60 kilometers away from the city of Tacna in southern Peru, thirty-seven pre-Incan tombs—estimated to be between 2800 and 3500 years old, have been accidentally discovered by construction workers who, as part of the installation of a water system for the Boca del Río settlement were digging trenches last week.
Archaeologist Gladys Barreto, who was hired by the Boca del Río consortium to be in charge of executing the construction, said that half of these newly found tombs contain the remains of children.
Barreto believes that the remains are from the period known as the Late Regional Development; also discovered were ceramics, symbolic depictions of boats, wooden harpoons and copper hooks, evidence of the exchange between the cultures on the coast and those in the Andean valleys in the Tacna sierra.
“We are talking about advanced cultures, whose principal economic activity would have been fishing.” Said Jesús Gordillo an archaeologist who studies Tacna cultures.
Gordillo emphasized that these relics, along with those found further north in Tomoyo, as well as other regions including the Sama valley, Vituña, the beaches Cánepa and Meca, Ite and Punta Picata shown that the Tacna coast was densely populated in between 800 and 1445 AD.
