Native Peruvians threaded corpses’ spines on to sticks, study suggests

Vertebrae threaded on to a reed post and inserted into a skull, found within a 16th-century tomb in Peru’s Chincha valley. Photograph: JL Bongers

Invasion. Disease. Death. The 16th-century Europeans arriving in Peru brought with them all manner of havoc and destruction.

But they did not only pillage the living. They also looted graves.