Settlement and Artificial Mummification of the Chinchorro Culture in the Arica and Parinacota Region

The marine hunter-gatherers of the Chinchorro culture lived on the hostile desert coast of the Atacama from about 5450 to 890 BCE — and created the oldest artificial mummies known to archaeology, dismembering and rebuilding the bodies of men, women and children into sculptural forms that reveal the dead's central place in their society. Three sites, two in the city of Arica and one at the Camarones river mouth roughly 100 kilometres south, preserve their settlements and cemeteries. UNESCO inscribed the property in 2021.