General information
Since 2015 a Polish-Peruvian team of archaeologists has been carrying out a series of interventions at the archaeological site of Toro Muerto. The first project – financed by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education with a Diamond Grant (DI2013008843) – lasted two years and was managed by Karolina Juszczyk (at that time,
an MA student at the Institute of Archaeology of the University of Warsaw) and Abraham Imbertis (a Peruvian archaeologist, specialist in geomatics). Janusz Z. Wołoszyn was a scientific advisor to the project. During our field seasons we had the logistic support of the Municipality Council of Uraca-Corire represented by its mayor Ramón Zegarra Prado.
In 2015 and 2016, the team managed to produce detailed documentation of approximately 3.8 sq km of the southern part of the site and drew up an inventory of approx. 1,650 rocks with engraved motifs. The results of this work were presented simultaneously on the project website (toro-muerto.com) and in two articles (Juszczyk et al. 2017; Juszczyk, Wołoszyn & Rozwadowski 2018).
Team of the Toro Muerto
Archaeological Project 2015
From the left:
Abraham Imbertis, Daniel Prusaczyk, Šárka Kučerová and František Neidhardt (volunteers from the Czech Republic), Janusz Wołoszyn (seated), Karolina Juszczyk, Stanisław Rzeźnik, Mario Llerena (employee of the Municipality Council of Uraca-Corire)
Part of the site documented by the Project
2015-2016 seasons
In 2017, a new project was launched. As part of it, we completed the basic documentation of the site, supplemented the list of questions and set further research goals, thus opening the second stage of our work. The Toro Muerto Archaeological Research Project (TMARP) is financed by the National Science Centre (OPUS grant, UMO-2016/23/B/HS3/01882) and is managed by Janusz Z. Wołoszyn from the Faculty of Archaeology of the University of Warsaw and a Peruvian archaeologist Liz Gonzales Ruiz. The scientific advisor to the project is Andrzej Rozwadowski from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań – an outstanding Polish researcher of rock art. The project continues to receive support from the Municipality Council of Uraca-Corire, headed by Mayor Martha Ruelas Condori since 2019.
By 2018, thanks to the work of the entire team, Toro Muerto managed to register 2,584 boulders with petroglyphs in an area of about 10 sq km (Wołoszyn, Gonzales & Rozwadowski 2019; Wołoszyn, Rozwadowski & Gonzales 2020; Gonzales et al. 2020). During that season, we also started very fruitful cooperation with the National Geographic Institute of Peru, thanks to which the team led by Major Fabian Brondi Rueda, head of the ING Unit of Specialized Cartography, produced full and extremely accurate aerial documentation of the studied area. We also initiated excavations at the same time.
TMARP team
2018
From the left:
Janusz Wołoszyn, Abraham Imbertis, Aleksandra Lisek, Manuel Morón, Becker Ascona, Miguel Macedo, Mónica Ayala, Nestor Lagos, Lesly Tapia, Liz Gonzales
Financing:
Team of the TMARP
2019
From the left:
Janusz Wołoszyn, Piotr Roguski, Becker Ascona, Michał Górski, Rider Briceño, Alexander Obregón, María Cristina Álvarez, Liz Gonzales, Susan Paucar, Fabian Simeon, Abraham Imbertis, Miguel Macedo, Lesly Tapia
Wayra & Rumi Simeon Gonzales
Northern part of the site documented by the TMARP team
2017-2018 seasons
In addition to having a team of qualified professionals (mostly archaeologists) from Peru and Poland, the project has had (year after year) the valuable support of Peruvian and foreign volunteers, thus opening a field school for young people (archaeologists and representatives of related disciplines) who wish to deepen their knowledge of rock art studies.
