AD: Can you explain in more detail what you specialise in?
MG: South American archaeology would be the natural answer, although, we specialize within it on more focused topics. Both Patrycja and I we have published our doctorates and habilitations on pre-Columbian complex societies. While sharing the work, I focus more on funeral archaeology, pre-Columbian material culture, archaeometry, non-destructive archaeology and anthropological archaeology. On the other hand, Patrycja, trying to understand the social construction of gender identities and relations, combines archaeology with art history, anthropology and ethnohistory. And both, Patricia and I, we do a lot of work on public archaeology and museology as well.
AD: You have spent the last twenty years working in one location, at Castillo de Huarmey, considered to be the largest pre-Columbian funeral and residential site related to Wari culture. Can you briefly tell me about your discoveries there, your on-going project? What has been your focus at this site?
MG: We went to Peru for the first time in 1999. We participated in many archaeological projects to get to know the specifics of local archaeology and choose the research topics. We went to the Nazca desert, where Italian archeologist Giuseppe Orefici was conducting research on a civilisation that began there more than two millennia ago, and we were charmed by the sites, where real treasures could still be found, overlooked by grave robbers.
Since then, we dreamed that one day, as professional archeologists, we will return to Peru to start our own study on the costal Peruvian deserts, one of those areas of the world, along with Egypt and other parts of the Middle East, where climate conditions allow artefacts – including perishables – to remain in perfect shape, as if they had been laid there the day before! In 2002, we started our own research in the Huarmey province in Peru, about 300 kilometres north of Lima. First, we worked in the archaeologically pristine Culebras Valley, or ‘Valley of the Snakes’. We received our first grants, which allowed us to discover more than 150 previously unknown archaeological sites in this region, and we have gained recognition in our field. It put us on the map.
Patrycja Prządka-Giersz: The study at Culebras Valley gave us a good start for further research. After a long search for our dream archaeological site, we decided to stay in the region we knew, literally tilting at windmills. The biggest and most renown archaeological site of the entire region, the legendary Castillo de Huarmey.
MG: In the Lima archives, we found records about Julio Cesar Tello, considered the father of Peruvian archaeology, who had visited the site in 1919. Tello had been intrigued by a finding, in an antiquarian market in Lima, of a series of beautifully decorated, rare wooden artefacts that the seller believed came from the Huarmey Valley. Unfortunately, he never began his research at Castillo, but for decades, this site seemed key to understanding the rise of the first pre-Columbian empire, the Wari.
PPG: That's how we got to Castillo de Huarmey in 2010. No excavations had ever been conducted at the site before – archaeologists considered it madness to explore sites that had previously been ruined and looted for decades. The name Castillo, or castle, was what the conquering Spaniards had called some pre-Columbian buildings of monumental character, but when we arrived at the site, we found ancient ruins converted into a garbage dump: modern rubbish mixed there with human bones from dug graves.
MG: However, thanks to our 10 years of work at Castillo de Huarmey, we can already say much more than our predecessors. Castillo de Huarmey is located in the suburbs of the modern city of Huarmey, less than 4 km from the Pacific ocean, at the Andean ecological zone called chala or costa (coastal desert near the Pacific). The site, dated mainly to the Middle Horizon (ca. 600––1050 AD) was a local capital and ceremonial centre of the pre-Columbian Wari Empire. The site occupies an area of 45 ha, but to date, only the central location with large monument structures is well-recognized. We started our investigations with a complex, non-destructive survey. It allowed us to perfectly plan forthcoming excavations, and already in 2012, we discovered the first unlooted royal tomb dedicated to the Wari female elite, associated with more than 1300 luxurious mortuary objects. The entire monumental part of the site was dedicated to the cult of ancestors, spreading along with the conquest of these areas by the first Andean empire – Wari, which preceded the Inca state.