The Band of Holes

In Peru’s Pisco Valley, there is a strange alignment of thousands of shallow pits. The pits are arranged in a narrow band about 14 to 20 meters wide, that run up a hill for about 1,500 meters. Their purpose or function is a mystery. The feature is locally known as Monte Sierpe (serpent mountain) or Cerro Viruela (smallpox hill). It is also called by the name Band of Holes. Photo: Gustavo Rios Cerro Viruela is a relatively unknown site even among archeologists who have been working in Peru for decades. The site first came to media attention in the 1930s after aviator Robert Shippee published an aerial photograph in the National Geographic . Since then, very few archeologists have visited the site. In 1953, American explorer Victor Wolfgang von Hagen surveyed the area and described the pits as “graves” but empty. He estimated that there are about 5,000 such graves in the area. Archaeologist John Hyslop speculated in his 1984 book The Inka Road System that the circular structures may have been used for storage, similar to the ones found on the Peruvian south coast in the sites Quebrada de la Vaca and at Tambo Colorado. The holes are about three feet across and 20 to 40 inches deep. They were made in various ways, some dug into artificial mounds of soil and others made up of small rock structures on the surface. The band is divided into several unique groupings, which they called blocks, each of which have different patterns of holes. Satellite view of Band of Holes. In 2015 a team of archeologists from the University of California made a detailed study of the site, using a drone to create a map of the Band of Holes, which they estimated is made up of between 5,000 and 6,000 depressions.