32 



THE COLLECTION OF OSTEOLOGICAL MATERIAL FROM MACHU PICCHU. 



interments in tlie ancient grave regions of the mountainside did not belong to a period 

 recent enough to admit of the preservation of grave-clothes and mummy-wrappings, down 

 to our own times. The value of the skeletal material, however, is enhanced by these 

 indications of antiquity. 



Figure 28. — Floor plan of Cave i2. 



Cave 33. 



In the part of the lower grave region nearest to the ruins, an open cave shown in text- 

 figure 29 was found to contain a few parts of a large adult human skeleton. The male 

 sex is indicated, although not proved. An odd circumstance that should certainly be recorded, 

 is that neither the skull nor any of the vertebrje and ribs were present, the few skeletal 

 parts that remained being well preserved and lying on the floor of the cave, as indicated 

 in text-figure 30. There were also a few small potsherds of little value, and some broken 

 llama bones that represented the food provided for the dead. No attempt has been made 

 to indicate these in the diagram. 



The chief interest in this grave, as in the one immediately preceding, lies in the incom- 

 plete character of the human skeletal material. I am disposed to believe that the mummy 

 or at least the greater portion of it had been taken from this grave, leaving only those 

 skeletal parts that would most easily be detached through rough handling. What became 

 of the trunk and skull of this individual, I could not learn while in the field, and when the 

 whole of the osteological collection from Machu Picchu was later carefully examined in the 

 laboratory, only one skull was found that the mandil)le from this grave would fit — and 

 that skull clearly belongs to a practically com])lete skeleton! 



