Huarmey Castle: the mausoleum of Wari artisans

Corresponding to the pre-Inca period, between 600 and 800 AD, and located in the city of Huarmey, province of the department of Ancash, the Huarmey Castle is a stepped pyramid belonging to the Wari culture, which was built with adobe, wood and stone. Its walls intersect and form a set of narrow rooms around a large central room.

El Castillo was an important ceremonial center that dominates the entire landscape of the Huarmey Valley. Its steps contain burial chambers that were used to bury members of the nobility. It covers a total area of 200 meters long by 65 meters wide and in some places it can reach eight meters high.

Wari would have conquered the north coast

After more than 10 years of work, in 2012 a Polish-Peruvian team of archaeologists made an exceptional discovery in the Castillo de Huarmey: an imperial tomb of the Wari culture (about 1,200 years old) that was intact.

63 bodies were found, among them 57 noblemen, probably women belonging to the Wari imperial elite, and six bodies that did not have bundles, so it is assumed that they were victims of a sacrificial ritual. Thanks to this finding, it was possible to learn a little more about the daily life of women of the high nobility. "All the women we have found had earmuffs, which means that their status was quite high," said Dr. Patrycja Przadka, a researcher on the project.

The finding also included more than 1,000 pieces made of gold, silver and copper, such as earmuffs, necklaces, pectorals, pins, rings, knives, axes, spearheads, rattles, bottles of extraordinary artistic beauty, pots, spoons, containers for Coca leaves; Textiles and ceramics were also found.

This important discovery would indicate that the Wari culture had conquered the north, something that many archaeologists were reluctant to believe. “With this meeting, it is conclusively demonstrated that the Wari conquest of the coast, beyond the central coast, was a reality. This scenario shows us a powerful and efficient empire, which, from Ayacucho, managed to extend its limits to Cusco and then reaches the north through the mountains and penetrates the coast through the valleys with the easiest access; something that the Mochica coastal people could not resist," said Krzysztof Makowski, a research member, in an interview for the Neo magazine of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP).

The Wari culture and its legacy in the Huarmey Castle

The Castle of Huarmey is twelve centuries old and 63 high lineage figures were buried there, including 57 noblemen, probably ladies of the royal court belonging to the Wari imperial elite, and six bodies that did not have bundles, possibly victims of a ritual sacrifice. The bodies were adorned with more than 1,200 objects made of silver, gold and its alloys, lead, possibly bronze, bone, sculpted wood, textiles, ceramics, and matte, among others. Huarmey Castle gained its fame due to the presence of excellent quality and impressively preserved fabrics.

In 2014, a successful exhibition was held at MALI with more than 40,000 visitors and the presentation of the publication «Castillo de Huarmey. The Imperial Wari Mausoleum”, achieving first place in the “Best Historical Exhibition” and “Special Editions” category at the Luces Awards of the newspaper El Comercio.

In 2017, Milosz Giersz, Director of the El Castillo de Huarmey Archaeological Research Project and Vice President of the Polish-Peruvian Association of Andean Studies, presented his book “Castillo de Huarmey – A Center of the Wari Empire on the North Coast of Peru”. The publication narrates the recent archaeological investigations in the monument located on the coast of Ancash, in which a burial chamber of the Wari culture was found in a perfect state of conservation, inside a large imperial mausoleum.

Huarmey Castle: the mausoleum of artisans

The archaeological site of Castillo de Huarmey, located in the coastal Peruvian region of Ancash, once again astonished archaeologists after the discovery of a mortuary gallery with seven tombs of elite artisans of the Wari culture, the first great empire in South America that dominated the Andes almost 1,000 years before the Incas.

This discovery, made last February, answers some of the questions raised ten years ago by the finding, in this same complex, of an intact mausoleum with 58 women of high Wari nobility and confirms Huarmey Castle as a production and administration center for the highest elites of the empire.

This was stated in an interview with Efe by the person in charge of the investigation, the Polish archaeologist Milosz Giersz, who highlights, among the seven tombs found, that of the first male member of the Wari elite, who was an artisan in life, according to the grave goods revealed. of gold and silver with which he was buried.

A basket maker

His corpse, about 1,300 years old, was wrapped in bales and accompanied by possible samples of his work and hundreds of objects typical of the trade of basket-maker, such as bronze tools, axes, knives and saws, which he surely used to make his cane baskets, finely decorated.

"We did not find a warrior man as the iconography paints, but an elite man who was a craftsman, a craftsman and masculine artist and that is the first time he has seen it," says Giersz, after mentioning that this man, in his 40s, He could have changed his social status for being a "high level professional" or belonging to a noble lineage dedicated to that work.

Next to him were the remains of another man and three children and the secondary contexts of two women, who could have been members of his family, all buried in orthogonal tombs of adobe bricks in the mausoleum that archaeologists have called "Gallery of elite artisans.

"They are elite members and they are artisans (...), surely attached to the royal court," reiterates the archaeologist, who comments that his team is now in the process of requesting permits "to export samples to the best laboratories in the world to compare the family ties", also with the 58 women found in 2012.

Luxury production center

For Giersz, this latest discovery shows that the Huarmey Castle was "one of the most important points on the map" of the Wari culture, the first imperial phenomenon that emerged in Peruvian territory in the Andean region of Ayacucho, between the years 600 and 1000. of our era.

"The importance of this site is precisely the production of luxury objects from that time," he maintains after recalling that this complex "is the only one of its kind and the only one known to have been built in the Wari era to exercise power and venerate this noble lineage. that dominated the valley.

The archaeologist hopes to find, one day, the production workshops of the Wari artisans in this castle, which extends over 45 hectares a few kilometers from the Pacific Ocean, in the suburbs of the Huarmey town.

To date, as detailed, less than 10% of the complex has been excavated since archaeological work began in this area twelve years ago, in coordination with local authorities and with the support of the University of Warsaw and the Antamina Mining Company.

10% that allows us to intuit the magnitude of the rest of a site that never ceases to surprise archaeologists who approach the Wari culture.

More discoveries are expected

The research project at Castillo de Huarmey lasted for more years and is supported by the Global Exploration Fund and the Expeditions Council, both of the National Geographic Society. “It is a brief historical phenomenon, but one with great consequences,” says Krzysztof Makowski in the National Geographic article.

It should be noted that this research is the continuation of the Valle de Culebras project, which began its activities in 2002 as part of an agreement between the University of Warsaw (Poland) and the PUCP; and is financed by the University of Warsaw and the National Science Center of the Republic of Poland.

Did you know?

The Wari are considered to be the pioneers in urbanism in the Andean world. This revolution led to societies characterized by new forms of production, which were far from the agricultural activities that were carried out before.

The Spaniards were the first to discover the remains of the Wari culture, but the person who carried out the first formal archaeological studies that brought the Wari to light was the Peruvian researcher Julio César Tello (1880-1947), who also carried out revealing studies of the Paracas and Chavín culture.

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