and 11th centuries AD. These communities had the capacity to organize long-distance exchange networks and large-scale ceremonies, consolidating this site as one of the most important pre-Hispanic cemeteries in the region.

Two rare carved heads have been found in the ruins of a pre-Hispanic Chachapoya culture structure in Peru’s Amazonas region. Carved heads linked to the Chachapoya culture were known to exist, but this is the first time any of them have been found in their original archaeological context.

The heads were made of sandstone and we found inside the debris of the perimeter walls of a circular structure. Based on where they were discovered, the carvings were originally mounted on the exterior of the structure wall. Chachapoya structures often had decorated walls, although typically the decoration involves geometric friezes, not mounted heads.

The discovery was made as part of the Xalca Grande Archaeological Research Project, a comprehensive remote mapping program of the Ollape Archaeological Site. Researchers are using drones and LiDAR technology to generate high-precision maps of the site over the challenging mountain terrain. The team has identified more than 200 previously unknown pre-Hispanic structures of the Chachapoyas civilization, revealing the broad geographic extent and complexity of Chachapoyas settlements.

Archaeologists from the Kuelap Archaeology and Anthropology Research Institute and the Xalca Grande Archaeological Project have followed-up on the remote data, investigating the structures on the ground. In addition to the carved heads, archaeologists recorded another unique finding: a zigzag motif on one of the wall geometric friezes.

The Ollape Archaeological Site contains Chachapoyas settlements dating from between 900 and 1470 A.D. In mapping and exploring the structures, archaeologists aim to get a better understanding of Ollape daily life, what they did, how they interacted with their environment, their rituals, their social hierarchies, etc. The fieldwork has recovered numerous artifacts and remains, including pottery, stone tools, grinding stones and animal bones, the remains of a rare Andean bear among them.