A living treasure in ancient bodies.

• Author: Robinson, Richard
• Position: Centro Mallqui, Peru, important archeological center for mummies

Under the direction of anthropologist Sonia Guillen, Peru's Centro Mallqui is a leading center for the preservation of mummies, and a resource for diverse biological research

The village of El Algarrobal, population twelve, sits on a shelf of sand above the green ribbon of the valley floor. Steep walls of tawny, crumbling sandstone rise to an opal sky, enclosing this valley of the Osmore River in quiet solitude--a long, thin oasis in the endless desert of southern Peru. Alongside the road is a white-painted church (one mass each year), a small olive-crushing plant, a municipal office, and a community store. Two buildings stand out in this otherwise spare ensemble--modern structures that incorporate a flavor of traditional desert styling with pre-Columbian hum mingbird motifs. They are the Museo Municipal and the Centro Mallqui--one of the foremost centers for the recovery and study of mummies in Peru, and by extension, the world.

Why did Centro Mallqui (in Quechua, mallqui means mummy) settle in this serene but remote corner of the country, eight miles from the nearest town of Ilo? Its director, Sonia Guillen, explains: "Many favorable conditions come together here, most importantly the presence of numerous graveyards of the Chiribaya culture. The low humidity and almost complete absence of rain have left the mummies, and the textiles and artifacts entombed with them, in a remarkably fine state of preservation. The climatic disruptions of El Nino tend to have had less impact here than in better known sites to the north."

Add to that the practical issue of land, made available by the authorities in Ilo, and the urgent need to counteract the activities of tomb robbers, and the choice of El Algarrobal becomes a natural one.

Guillen studied medicine for two years in Lima before switching to archaeology, later earning a doctoral degree in biological anthropology at the University of Michigan. She found that there was no clearly defined career path for newly qualified specialists in the conservation of organic remains and worked to create her own opportunities, acquiring formidable management and resource-juggling skills along the way.

Founded in 1994, Centro Mallqui is sponsored by the private Bioanthropology Foundation Peru, a U.S.-based, family-owned foundation. The most exacting of the work is entrusted to a young conservator, Fran Cole, from Surrey, England, and a local weaver, Rosa Choque, whose intimate knowledge of textiles has been augmented by training in conservation. Around the various laboratories and storerooms floor-to-ceiling rack shelving is packed with cartons, each labeled in great and inscrutable detail. The center's small staff also includes an implausibly friendly guard dog and several cats to deter rodents and lizards.

Centro Mallqui has developed as a place where local people can learn some of the very exacting techniques of conservation, and expertise can be exported to other sites, which can in turn become self-supporting. It is at one of these sites that we gain our first insight to the problems faced and the obstacles to be overcome in this valuable work.

After meeting up with Guillen in Lima, we traveled together to Chachapoyas, the remote capital of a mountainous, wooded province between the Andes and the Amazon forest, some eighty miles north of Cajamarca. This being the rainy season, the most reliable means of transport is by the weekly Accion Civil flight operated by the Peruvian armed forces to isolated parts of the country. Our arrival in Chachapoyas represented no more than a staging post to...