Bone sleuth tackles ancient mystery ......................~Wise

Bone sleuth tackles ancient mystery by Arthur Nead

Something happened at Peru’s Pyramid of the Moon some 1,400 years ago, and Tulane anthropologist John Verano wants to know what it was.

Dozens of human skeletons have been discovered at the pyramid, and evidence is mounting that they belonged to the victims of human sacrifice rituals. Verano, a physical anthropologist whose courses at Tulane include human osteology, paleo-pathology and forensic anthropology, is leading an archaeological excavation at the pyramid to shed light on the mystery. The National Geographic Society provided funding for Verano’s explorations last summer, and it has made a second grant to continue the dig this summer.

The Pyramid of the Moon, a massive mud-brick structure, was one of many built by the Moche, a civilization that flourished on the north coast of Peru from the years 100 to 800. Only recently have researchers begun to unearth and appreciate the achievements of the Moche, including decorated temples and the tombs of kings, warriors and priests. And with each discovery comes another puzzle about Moche culture.

Since 1983, most of Verano’s fieldwork has focused on the skeletal remains at Moche archeological sites. “I’m a ‘bone man,’” says Verano. “What I’m interested in is extracting as much information as we can from burials, from any skeletal material we find.” And the evidence mounts that the Moche engaged in warfare and human sacrifice.

In 1995, Verano was called on to examine a startling find of some 70 human skeletons in a Pyramid of the Moon plaza. “The skeletons are the most direct testimony of what happened,” says Verano. The remains provided confirmation for hypotheses derived from Moche paintings about human sacrifice. The skeletons appeared to have been tossed into the plaza haphazardly. More ominously, the bones revealed cut marks consistent with the sacrifices depicted in the artwork.

When archaeologists dug a test pit in an area near the pyramid, more skeletons were discovered. Verano then knew that a rare opportunity had arrived.

“Ideally, what I like to do is both excavate and analyze,” he says. As a physical anthropologist, Verano says he knows the skeletons well and he may see things in the field that an archaeologist wouldn’t see.

Verano received approval from Peruvian authorities to excavate the area called Plaza 3c. During summer 2000, Verano’s team, including physical anthropology students from Tulane and other universities and specialists from Peru, painstakingly began their work. The Roger Thayer Stone Center for Latin American Studies and the anthropology department’s Kenneth J. Opat Fund helped support the project.

The plaza yielded some 25 articulated skeletons of adolescent and young adult males and numerous hands, feet, limb segments and hundreds of isolated human bones. “I’ve found wounds that were in the process of healing when the person was killed,” says Verano. “Things like broken arms, broken ribs and broken shoulder blades that indicate at least a couple of weeks of healing. So they make a lot of sense as combat injuries.” Verano believes the wounded warriors had been taken prisoner, as shown in the Moche paintings. “They were brought back,” says

Verano, “and they lived for some weeks more. This suggests that they were either brought a long way or that they were paraded around or kept for a while as prisoners.”

The paintings show naked male prisoners being marched up a pyramid with a rope around their necks. Atop the pyramid, supernatural figures—part human and part animal—slit the prisoners’ throats, collect their blood in goblets, and present the drink to the supreme leader.

The skeletons matched this image precisely. “We found male bodies without any artifacts, basically skeletons with cuts to the neck vertebrae,” says Verano. Some of the skeletons and individual bones still had ropes tied around them. The bones also speak of other bizarre rituals. Many skeletons had extensive cut marks, indicating that the victims were probably de-fleshed and their muscles cut off after their death, according to Verano.

But Verano says there are no indications of cannibalism. “They may have defleshed these bodies for display—for trophy purposes,” he says. “In a sense it’s even more gruesome than cannibalism. It’s something we’re still working on, trying to put the whole pattern together as to why they did this.”

When Verano’s team finished excavating Plaza 3c last summer, they dug a test trench below the plaza floor. “We went down about three feet and then more skeletons showed up,” he says.

“The new deposit of skeletons shows that the Moche were likely sacrificing people for centuries,” says Verano. “The interesting question is how these practices change through time.” This summer, Verano and his students plan to excavate beneath the entire plaza. National Geographic is sending a crew to film the project, and an article about pyramid sacrifices is slated to appear in National Geographic Magazine this fall.

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