parallelnormal

Purdue assistant professor of anthropology Kevin J. Vaughn with a pottery fragment from an ancient mine he discovered in Nasca, Peru.

The Nasca of South America (A.D. 1 to A.D. 750) used red ochre from a newly discovered mine to paint pottery, textiles and buildings, as well as their own bodies, Purdue’s Kevin J. Vaughn says.

The 2,000-year-old mine, which  Vaughn discovered, yielded more than 3,700 metric tons of ochre for the Nasca and their predecessors.

Archaeologist ’strikes gold’ with finds of ancient nasca iron ore mine in Peru
Now that there is archaeological evidence that ancient cultures in the Andes were mining iron ore, it is important to give credit to New World civilizations, Vaughn said.

“Even though ancient Andean people smelted some metals, such as copper, they never smelted iron like they did in the Old World,” he said. “Metals were used for a variety of tools in the Old World, such as weapons, while in the Americas, metals were used as prestige goods for the wealthy elite.”

This excavation was part of Vaughn’s Early Nasca Craft Economy Project, a multiyear National Science Foundation-funded study of Nasca ceramic production and distribution. The project’s goal is to better understand the origins of inequality and political economy in this ancient culture.

– Mark Baard