Gas company workers digging for a new natural-gas line in Lima’s Puente Piedra district uncovered a sitting mummy estimated to be more than a 1,000 years old. The body lay just two meters beneath an ordinary street, near the gate of a house, wrapped in layers of burial cloth and positioned with folded arms and legs, the face oriented to the north.
“We found a burial coffin of a figure in a cemetery over a thousand years old,” said archaeologist Jesus Bahamonde. “Material evidence suggests that it could be a burial from the Chancay culture,” said Jose Pablo Aliaga, another archaeologist. Aliaga noted that similar discoveries in recent months, including the mummified remains of a woman dating back about 900 years, pointed to a wider cemetery beneath the modern neighborhood.
The Chancay culture dominated Peru’s central coast between 1000 and 1470 CE. Chancay burials typically relied on simple underground pits where the dead were wrapped in multilayered fabrics and accompanied by gifts such as red-and-black ceramics, textiles, and everyday objects. Items found beside the newly exposed mummy followed that pattern, and the body’s north-facing orientation matched practices documented in the Chillón, Rímac, and Lurín valleys.
The preparation of this article relied on a news-analysis system.