Eight centuries-old mummies have been unearthed in the capital of Peru, in a find that experts say could point to a colonial-era cemetery.
Archaeologists were hard at work carefully cleaning the ancient preserved corpses found under the site, including the remains of children, in Lima's Park of Legends on the coast of central Peru on Tuesday.
Park official Lucenida Carrion said the find follows an earlier discovery of three mummies, one of which was holding a wooden cross, in early August.
She said: "This finding backs our hypothesis that this could be cemetery from the colonial period, at the time of conversion to Christianity or Catholicism."
The mummies were found in unusual positions and with a mix of textiles that pointed to the influence of Spanish colonials, added field manager Manuel Moron.
Spain's bloody conquest of Peru's Inca empire began in 1532 and lasted four decades. Government officials said the site had been occupied by the Lima and Ychsma people before the Incas.
Other monuments discovered at the same site date back some 2,000 years.
The find comes after 42 human skeletons dating back to the 16th century, when Peru was conquered by Spanish invaders, were discovered in May.
The skeletons were unearthed near to the Hospital Real de San Andres, a famous building also in the capital Lima.
It is what led archaeologists to believe there may also be mummies belonging to the Incas, the population that inhabited and ruled the Andean region of South America before the Spaniards arrived.
A team of archaeologists also discovered a network of passageways under a more than 3,000-year-old temple in the Peruvian Andes.
Chavin de Huantar temple, located in the north-central Andes, was once a religious and administrative centre for people across the region.
The passageways were found earlier in May and have features believed to have been built earlier than the temple's labyrinthine galleries, according to John Rick, an archaeologist at Stanford University who was involved in the excavation.
Located 3,200 metres above sea level, at least 35 underground passageways have been found over the years of excavations, which all connect with each other and were built between 1,200 and 200 years BC in the foothills of the Andes.
John Rick, an archaeologist at Stanford University involved in the excavation, said at the time: "It's a passageway, but it's very different. It's a different form of construction. It has features from earlier periods that we've never seen in passageways."
Chavin de Huantar, declared a World Heritage Site in 1985, was the inspiration and name of the operation carried out when the Peruvian armed forces built a network of tunnels to rescue 72 people taken hostage by the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) rebel group at the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima in 1997.
