20 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 6l 



SOUTH OF LIMA 



Chorillos. — Twelve kilometers south of Lima, on the coast, lies 

 the watering- place and town of Chorillos. Following the road 

 which leads from this town eastward and then southward, toward 

 Lurin, the traveler passes rather extensive adobe ruins, and at least 

 two burial grounds. Curiously enough, though so near to Lima, 

 these ruins and cemeteries have not as yet been properly explored. 

 Uhle, on his archeological map of the Lima Valley (4to, Lima, 

 1907), marks them as belonging to the "last civilization of the 

 valley before the Incas," but they are probably more recent. They 

 show excellent construction from huge blocks of adobe, formed 

 doubtless in situ, in frames. The burial grounds were examined by 

 the writer in 19 10, and were seen again on this occasion. At the for- 

 mer date a quantity of skulls and bones lay over the surface ; these 

 have since then almost entirely disappeared. The crania showed a 

 prevalence of the antero-posterior deformation, and were evidently of 

 the ordinary coast type, though occasionally an oblong skull was 

 present. The bones indicated people of moderate stature and 

 moderate muscular development. 



A considerable number of burials probably still exist in this 

 neighborhood and they, as well as the ruins, deserve attention before 

 it is too late. 



Pachacamac. — About 18 kilometers southeast of Chorillos, with- 

 in a few hundred feet from the sea and just north of the Rio de 

 Lurin, on and about a number of moderate elevations, lie the great 

 ruins of Pachacamac (pis. 9, 10) well known from Uhle's descrip- 

 tion. 1 The writer has referred to this old city, to which he made 

 two brief visits in 1910, in another publication. 2 Although the present 

 owner of the land on which the important ruins stand forbids the 

 peons to excavate for themselves and is opposed to wanton destruc- 

 tion of the remains, still they are in a perceptibly worse state than 

 three years ago. 



The abundant skeletal material found here by the writer in 1910, 

 and from which 2,200 skulls with several thousand other bones were 

 at that time secured for the U. S. National Museum, has in a 

 large measure disappeared, mainly through the influence of the 

 elements. New excavations, however, have been carried on for a 

 person of high standing in Lima, and it was possible to examine 



1 Uhle, M. : Pachacamac. University of Pennsylvania Publications, fol., 

 Philadelphia, 1903. 



2 Hrdlicka, A. : Some Results of Anthropological Exploration in Peru. 

 Smithsonian Misc. Coll., Vol. 56, No. 16 (Publication 2005), Washington, ion. 



