Looters had dug all around it, but the Wari tomb at Castillo de Huarmey held 58 noblewomen and their queens, untouched

El Castillo de Huarmey is a hill four hours north of Lima, pitted by looters' holes. In 2010 a University of Warsaw team led by Miłosz Giersz and Patrycja Prządka-Giersz found untouched walls with a magnetometer and kite photographs. In autumn 2012, under layers of mud brick and more than 30 tons of gravel, they reached an unlooted royal chamber, the only known unlooted imperial Wari tomb. It held 58 noblewomen, six human sacrifices, and two guardians whose feet had been cut off. Three or four of the women were royal; the highest-ranked was about 60. She was buried with gold weaving tools, a bronze ceremonial axe and a silver goblet. Lesser noblewomen lay beside boxes of weaving tools. More than 1,300 objects included gold ear ornaments of a kind usually worn by royal men. Nearly everyone in the chamber was a woman or girl, and most died of natural causes over several months. Giersz dates the tomb to about AD 750 and says the Wari valued textiles above gold. The site was used as an ancestor temple for about 200 years; bones and goods were later moved, which the team links to ancestor worship. In 2022 the team found a separate gallery of seven craftworkers beneath the mausoleum.