How a 3,000-year-old tomb upended what we know about ancient Peru

Archaeologists in northern Peru have discovered a 3,000-year-old burial. Inside it lay one of the first priests in ancient Andean history, a man who lived well before the time of the Inca.

Burial complexPacopampa is located some 8,200 feet above sea level in the Cajamarca region of the Andes about 560 miles north of modern Lima, Peru. Archaeologists believe the site was first settled around 1200 B.C.

The discovery was made in the Pacopampa Archaeological Complex, a 40-acre site of monumental and ceremonial structures that was active between 1200 and 700 B.C.

Over nearly 20 years, the Project of Archaeological Investigation has discovered numerous finds at Pacopampa. The latest one, the skeleton of an ancient religious leader interred there around 1000 B.C., has been named the Priest of Pacopampa because of his tomb’s contents.

(An intact tomb revealed royal secrets of an ancient people in Peru.)

Buried with him were three stamps or seals. The first seal resembles a jaguar, indicating the priest’s status as a leader who could harness the animal’s spiritual power. The second one depicts a human face, and the third is in the shape of a hand. Scholars believe people dipped the seals in paint and then stamped the images on the priest’s skin.

The find is “extremely important,” says Yuji Seki, who leads researchers from Japan’s National Museum of Ethnology and Peru’s National University of San Marcos.

Workers carefully excavate the tomb of the Priest of Pacopampa, one of four burials found at the Pacopampa Archaeological Complex.

Ministry of Culture of Peru

Deep connections

The discovery of the priest is helping archaeologists at Pacopampa pinpoint when a powerful priestly class first appeared in the region. Seki explains that Pacopampa was at one time a pilgrimage center, where people from near and far came together to participate in religious rites. “These group rituals are credited with creating the social conditions that allowed the earliest Andean civilizations to rise,” says Seki.

Similar burials, such as the Tomb of the Lady of Pacopampa (found in 2009) and the Tomb of the Serpent Jaguar Priests (found in 2015), have important connections to the Priest of Pacopampa, whose tomb may be as many as 300 years older.

(This Inca girl was frozen for 500 years. She just got a new face.)

Three ceramic seals (hand, jaguar, and face) were found in the priest’s tomb. The artifacts suggest the religious power of the buried person.

Ministry of Culture of Peru

Seki believes that these later spiritual leaders made their relationship with ancestral elites visible through their burials: “I consider this to be evidence of the incorporation of ancestor worship into the succession of power.” Worshipping ancestors was of central importance to later Andean cultures in the region, such as the Wari (ca A.D. 500-1000), the Tiwanaku (ca A.D.600-1000), and ultimately the Inca (ca A.D. 1200-1533).

Excavations continue at the Pacopampa complex, with new discoveries on the horizon. In 2022 a priestly tomb at the site was uncovered. Some believe it could be even older than the Priest of Pacopampa, but analysis of the tomb and its contents is still under way.

(These remote Inca ruins rival Machu Picchu.)

For nearly 20 years, Japan and Peru’s joint excavation at Pacopampa has made a string of exciting discoveries of rich burials. According to project director Yuji Seki, the site was “used for a relatively long time,” meaning that each discovery reveals the evolution of ancient Andean social and ritual behavior over many centuries. The Priest of Pacopampa was interred around 900-750 B.C. About a century after his burial, a high-ranking woman was buried. When her tomb was discovered in 2009, she was dubbed the Lady of Pacopampa. Around 700 B.C. the serpent jaguar priests were laid to rest, confirming that elite priestly burials—along with rich, golden grave goods like this gold necklace found in 2015—were becoming customary at the site.

Pacopampa Archaeological Project

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