TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 503 



the Red Hills on which wilder figures are grouped, with rocks and trees below. 

 The north end is much destroyed, but some personages on a background of blue 

 sky may represent departed heroes. The shields in this are oblong. The last 

 of these scenes shows a group of houses inside a defensive barrier, and blue 

 warriors in feather cloaks have conquered the inhabitants. Above the door a 

 life-size recumbent figure may be the hero in whose honour the building was 

 erected. 



6. Archaeology in Peru. By Miss A. C. Breton. 



In recent years there has been much activity in the field of Peruvian 

 archaeology. At Tiahuanaco (which must always be associated with Peru, though 

 now within the borders of Bolivia), M. G. Courtz, of the expedition of MM. 

 Senechel Lagrange and de Crequi-Montfort in 1903, excavated the wide monolithic 

 stairway which forms the eastern entrance to the great enclosure called Kalasasaya. 

 He then dug along the western line of monoliths, and found that they were con- 

 nected by a wall of cut stone. On that side he uncovered the double walls of 

 another enclosure, and to the east he found a smaller one, constructed in similar 

 style to the Kalasasaya, with upright monoliths at almost equal distances from 

 each other, and a connecting wall of smaller squared stones, uncemented. From 

 this wall projected a number of human heads, carved in the round from trachyte, 

 and apparently portraits. Some of them are now in the Museum at La Paz. 

 In 1910 the Bolivian Government had the Puerta del Sol set upright and 

 cemented, and erected a shelter for the many sculptured stones which had been 

 found. An underground chamber of carefully cut and fitted stone, discovered 

 in 1908, is only 1 m. 40 cm. by 1 m. 30 cm. (not including five steps which lead 

 down to it), and 1 m. 83 cm. high. The roof is of flat slabs of andesitic lava. 

 Five colossal statues have been disinterred, of which the largest is 5 m. 72 cm. 

 high. They are covered with finely incised designs. On the breast of one is 

 a figure of the deity represented in the centre of the Puerta del Sol, surrounded 

 in this case by standing personages. Another has several minute faces on its 

 hands, and a face on each finger-nail. 



Small portions of the great pyramid-building Ak-kapana can be seen — terrace 

 walls of well-cut stone, but the masses of earth thrown out from the excavation of 

 the centre (the present hollow is said to be more than 300 feet in diameter and 

 60 feet deep) hide the greater part. At Pumapanku, on the opposite side of the 

 Indian town, a number of huge blocks of stone remain at the edge of the plateau. 

 Although many hundreds of tons of worked stones have been removed from the 

 ruins for different purposes, there is no doubt that systematic excavation, con- 

 ducted by competent persons, would result in discoveries of the greatest interest. 

 It is a mistake to suppose that because Tiahuanaco is at the altitude of 12,000 

 feet, the climate is too frigid for comfort. In the middle of winter there the 

 early mornings are cold, and frost may lie in the shade all day, but the sun is 

 hot and the air invigorating. Plentiful crops of barley are gathered, besides the 

 native quinoa and potatoes, and the Indians are well nourished and clothed, 

 capable of long journeys with their lamas and other animals. On St. Peter's 

 Day they assemble in thousands to perform their ancient dances in the town 

 square, as described by Squier. A curious feature is that those who wear great 

 feather crowns resembling the tops of palms, after dancing for some hours, 

 place them in the centre of the ring and continue to dance round, bending 

 towards the crowns as if in worship. 



The amazing richness of Peru in antiquities is seen in the galleries of the 

 National Museum at Lima, which Dr. MaxUhlehas filled with the results of two 

 years' excavation in the region of Nazca, the neighbourhood of Lima, and near 

 Trujillo, all coast civilisations. In the bay of Ancon, the first settlements of 

 primitive fishermen were on the side hills which slope to the sea, where the rocks 

 are covered with shellfish. Then followed the wide-spreading town which filled 

 the sandy area between sea and mountains, known from Reiss and Stiibel's book 

 as the Necropolis of Ancon, but now proved to have been a series of shell heaps 

 and of reed huts, which decayed or were destroyed after the owners had 

 been buried under them with their possessions, when others were built above. 

 The accumulated material covers a space more than a mile square and 30 feet 



