Three weeks of laboratory work follow our field season this year, and lab work can be tedious, but enlightening. We catalogued over 6,500 collection lots from our excavations this year and photographed over 500 of the most diagnostic artifacts. We also began detailed studies of some of the specimens. However, our most enlightening finds in the lab resulted from a partial restoration of the ceramics from the burial room context.

After days of painstaking work piecing the broken ceramics back together, we have determined that the majority of sherds from above the tomb pertain to one gigantic ceramic vessel. It was an hour-glass shaped pot, about 4 feet high and over a foot wide at the mouth. Fourteen puncture holes created before the pot was fired circled the rim at even spaces. The bulbous base was adorned with three naked dancing figures, one of them flanked by a spear. This was a massive drum, a rare find in Andean archaeology!

Furthermore, lab analysis of the principal burial underneath the drum revealed that this was a pre-pubescent adolescent between 12 and 18 years of age, and probably on the younger end of that range. Gender was indeterminate, but no signs of trauma were evident. Dr. Jane Buikstra and Dr. Maria Lozada, reknowned osteologists and archaeologists were in town and conducted the study of the human remains.

The drum and ceramic bowls from this context are in the Nasca ceramic style, a culture from the coast of Peru, 500 miles north of Cerro Baul. Nasca was very influential in the rise of Wari, and the Late Nasca style continued to be produced under Wari's sway. Chemical analysis of the drum and bowls will permit us to assess if the ceramics were actually produced in the Nasca region, or were imitations produced locally. The spectacular nature of this find, and the fact that the burial is so young and unadorned, begs the question, was this child a dedicatory burial to the drum or vice versa? That remains to be seen.

Our analysis of artifacts from the brewery is still ongoing. Our Peruvian colleagues will continue to analyze the ceramic vessels from this context after our departure. We have, however, been able to document fragments of some of the large brewing and fermenting vessels. Reconstructions of the rims of some of these vessels indicate that the mouth was over a foot wide in some cases, with a body diameter approaching 3 feet. Another ceramic find from the brewery includes the last of a set of four staff god keros, or drinking cups. We have found that numerous of the drinking vessels come in sets of four, perhaps reflecting a fundamental social division in Wari society. The Inca organized their empire and capital city into four quarters, each governed by a lord who served the Inca emperor. Perhaps this quadripartite division harkens back to earlier Wari times.

The contexts from our final excavation area, Unit 40, are revealing the raw materials for the production of ceramics. Donna Nash, who led the excavations in this area, has been meticulously documenting the components of ceramic production here. This excavation also yielded one of two nearly identical stone carvings recovered in this year's excavations. These unique carvings are composed of a series of boxlike depressions carved into the surface of the stone, with two square towers at diagonal corners of the specimen. My colleague, Adan Umire, noted that these carvings were nearly identical to a set of photographs published by an Italian scholar in the 1970's and identified as yupana, or an ancient Peruvian abacus. If so, these would be some of the earliest calculating devices in the Andes, as yupana are usually associated with Inca accounting.

It has been an intense field season, but probably our most rewarding to date. Despite having worked at this site for almost 10 years, I am continually surprised by new discoveries every season that help us redefine the nature of Peru's first empire. We are very content with the discoveries made, and are eager to return to learn more. We especially await the results of the additional laboratory analyses that will tell us so much about the Wari and their contemporaries. However, this year's field research has come to an end and so has this expedition. We hope you will have an opportunity to join us on a future expedition to Cerro Baul, and thank you all for your participation in this one.

Photo captions

Drum cr. R. Williams The partially reconstructed drum, Late Nasca style, was located above the burial in Unit 26.

Bowl cr. PACB This Loro style bowl, a Late Nasca form contemporary with Wari, also came from the mortuary context in Unit 26.

Vat cr. PACB The rims of the ceramic brewing vessels indicate these were very large vessels from Unit 1.

Kero cr. PACB The face of the staff god is portrayed on this last of a set of four keros featuring Wari and Tiwanaku's principal deity.