SIUC anthropology professor Izumi Shimada and his crew recently unearthed 22 graves approximately 1,000 years old in northern Peru. The tomb complex contained artifacts from the Sicán culture, including the first "tumi" ceremonial knives ever discovered by archaeologists rather than looted by thieves.

The discovery will enable study of the tumi, Peru's national symbol, in its original setting. "It will allow archaeologists to study the roles tumi knives played in the lives and deaths of the ancient inhabitants of Peru," says Susan Ford, chair of SIUC's anthropology department.

Shimada is the world's top expert on the culture of two ancient Peruvian peoples, the Moche and the Sicán, both of whom predated the Inca empire. The Sicán, who lived along the north coast of what is now Peru between about 800 and 1300 A.D., produced alloys of gold, silver, and arsenic-copper on an unprecedented scale in pre-Hispanic America.

Shimada's excavation of a Sicán religious and ceremonial center, begun more than 25 years ago, is the longest continuous archaeological project in South America, funded in part by such agencies as the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society. The project has discovered pyramids that served as tombs of the elite, and it has shed much light on the culture of the Sicán people.

It also led to the founding of the Sicán National Museum in Ferreñafe. The museum's director, Carlos Elera Arevalo, co-directed the new excavations with Shimada. Their work led to the recent discovery of the graves, which were "clearly from the social elite," says Shimada.

The latest finds, especially those of the tumi knives, attracted international attention last November. In December 2006, Shimada received the Distinguished Service Medal from the National Congress of Peru for his three decades of scientific contributions to Peruvian archaeology.

—by Tom Woolf and Sun Min, Univ. Communications