Peruvian mummy from 450 A.D. perplexes experts

A mummy of mystery has come to light in Peru.

She was a woman who died some 1,600 years ago in the heyday of the Moche culture, well before the rise of the Incas. Her imposing tomb suggests someone of high status. Her desiccated remains are covered with red pigment and bear tattoos.

But the most striking aspect of the discovery, archaeologists said Tuesday, is not the offerings of gold and semiprecious stones or the elaborate wrapping of her body in fine textiles, but the other grave goods.

She was surrounded by weaving materials and needles, befitting a woman, and two ceremonial war clubs and 28 spear throwers - sticks that propel spears with far greater force - items never found before in the burial of a woman of the Moche (pronounced MOH-chay).

Was she a warrior princess, or perhaps a ruler?

"She is elite, but somewhat of an enigma," said Dr. John Verano, a physical anthropologist at Tulane University who worked with the Peruvian archaeologists who made the discovery last year.

Dr. Christopher B. Donnan of UCLA was not a member of the research team but inspected the mummy and the tomb soon after the find. "It's among the richest female Moche burials ever found," said Donnan, an archaeologist of Peruvian culture. "The tomb combines things usually found either exclusively in male or female burials - a real mystery."

The National Geographic Society announced the discovery and is publishing details in its magazine's June issue. The excavations, more than 400 miles northwest of Lima, were supported by the Augusto N. Wiese Foundation of Peru.

The Moche culture flourished in the coastal valleys of northern Peru in the first 700 years A.D. The woman's tomb was near the summit of a pyramid called Huaca Cao Viejo, a cathedral of the Moche religion.

Verano's X-ray examination revealed that the mummy was a young adult. Lying near her was the skeleton of another young woman who was apparently sacrificed by strangulation with a hemp rope, which was still around her neck. Such sacrifices were common in Andean cultures. Radiocarbon analysis of the rope indicated that the burial occurred around A.D. 450.

"Perhaps she was a female warrior, or maybe the war clubs and spear throwers were symbols of power that were funeral gifts from men," Verano said.