Page 22 - Archaeology - October 2017

FROM THE TRENCHES

Copper mask
(front and back),
Cajon Valley,
Argentina

ANDEAN COPPER AGE

ew radiocarbon dates show that a mask discovered in a mask challenges that assumption, says University of Buenos
valley in northwest Argentina is the oldest worked cop- Aires archaeologist Leticia Inés Cortés, who led the team that
N per artifact ever found in the Andes. The 3,000-year- studied the artifact. “Since complex societies later emerged in
old mask, which depicts a stylized human face, was discovered what is now Peru, there is a tendency to assume that all tech-
in the grave of a man who lived at a time when Andean peoples nological innovations did too,” says Cortés. “The mask shows
were first beginning to practice agriculture. Scholars had gener- that there was not one place for innovation in metalworking,
ally believed metallurgy in the New World was first developed but many, including this region of the southern Andes.”
–Eric A. PowEll
in Peru and then spread to the rest of South America. But the
CAPITAL GAINS
Temple, Mexico City, Mexico

rchaeologists working in downtown
Mexico City have uncovered
A sections of a large circular temple

dedicated to the Aztec god of wind, Ehecatl,
and part of a ritual ball court, that date
to just before the Spanish conquest in
the late fifteenth century. The team also
encountered a chilling collection of 32 male
neck vertebrae that researchers believe was
an offering associated with the ball game.
Future excavations could reveal more ritual
and governmental spaces believed to have
been built during the 1486–1502 reign of
Aztec emperor Ahuizotl, the predecessor
of Moctezuma, and will prove integral in
confirming surviving Spanish descriptions of
the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán.
–MArlEy Brown

20 ARCHAEOLOGY • September/October 2017