Conquering the Past Post-War Archaeology and Nationalism in the Borderlands of Chile and Peru, c. 1880–1920

In 1899, Chilean workers discovered the mummified body of a woman in a copper mine in Chuquicamata, in the Atacama Desert. Chile's most prominent archaeologists were called to examine the body and they estimated it had been in the mine for more than four centuries. What most astonished both the public and the scholarly community was that the body had been preserved virtually intact, apparently by nothing but the environmental conditions surrounding it. José Toribio Medina, a central figure in Chilean archaeology at the time, discussed this finding in 1901:

Natural causes account for the mummy of Chuquicamata. The body is that of a female. The depth of the soil where the corpse was found was no more than six to eight feet, and the miner was probably searching the mountain when a sudden collapse buried her. The miner, feeling that the mountain was breaking down, lifted her arms up to protect her head, the position in which her body is preserved. … In some parts of the body, especially the arms, the difference between the injured and the intact parts of the skin can even be distinguished, to the point where it seems almost that blood is flowing from the wounds. In her face, hidden between her arms, her contracted mouth is visible… .1