Band of Holes

Summary

Archaeological site in Peru View of the holes The Band of Holes, also known in Spanish as Monte Sierpe (serpent mountain) or Cerro Viruela (smallpox hill), is a series of about 5,000–6,000 man-sized holes[1] found in the Pisco Valley on the Nazca Plateau in Peru. Local people have no idea who made them or how they were used. Over the years, it has been speculated that they were graves, defensive positions, or storage places.[2] Recent thought is that they were storage pits built during the time of the Inca Empire (1438–1533).[1] The band lies between 13°42′59.9″S 75°52′28.46″W / 13.716639°S 75.8745722°W / -13.716639; -75.8745722 and 13°42′20″S 75°52′28.46″W / 13.70556°S 75.8745722°W / -13.70556; -75.8745722 extending in a basically north-south orientation over uneven terrain. The band begins at the edge of a valley and runs up a hill for about 1.5 km. The holes, actually pits with raised edges, are about 1 meter in diameter and 50–100 cm deep. They are arranged in discernable blocks or segments along a band that varies in width from 14–21 meters, with an average width of about 19 meters.[1] Archaeological investigations[edit] Modern attention was drawn to the site in 1933, when the aviator Robert Shippee published an aerial photograph in National Geographic.[1] Victor Wolfgang von Hagen surveyed the area in 1953. In The Royal Road of the Inca he describes these as pre-Inca graves, writing[3] that: These circular, stone-lined although unused graves lay in rows, seven to nine, and marched up the 50° angle to the slope called Mt. Sierpe, that is the “snaking” line of graves reminding the one who named it of a serpent. There are over 5,000 such graves; empty, graves in so far as they are circular and stone-lined, and of the same construction of those graves which are found with mummies, weavings and pottery. For years, ever since 1931 they appeared on the photographic plates of the aerial surveys of the Shippee–Johnson expedition, they were the "strange and myster...